Yes I recall Ryun during one of his WR ran a 50.x It might have been 50.6, but I seem to remember it being 50.1 but not below 50. But it was also a WR run.
What was even more impressive was his last 100 yards was a 10.2.
And all of this before super shoes and all weather tracks of course.
I remember talking about this with a coach and he be like, yeah but he had a running start. Duh.
This post was edited 2 minutes after it was posted.
Can we stop with the "Centro controlled the race" non sense?
He deserves credit for positioning himself well for the last lap and closing super fast, but that is a set of circumstances outside his control (i.e. rest of athletes refusing to race a legit 1500 to play it all on a kick). It's fair to say that his competitors underestimated him by giving him a 1-2m headstart on the final 400-500, but you can't attribute this to a masterful, genius tactic that Centro pulled out of his a..e!
They all gambled. Sometimes you ein, sometimes you lose.
No we can't stop, that's exactly what he did. He was challenged for the lead multiple times and ran just hard enough to stay ahead and because of that the field was content to sit back and wait.
You CAN attribute this to a masterful tactic that Centro pulled off because that's exactly what happened. The 1500 final would never have been a 3:50 race if Centro didn't slow it down and fend off challenges to speed up.
Oh come on, you know that's not what REALLY happened, right?
Had they been through 800 at 62-64 sec per lap (which is still quite slow) I could see how the chasers would be hesitant to pick up the pace / go around Centro to save energy.
But they went through 800 in 2:17! That is not even half marathon pace for these guys. It's unbelievably slow.
You can't really believe that they were controlled/blocked/slowed by Centro at that pace. It would take little to no effort at all to go around. There was no challenge for the lead at all until they reached 1000m. Watch the race again.
They all played a stupid sit and kick waiting game.
No genius, no tactic, just an idiotic leave-it-to-the-last-lap race.
Centro deserves some credit for positioning himself before the bell lap of course (and that is a skill he possesses undeniably), but for the most part, he is very lucky the race played out the way it did.
I’ve done a couple searches on the boards here about the mythical sub 50 last lap and this race usually comes up. I’ve linked the only video I could find of it below but I’ve never been able to find a consensus on the split. Some have said it’s sub 50, some 50 low, and it seems to be thrown off by how fast Jim goes by the others. In all my searching, I have never found a confirmed split of sub 50 for any multi lap race but would love to see one. Surely there must be some 800 or elite 1500 that needed a 49 high to win, right?
To this day Ryun claims he ran sub-50 for the last lap, but since no 1100 split was taken, we'll never know. There was a 1200 split taken and Ryun ran 36 for the last 300, which is blazing fast. If there was an unedited clip of the last lap his time could be estimated but so far all there is is this edited clip.
Actually, it's quite possible guys in the same race like Mahkloufi and maybe even Willis ran the last lap faster than Centro -- they just weren't in the lead.