in the old days you added .7 to relay time, as an approx. open time. What I liked seeing is how well Boling was able to keep his knees up coming down the final stretch. I have seen some of the women doing that in the 200 and it shows, to me, that he is very strong despite a lot of fatigue at that point. Many of these guys running 44+ can maintain very good form, very impressive. I am guessing a lot of that has to do with their 200 and 100 meter times, as they can run 21+ and it is less than max, close to maybe 92% of their max? To me that has been the biggest improvement over previous generations of 400m runners. They go out in 21 and can come back in 23.....I still remember when Larry James ran 43.9 leg yds at Penn Relays (his 5th race of the weekend) and had similar lift. He was able to maintain speed as his runs were a bit more even split. All in all very exciting to see such running. In 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, the US ran 2:56.1, a world record at the time. Matthews(Johnson C Smith College), Freeman (Arizona State), James (Villanova) and Evans (San Jose). James was a sophomore, Freeman a junior and Matthews and Evans seniors. I am guessing that record could be achieved by one of these college teams.