The discreet charm of the 400 m hurdles, revisited

A few years ago I wrote an article with title "The discreet charm of the 400 m hurdles". It was inspired by the announcement that A. Eaton was going to take a year off decathlon in order to compete in the 400 m hurdles. He had predicted a time between 47 and 48 seconds but specialists thought that he would be lucky to break 50 seconds. Things turned out to be in between the two predictions, with Eaton registering a 48.69 s, and winning a Diamond League event.

J. Mulkeen in his blog had published an interesting study on the unlikely couple, as he put it, of decathlon (and heptathlon) and 400 m hurdles. Unfortunately his study goes up to 2014 and thus would be slightly outdated today. 

What spurred the current article were two events just a few weeks apart, where the combined event specialist 400 m hurdles record was broken, both for men and women. Ayden Owens-Delerme is well-known to the readers of this blog. With 8532 points he was fourth at the 2022 World Championships after leading the event the first day and registering a 45.07 s in the 400 m. This year, following some minor injuries, he decided not to compete in the NCAA decathlon in order to concentrate on the World Championships. And in the meantime he went back to the 400 m hurdles where he had a modest 53.13 s best, from 2016 (when he was just 16). And, on May 13, he surprised everybody with a blistering 48.26 s, almost half a second better than the time of Eaton. 

But wait, it does not stop here. While following the Florence Diamond League meeting I discovered that the athlete running in lane 8 was none other than last year's world bronze medalist in heptathlon, Anne Hall. Of course Hall is a superb 400-800 runner, having won the indoor national title over the shorter distance this winter. And she has one of the best performances over the heptathlon 800 m, with 2:02.97, obtained the previous week in Götzis, where with 6988 points she scored the fifth best score ever. (At long last the 2:01.84 record of Nadine Debois is under a substantial threat). Hall had already run the 400 m hurdles in March and April with 54.94 and 54.48 s. With 54.42 s in Florence she finished 3rd, behind F. Bol and S. Little.

The question that springs to mind is how do the performances of Hall and Owens-Delerme compare to those of the world record holders. Well, it turns out that both K. Mayer and J. Joyner-Kersee have run the 400 m hurdles. Mayer has a 54.57 s performance dating back to 2017, while JJK has a 55.05 s best (and a few other performances in the 55-56 bracket). And the most natural way to compare these performances is by using the scoring table. (Yes, Virginia, there is a scoring table for combined events scores). Owens-Delerme scores 1218+1209 points for the 400 m hurdles and the decathlon for a total of 2427. Mayer with 914 points in the 400 m hurdles cannot do better than 2216 despite his 9126 score at the decathlon (1302 points). Eaton beats Owens-Delerme scoring 1196+1289 for a total of 2485. D. Thompson, who was number one in Mulkeen's list scores 1004+1258 points, a total on 2264, for his 52.6 and 8847 performances.  In the case of women, Joyner-Kersee wins easily with 1171+1331 points (a total of 2502) compared to 2461 (obtained from 1191+1270) for Hall. It is tempting to compare Hall to that other great heptathlete, K. Klüft, who has a 7032  heptathlon personal best and had run the low hurdles in 61.14. Her total is just 2267 (with only 988 points in the hurdles) but one must bear in mind that Klüft ran the 400 m hurdles just once at the very last year of her career. The only other heptathlete among the elite who has a 400 m hurdles performance is K. Johnson-Thompson. Her 58.3 combined with the 6981 heptathlon points give her a total of 1072+1269, i.e. 2341 points.  

So, all in all, Hall and Owens-Delerme are already number two in the combined 400 m hurdles and deca/heptathlon. Given that they are still in activity and have a substantial progression margin I would not be astonished if they ended up by becoming number one.

Before wrapping up this article the question that springs to mind is how do the two combined events specialists compare with record holders of the hurdles event, in particular since it is well-known that K. Warholm started his career as a decathlete. His personal best goes back to the days he was competing in the U20 category and his 7764 score obtains 1090 points. Adding them to the 1341 points of his hurdles world record gives a total of 2431, just ahead of Owens-Delerme. On the other hand, none of the top female hurdles specialists has dabbled with combined events. One must go back to S. Gunnell who at the very beginning of her career, when she was just 17, completed a heptathlon obtaining 5395 points. Combining this with her 52.73 world record gives her a 2202 total (obtained as 957+1245), even lower than the one of Klüft. 

And, at this point, I am willing to risk a prediction. If one day the women's decathlon becomes the mainstream event, we may have more athletes trying the 400 m hurdles, the decathletes being more versatile than the actual heptathletes.