Is There Anyone That Can Break Women's 400m Record?
Many track and field records have been broken in the past two decades, but the women's 400 meter record of 47.60 seconds stands untouched until this day. Tomorrow on October 6 2012 women's 400m world record, 47.60 seconds, will celebrate its 27th birthday.
It was on October 6, 1985 when East German Marita Koch broke the women's 400 meter world record in Canberra, Australia in a time of 47.60 seconds. She improved Czechoslovakias Jarmilas Kratachilovas world record by 0.33 seconds. Her record is one of the oldest ones in the sport of track and field.
In the last 10 years the average time of the top performances in the world is 49.16 seconds, that is 1.56 seconds slower than the world record.
Some Doping History
East Germany conducted a decades long program to feed performance-enhancing-drugs to their athletes. The drug regimens, given either with or without the knowledge of the athletes, resulted in victories in international competitions, including the Olympic Games. East Germany had been a pioneering state in doping, so much that it was considered to be the inventor of doping. East German women controversially set many world records in the 1970s and 1980s. World record holder Marita Koch maintains her innocence, although released government files detail her drug usage.
Koch has never acknowledged the use of prohibited substances "At the World Championships in Helsinki in 1983 I had to go to dope-testing three times and always I was clean. The same applies to my career overall. I was a mature and responsible athlete." Koch insisted in an interview a couple of years ago.
Systematic doping of athletes ended with the fall of communism in East Germany in 1989, before German reunification a year later. Many former athletes suffer from health problems related to steroid consumption.
