When Dwain Chambers won the Indoor Euro Championships 60 meters in 6.42 seconds (March 2009), he predicted that time extrapolated to a 9.70.
I felt based on previous world records, a conversion of 1.53 or 1.54 would give Dwain approximately 9.82 – 9.89 seconds for a 100 meters. (He ran a 10.00 season best in Berlin)
These tables or conversions assume a maximum velocity to 60 meters, followed by speed endurance maintenance for another 20-30 meters, and a deceleration anywhere from 10-15 meters.
[Tweet “Is 60m to 100m Conversion Tables Useless?”]
One poster on T&FN forum suggested you can extrapolate a 100m using 2 x 60m time minus 3 sec, which to me just doesn’t add up.
The problem with any conversion of a 60 meter race is Super-Elite athletes today like Usain Bolt and Tyson Gay are accelerating to maximum velocity well past the 60 meter point.
So for those Super-Elite athletes, just take those tables and throw it away.
Unless, of course, you want to have indoor 70 meter races with extra large crash mats! Then we can talk 70 to 100 meter conversions.
But wait!
If you take Usain Bolt’s 60 meter split from Berlin, multiply by 2 and subtract 3, to you get:
(6.29 x 2) – 3 = 9.58
Dead on.
So is this the new formula?
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when you consider the race models for 60 and 100 usually differ in the amount of time spent in the acceleration phase, you could take 100 race times and use that formula because the race model being used was for 100 meters. When modeling a 60, the amount of emphasis changes in the acceleration phase to allow for a quicker transition. Just MHO.
Bolt had .08 on Gay at 60m which means he should beat him by .13 at 100m
that’s prorated 9.71-9.58 = .13 Now the next is a lower class and Powell may not belong. But let’s use him to gage what the rest should project.
Powell 6.42 9.84 projected difference
Thompson 6.45 9.93 9.89 .04
Bailey 6.48 9.93 9.94 .01
chambers 6.50 10.0 9.97 .03
Burns 6.52 10.0 10.01 .01
Patton 6.51 9.98 9.99 .01 (from semi.)
Using your 1.53 with chambers=9.95 1.54 =10.01 the error was using 6.42 and not 6.50 which he ran. Now my projection has 4 runner’s within .01 including Gay which is dead on. Using Powell works because his deceleration is about the same.
wait!! why does’nt bolt run the 60m?? is he going to because i am not sure but that’s a fast 60m!!! i mean i think they would run faster at a shorter distance than a 100m obviously but he has every other sprinting record why not go for it? he could work on his start?
@Bobby – can you imagine the Crash Mats needed to stop him on an indoor 60? he’s big and tall… I would not want to get in his way.
It would work if they ran the same race patterns. But often they run a different race pattern. Which would suggest run the same race pattern for 100m as would for the 60 if you want to run faster 100m times.
Also it is still time to rethink conventional thinking about sprinting and race patterns.