(Revised) Tokyo 2020 Olympic Timetable for Track & Field, and the 400-200 Double

Approximately 100 days from now, the postponed 2020 Tokyo Olympics are scheduled to begin.

Full details are slowly trickling in, such as no foreign spectators, and massive testing.

But most countries have not held their Trials or selections yet (except the Marathon), and most counties have had relaxed (or non existent) out-of-competition drug testing. As well, many athletes didn’t have access to weight rooms, outdoor tracks, supervised coaching for several weeks or months, or even competitions to make the standard qualifying marks!

To say these Games are about “Olympic Values and Fair Play” is an understatement.

I wrote some thoughts on the original schedule here:

You can download the new 2021 Tokyo 2021 Track & Field schedule here in PDF.

The 200-400 Double

Valerie Brisco-Hooks, Marie-Jose Perec, Michael Johnson and immediately come to mind.

Even Wayde van Niekerk’s 200-400 double attempt at a 2017 World Championships comes to mind (though he missed the 200m gold by 0.02 thanks to Ramil Guliyev). van Niekerk admitted the double was tough and took “a lot out of his legs”.

Take a look at the 2021 schedule:

Thoughts?

Clearly, the schedule for the 400/200m double favours Men than Women. That is the argument from Shaunae Miller-Uibo.

Most athletes are running for their lives in the Semi-finals, just to make the Finals. They don’t have the luxury of “jogging the last 50m” of a 400m semi-finals, to conserve energy.

Day 5 for Women is separated by 12 hours, but you still have 5 races in 3 days.

So it’s unlikely we’ll see this double, Men or Women, at this years 2020/21 Tokyo Olympics.