Desk Report,
These 5 athletics records have stood for over 30 years
It is said that records are made to be broken. And due to the combination of factors such as sports science, athlete nutrition, training methods and the use of technology around the world, the number of cases of breaking old records and setting new records is constantly increasing.
These 5 athletics records have stood for over 30 years
However, while records and records are almost regular in most sports, the opposite is true in athletics. There are some records in this sport that have stood for ages. Even though the World Athletics Championships are held every two years and the Olympic Games are held every four years, no one has been able to break the records for a long time. There are three types of events in athletics. Among them, sprints, middle distance, long distance, hurdles and relays are held on the track. Jumps and throws are held on the field. And events such as the pentathlon, heptathlon and decathlon are also held in track and field.
Records for five events have stood for three decades or more.
1. Hammer Throw
The world record for the hammer throw belongs to Yuri Sedykh. This athlete from the former Soviet Union threw the hammer at a distance of 86.74 meters or 284 feet 6 inches at the 1986 European Championships in Stuttgart. No one has come close to it for 39 years since then. Sedykh holds the second and third highest distance records, no matter how far he goes.
Another piece of information shows how secure the former Soviet star’s record is. In the 21st century, Vadim Devyatovsky of Belarus managed to throw the hammer at a maximum of 84.90 meters in 2005. He is now 14th in terms of distance. 2. Long Jump
In 1991, Mike Powell crossed 8.95 meters in the long jump at the World Athletics Championships. This American athlete broke Bob Beamon’s record from 1968. Powell broke the record 23 years later, but his record has not been surpassed in 34 years. The only person to come close to his world record is Dwight Phillips of the United States, but his long jump in 2009 was 8.74 meters, which is the joint tenth longest distance.
3. High jump
The world record for the high jump is held by Javier Sotomayor. The Cuban athlete jumped 2.45 meters in this height-extending sport at the 1993 World Athletics Championships. Sotomayor, who won gold in the same event at the 1992 Olympics, is the only athlete to have jumped 8 feet or more twice. No other high jumper has ever climbed 8 meters. Qatar’s Musat Essa Barshim came close to him in the 2014 Diamond League, jumping 2.43 meters. 4. 4X400-meter relay
Like many long-standing world records, this is an exception—the only team record. The United States finished the 4x400m relay in 2 minutes 54.29 seconds at the 1993 World Athletics Championships in Stuttgart, Germany. The team featured three Olympic champions: Michael Johnson, Butch Reynolds, Quincy Watts and Andrew Valmont. This record has stood for 32 years.
5. Triple Jump
The triple jump is a three-step jump—a hop, a step and a jump. The overall distance covered is the criterion for victory. The world record for this event in athletics is held by Jonathan Edwards of England. He cleared 18.29m at the 1995 World Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden, which has not been broken yet. In 2015, American Christian Taylor cleared 18.21m in Beijing, and last year, Spain’s Jordan Diaz reached 18.18m. But Edwards remains at the top. While it is a source of pride to hold a record for so long, Edwards believes it is not in the best interests of athletics. In a recent interview with the BBC, he said, “I don’t think it is a good sign for athletics as a sport that an athletics record has been intact for 30 years.”
