History of the 200 M. Dash
Event Depth Chart . . .
200 M. Dash
This distance is similar to the ancient Greek sprint event the "stadion"
(literally length of the stadium), but it derives from a mile-based distance,
the furlong, or one-eighth of a mile.
In the USA, the 200m was run in a straight line until around 1960. A curve
was only included in Europe and at the Olympics, where the distance first
appeared in 1900. The 200m with a full bend on a 400m track became universally
accepted in 1958, when two distinct sets of records began to be kept.
The 200m specialist must combine the basic speed of the 100m sprinter with
a running technique that allows him to cope with centrifugal forces when
sprinting around the bend. Times in a 200m straight race were estimated
to be around 3 to 4/10ths of a second faster than races including a bend.
A distance related to the quarter-mile which is 440 yards or 402.34 meters.
This race is probably best described as an endurance-sprint.