A new era for women’s 400m running, but we still need to talk about Marita Koch

Jerry Kiernan had a great notion that all runners must eventually move up a distance. Like most things in life, he knew what he was talking about, running a sub-four minute mile in 1976, before successfully moving his way up to the marathon, finishing ninth in the 1984 Olympics in LA.

By necessity or otherwise, Kiernan’s rationale didn’t always win appeal, although he loved to debate it. One of the reasons we miss him dearly. What is undeniable is that rarely in the history of this sport has any athlete moved so swiftly and successfully across a distance better than Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone. The natural fear for her opponents is that at age 23, the American is only getting going.

We are referring to her move across from the 400m hurdles to the 400m flat. Still one lap of the track, obviously, only without 10 hurdles lined up along the way it’s an entirely different technical and tactical event. Think of it as running with one hand tied behind your back and then running with one hand waving free.

McLaughlin-Levrone has unquestionably mastered the former, the New Jersey native smashing — and the word is justified — every US and world age-group record over the 400m hurdles since she was 13. Having already become the first woman in history to break 52 seconds back in 2021, she then won the Tokyo Olympics in 51.46 seconds, and she came out last year and ran 50.68, the first sub-51 in history, when winning the World Championships in Oregon.

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That’s her fourth world record in the event, and with that came the question: what’s the next hurdle? After first announcing herself as Sydney McLaughlin (last year she married Andre Levrone, who spent three seasons as a wide receiver in the NFL), she made the US Olympic team in Rio in 2016 at age 16, ran 52.75 over the hurdles at age 18, and her world record of 50.68 is nearly one second faster than the next best on the all-time list — the biggest gap in any individual track event.

So why not try something different? Coached since 2020 by Bob Kersee (who first made his name with the likes of Flo-Jo, later Allyson Felix), the 100m hurdles were briefly mooted, before they settled on the 400m flat — with that bringing her into the same conversation as Rhasidat Adeleke, who to Kiernan’s no doubt approval has moved up from the shorter sprint events.

Although Adeleke first dipped her spikes into one-lap running last year, improving her Irish record to 50.53 when finishing fifth at the European Championships in Munich, this is her first full tilt at it, and still only 20, the 49.20 seconds she clocked when winning the NCAA title in Texas last month marks some similarly startling progression.

In her first 400m flat since turning professional in 2018, McLaughlin-Levrone won the Paris Diamond League last month in 49.71 seconds, passing halfway in a crazy-fast 22.66. She followed that with a 49.51 in New York, before last weekend she won the US Championships in a more evenly split 48.71 — making it five-for-five in sub-50 second performances, moving her straight to number 10 on the all-time list.

Now, for the first time in almost 40 years, there is talk of a world record again in the 400m flat, the women’s event moving into a new era not witnessed in quite some time. But before that, we need to talk about Marita Koch, and some old truths about what breaking that world record would mean.

In all, Koch broke 30 world records, 16 outdoors and 14 indoors, all while representing the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) and during the time of their state-sponsored and systematic doping. While Koch never failed a doping test, evidence of that GDR regime has been repeatedly presented beyond any reasonable doubt. Going back to 1990, when Manfred Hoppner, the man who for years helped East German athletes evade the testing, sold secret documents to Stern magazine.

Of all Koch’s world records, her 400m mark of 47.60 is still out there on its own, given no woman has broken 48 seconds in the 38 years since. Running at the 1985 World Cup in Canberra, drawn in lane two and passing halfway in a ridiculous-fast 22.4, she bettered the 47.99 that the former Czechoslovakian Jarmila Kratochvilova clocked to win the 1983 World Championships in Helsinki, still the only other sub-48 in history.

Koch also won the Olympic 400m in Moscow in 1980, part of this era laid bare on the BBC Radio 5 Live 90-minute special The Record Fakers, first aired in 2013 to mark 30 years since Helsinki, when the GDR athletes were essentially unbeatable, topping the medal table with 22 in all, including 10 in gold — three for Koch (in the 200m, plus the 4x100m and 4x400m relay)

The Record Fakers includes input from Ines Geipel, a former East German world record holder in the women’s sprint relay. “We were a large experiment, a big chemical field test, a stolen childhood,” she said.

“That’s the least it was,” said Prof Werner Franke, a long-term campaigner for full recognition of the severity of the old GDR doping regime, and the erasure of all records associated with it. In 1991, more than 20 years after Barbel Wockel won the 200m for the GDR at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, Franke produced a letter in which Koch complained to the head of the state-owned pharmaceutical company that Wockel was receiving larger doses of steroids because she had a relative who worked there.

Koch has always maintained her innocence. She is still married to Wolfgang Meier, the coach who first discovered her, aged 15.

What is certain is that this is a different generation entirely, Adeleke’s arrival at this level, aged only 20, is neatly reflected by her two college rivals this season, Britton Wilson and Talitha Diggs, second and third behind McLaughlin-Levrone at the US Championships last weekend.

Now, Adeleke gets to test herself against McLaughlin-Levrone for the first time, as she makes her Diamond League debut in Monaco next Friday night, alongside Wilson again also. Still, too soon to talk up anyone breaking 47.60, it is back in the conversation nonetheless.

“It’s a very daunting number to look at, I’ll tell you that,” McLaughlin-Levrone told the LA Times in May. “But at the end of the day, I think if we can take the 400 hurdles to 50.6, I think 47.6 isn’t too far off.”

Perhaps only as far as moving across events.