Night Of Speed
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Night Of Speed
The Night of Speed was the rare occurrence when three men set the world record in the 100 metres in the same History On Thursday, June 20, 1968, two semi-final races were held as part of the AAU National Championships held at Hughes Stadium in Sacramento, California. At the time, the world record for the 100 metres was 10.0 seconds, hand timed, set and equalled over the years by Armin Hary (Germany) and Harry Jerome (Canada) in 1960, Horacio Esteves (Venezuela) and Bob Hayes (United States) in 1964, Jim Hines (United States) and Enrique Figuerola (Cuba) in 1967, and by Paul Nash (South Africa) and Oliver Ford (United States) earlier in 1968. Earlier in the day, with the maximum allowable wind of , Roger Bambuck (France) and Charles Greene (United States) had again tied the world record. With an aiding wind of , Hines won the first semi-final, timed in 9.9 seconds, to set the new world record, but in second place Ronnie Ray Smith was also credited with the same tim ...
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100 Metres
The 100 metres, or 100-meter dash, is a sprint race in track and field competitions. The shortest common outdoor running distance, the dash is one of the most popular and prestigious events in the sport of athletics. It has been contested at the Summer Olympics since 1896 for men and since 1928 for women. The inaugural World Championships were in 1983. The reigning 100 m Olympic or world champion is often named "the fastest man or woman in the world". Fred Kerley and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce are the reigning world champions; Marcell Jacobs and Elaine Thompson-Herah are the men's and women's Olympic champions. On an outdoor 400-metre running track, the 100 m is held on the home straight, with the start usually being set on an extension to make it a straight-line race. There are three instructions given to the runners immediately before and at the beginning of the race: "on your marks," "set," and the firing of the starter's pistol. The runners move to the star ...
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Paul Nash (athlete)
Paul Nash (born 20 January 1947) is a South African sprinter who tied the 100-metre world record four times in 1968 with a time of 10.0 seconds. He attended Michaelhouse school in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. His most celebrated race in South Africa occurred on 2 April 1968 when at the Krugersdorp stadium he equalled what was then the world record of 10.00. He was ranked third in the world over 100-metre behind Jim Hines of the United States and Lennox Miller of Jamaica by Track and Field News in 1968. Hines won the Olympic title at high altitude in Mexico City in 1968 in a world record electronic time of 9.95 with Miller second. In 1967 Nash had competed against Hines in Los Angeles when he finished third in a hand-timed 10.4 with Hines in 10.2. The next year Nash, aged 21, was in fine form and during the South African athletics season in the early months of 1968 media attention focussed intensively on Nash's prospects of breaking the world handtimed record ...
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Mel Pender
Melvin Pender Jr. (born October 31, 1937 in Atlanta, Georgia) competed as a runner in the 1964 and 1968 Olympics, winning an Olympic gold medalist in the 4x100 m relay at the 1968 Summer Olympics. He had been a member of the Philadelphia Pioneer Track Club where he was coached by Alex Woodley, who had coached several other athletes who went on to participate in Olympic events. U.S. Army career Pender enlisted in the U.S. Army at age 17. In 1960 he was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division on Okinawa. Following the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, he returned to military service, graduating from Officer Candidate School in 1965. He was subsequently deployed to South Vietnam where he served with the 9th Infantry Division in the Mekong Delta. Subsequently he was ordered to return to the U.S. to train for 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. After the 1968 Olympics, Pender returned to South Vietnam where he earned a Bronze Star Medal. Returning to the U.S. in August 1970, he then worked ...
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IAAF
World Athletics, formerly known as the International Amateur Athletic Federation (from 1912 to 2001) and International Association of Athletics Federations (from 2001 to 2019, both abbreviated as the IAAF) is the international governing body for the sport of athletics, covering track and field, cross country running, road running, race walking, mountain running, and ultra running. Included in its charge are the standardization of rules and regulations for the sports, certification of athletic facilities, recognition and management of world records, and the organisation and sanctioning of athletics competitions, including the World Athletics Championships. The organisation's president is Sebastian Coe of the United Kingdom, who was elected in 2015 and re-elected unopposed in 2019 for a further four years. World Athletics suspended the Russian Athletics Federation (RusAF) from World Athletics starting in 2015, for eight years, due to doping violations, making it ineligible to hos ...
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Athletics At The 1968 Summer Olympics – Men's 100 Metres
The men's 100 metres sprint event at the 1968 Olympic Games took place at Estadio Olímpico Universitario in Mexico City, Mexico, on October 13 and 14. Sixty-five athletes from 42 nations took part. Each nation was limited to 3 runners by rules in place since the 1930 Olympic Congress. The final was won by American Jim Hines, the second consecutive time the event was won by an American (and the nation's 12th title in the event overall). Jamaica won its first medal in the event since 1952. Background This was the sixteenth time the event was held, having appeared at every Olympics since the first in 1896. The gold medalist from 1964, American Bob Hayes, did not return (playing in the National Football League instead), but Tokyo silver medalist Cuban Enrique Figuerola and bronze medalist Canadian Harry Jerome did. The American team was led by Jim Hines and Charles Greene, two of the three men to establish the world record at 9.9 seconds during the Night of Speed; Mel Pender, ...
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Mexico City
Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley of Mexico within the high Mexican central plateau, at an altitude of . The city has 16 boroughs or ''demarcaciones territoriales'', which are in turn divided into neighborhoods or ''colonias''. The 2020 population for the city proper was 9,209,944, with a land area of . According to the most recent definition agreed upon by the federal and state governments, the population of Greater Mexico City is 21,804,515, which makes it the sixth-largest metropolitan area in the world, the second-largest urban agglomeration in the Western Hemisphere (behind São Paulo, Brazil), and the largest Spanish language, Spanish-speaking city (city proper) in the world. Greater Mexico City has a gross domestic product, GDP of $411 billion in 2011, which makes ...
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1968 In Athletics
While the most notable story coming out of 1968 was socio-political, politics involved with the Olympics was not something unique to this year. However, the year marked the beginning of several emerging elements of contemporary track and field. Automatic timing While timing to the 100th of a second had been experimented with for many years, the 1968 Summer Olympics were the first to use Fully Automatic Timing, in not only athletics, but in canoeing, rowing, cycling, equestrian and swimming competitions.] Subsequently, systems to record such times became more common and thus the accuracy of Fully Automatic Timing became mandated for World Record acceptance. While this rule was officially put into place in 1977, many 1968 records still stood as the first Automatically timed record. All weather tracks This technology too had been developing, but Tartan tracks were used as the competition surface for the first time at an Olympics. Since then an all-weather running track was requir ...
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Fully Automatic Timing
Fully automatic time (abbreviated FAT) is a form of race timing in which the clock is automatically activated by the starting device, and the finish time is either automatically recorded, or timed by analysis of a photo finish. The system is commonly used in track and field as well as athletic performance testing, horse racing, dog racing, bicycle racing, rowing and auto racing. In these fields a photo finish is used. It is also used in competitive swimming, for which the swimmers themselves record a finish time by touching a touchpad at the end of a race. In order to verify the equipment, or in case of failure, a backup system (typically manual) is usually used in addition to FAT. Technology In races started by a starting pistol, a sensor is typically attached to the gun which sends an electronic signal to the timing system when fired. An alternative starting light or sound which is electronically triggered, such as a horn, is typically also wired to the timing system. In sports ...
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Ronnie Ray Smith
Ronald Ray Smith (March 28, 1949 – March 31, 2013) was an American athlete, winner of the gold medal in the 4 × 100 m relay at the 1968 Summer Olympics. He attended San Jose State College during the "Speed City" era, coached by Lloyd (Bud) Winter and graduating in sociology. At the 1968 AAU Championships, Ronnie Ray Smith equaled the 100 m world record in the semifinal, repeating the same time of 9.9 which was run by Jim Hines in the same race and Charles Greene in the other semifinal of the same competition. That evening of June 20, 1968, at Hughes Stadium in Sacramento, California has been dubbed by track and field historians as the "Night of Speed." Since Smith was still 19 years old at the time, that mark also became the World Junior Record, which lasted for exactly 8 years. At the Mexico Olympics, Smith ran the third leg in the American 4 × 100 m relay team that won the gold medal and set a new world record of 38.24 seconds.
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Charles Greene (athlete)
Charles Edward "Charlie" Greene (March 21, 1945 – March 14, 2022) was an American track and field sprinter and winner of the gold medal in the 4 × 100 metres relay at the 1968 Summer Olympics. Born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, Greene was considered a certain candidate for the 1964 Olympic team, but he suffered a muscle pull which held him to a sixth-place finish at the Olympic Trials. Greene won the 100-yard dash for O'Dea High School in Seattle in 1962 and 1963 and also the 220-yard dash in 1963. Greene won the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) championships in the 100-yard dash in 1966 and in the 100-meter dash in 1968. At the 1968 AAU Championships, Greene tied the 100 m world record twice. First in the heats, he equaled the world record of 10.0 seconds. In the second semifinal, he achieved a time of 9.9 seconds, the same time which had been run by Jim Hines and Ronnie Ray Smith in the previous race. The evening when the three men equaled the world record (and several others we ...
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France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its Metropolitan France, metropolitan area extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea; overseas territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, the French West Indies, and many islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean. Due to its several coastal territories, France has the largest exclusive economic zone in the world. France borders Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Monaco, Italy, Andorra, and Spain in continental Europe, as well as the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Netherlands, Suriname, and Brazil in the Americas via its overseas territories in French Guiana and Saint Martin (island), ...
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Roger Bambuck
Roger Bambuck (born 22 November 1945 in Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe) is a French former sprinter and politician. Athletic career Bambuck took part in his first Olympic Games in Tokyo in 1964. At the 1966 European Championships in Budapest, he won the gold medal in the 200 m and in the 4 × 100 m relay, as well as the silver medal in the 100 m. He competed in the 1968 Summer Olympics held in Mexico City in the 100 metres (finalist) and in the 4 x 100 metre relay where he won the bronze medal with his team mates Gérard Fenouil, Jocelyn Delecour and Claude Piquemal. In the 100 and 200m. individual men's final he finished fifth with times of 10.16 and 20.51 seconds respectively. Earlier in 1968 he had equalled Armin Hary's eight-year-old European record of 10.0 seconds. He retired from sprint after the Mexico games, aged 23. Political life In the mid-eighties, he became head of sport for the commune of Épinay-sur-Seine. From 1988 to 1991, he was minister of Youth ...
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