55 metres is a sprint event in

track and field Track and field is a sport that includes athletic contests based on running, jumping, and throwing skills. The name is derived from where the sport takes place, a running track and a grass field for the throwing and some of the jumping events ...

. It is a relatively uncommon non-championship event for indoor track and field. The history of the event lies in the

60-yard dash 6 (six) is the natural number following 5 and preceding 7. It is a composite number and the smallest perfect number. In mathematics Six is the smallest positive integer which is neither a square number nor a prime number; it is the second small ...

, which is about 5 inches shorter than 55 metres. Since the 1960s almost all countries have used metric measurements for track and field, hence the standard sprint distances for indoor competition have been 50 metres and 60 metres. The single exception to this was the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, which continued to use imperial measurements. In the 1980s efforts were made to switch track and field in the United States to used metric measurements and the 55 metres was adopted as a close equivalent to 60 yards. The NCAA Indoor Championships featured the event from 1984 to 1998 and the

USA Track & Field Indoor Championships The USA Indoor Track and Field Championships is an annual indoor track and field competition organized by USA Track & Field, which serves as the American national championships for the sport. In years which feature a World Indoor Championships in ...

featured the event from 1987–1990. Subsequently the 55 metres were dropped from American championships in favour of the international standard of 60 metres. Since the late 1990s there have been very few significant open competitions over 55 metres and the event remains something of a historic anomaly. The distance is still frequently run in junior (below college) meets.

All-time top 25

''Indoor results only. Hand-timed results are excluded'' The websites of

World Athletics 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 ...

and tilastopaja.net are often used to generate lists of top performers. However, the data in these sites is not complete before about 1998 and, as noted above, much of the championship activity in this event (and hence best performances) were before this time. Hence a better source of data is the Track and Field News website. *A = affected by altitude

Men

*Updated March 2020

Women

*Updated April 2020 Note:

Angella Issajenko Angella Taylor-Issajenko, CM ( née Taylor; born September 28, 1958) is a Canadian coach and former sprinter. She won an Olympic silver medal in the 4 × 100 metres relay in Los Angeles 1984. At the Commonwealth Games she won seven medals, incl ...

of Canada ran 6.69 in New Jersey in 1987, but this time was deleted from the records in 1989 after she admitted to long-term steroid use.

All-time top 25

Men

Women

Season's bests

Men

Women

Notes

References