The men's

200 metres The 200 metres, or 200-meter dash, is a sprint running event. On an outdoor 400-metre racetrack, the race begins on the curve and ends on the home straight, so a combination of techniques is needed to successfully run the race. A slight ...

sprint event at the

1948 Summer Olympics The 1948 Summer Olympics, officially the Games of the XIV Olympiad and officially branded as London 1948, were an international multi-sport event held from 29 July to 14 August 1948 in London, United Kingdom. Following a twelve-year hiatus cau ...

took place between 2 August and 3 August. There were 51 competitors from 28 nations. The maximum number of athletes per nation had been set at 3 since the 1930 Olympic Congress. The final was won by American

Mel Patton Melvin Emery Patton (November 16, 1924 – May 9, 2014) was an American sprinter, who set the world record of 9.2 seconds in the 100 yard dash in 1948. He also set a 220 yd world record in 1949 on a straightaway of 20.2, breaking the record hel ...

. His countryman Barney Ewell earned silver, making this the third consecutive Games the United States took the top two spots in the event. Lloyd La Beach's bronze gave Panama a medal in its debut in the event.

Background

This was the 10th appearance of the event, which was not held at the first Olympics in 1896 but has been on the program ever since. None of the six finalists from the pre-war 1936 Games returned. The Americans were favored. Barney Ewell was the 1946 and 1947 AAU champion.

was a short sprint specialist who had been disappointed by a fifth-place finish in the 100 metres earlier in the Games; he had never won an American title at the longer sprint distance. European champion Nikolay Karakulov did not compete because the Soviet Union did not yet participate in the Olympics. Bermuda, Burma, Ceylon, Cuba, Iceland, Iraq, Jamaica, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, and Uruguay each made their debut in the event. The United States made its 10th appearance, the only nation to have competed at each edition of the 200 metres to date.

Competition format

The competition used the four round format introduced in 1920: heats, quarterfinals, semifinals, and a final. There were 12 heats of between 3 and 6 runners each, with the top 2 men in each advancing to the quarterfinals. The quarterfinals consisted of 4 heats of 6 athletes each; the 3 fastest men in each heat advanced to the semifinals. There were 2 semifinals, each with 6 runners. Again, the top 3 athletes advanced. The final had 6 runners. The races were run on a now-standard 400 metre track.

Records

Prior to the competition, the existing World and Olympic records were as follows. No new world or Olympic records were set during the competition.

Schedule

All times are

British Summer Time During British Summer Time (BST), civil time in the United Kingdom is advanced one hour forward of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), in effect changing the time zone from UTC+00:00 to UTC+01:00, so that mornings have one hour less daylight, and eve ...

(

UTC+1 +01:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of +01:00. In ISO 8601, the associated time would be written as 2019-02-07T23:28:34+01:00. This time is used in: *Central European Time * West Africa Time * Western European Summer Time **Brit ...

)

Results

Heats

The fastest two runners in each of the twelve heats advanced to the quarterfinals.

Heat 1

Heat 2

Heat 3

Heat 4

Heat 5

Heat 6

Heat 7

Heat 8

Heat 9

Heat 10

Heat 11

Heat 12

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Quarterfinals

The fastest three runners in each of the four heats advanced to the semifinal round.

Quarterfinal 1

Quarterfinal 2

Quarterfinal 3

Quarterfinal 4

Semifinals

The fastest three runners in each of the two heats advanced to the final round.

Semifinal 1

Semifinal 2

Final

Key: * = Time is an estimate

References

External links

*Organising Committee for the XIV Olympiad, The (1948)
The Official Report of the Organising Committee for the XIV Olympiad
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LA84 Foundation The LA84 Foundation (known until June 2007 as the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles) is a private, nonprofit institution created by the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee to manage Southern California's endowment from the 1984 Oly ...

''. Retrieved 5 September 2016. {{DEFAULTSORT:Athletics At The 1948 Summer Olympics - Men's 200 Metres Athletics at the 1948 Summer Olympics 200 metres at the Olympics Men's events at the 1948 Summer Olympics