Chronology of world records in the 400 meter race (men)

The first world record in men's 400m race was set by the International Amateur Athletics Federation (now the IAAF ) in 1912, when Charles Raidpas showed 48.2 seconds at the Stockholm Olympics. At the same time, the federation recorded a Maxi Long record set in 1900 at a distance of 440 yards (402.34 m), which exceeded the result of the raid pass.

By June 21, 2009, the IAAF had ratified 23 world records in this form ^[1] .

Legend:

y - the result is shown at a distance of 440 yards (402.34 m);

+ - the result is shown during the race for a longer distance.

If the result is recorded by an electronic stopwatch, in the column “Ex.” (Notes) the result on the electronic stopwatch is accurate to 0.01 s, and in the column “Res.” (Result) either the result recorded in parallel with the manual stopwatch, or electronic time appropriately rounded to 0.1 s. When rounding an electronic result to tenths, a small value was taken away from it (most often 0.24 s), since according to statistics, a manual stopwatch when measuring the same time period gives a slightly better result.

Since 1975, the IAAF has approved the automatic recording of results at all distances up to and including 400 m. Since January 1, 1977, all official athletics competitions have required electronic measurement of results at these distances with an accuracy of hundredths of a second ^[1] .

The first world record recorded under the new rules was the result of 43.86, shown by Lee Evans in the final of the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.

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