What is the greatest number of runners ever to have gone below 10s in a single 100m race? Has there ever been an instance of all runners getting below 10s?
Just found that at the 2012 Olympics it would have been all eight except that Asafa Powell pulled a muscle half way through. So seven is the highest number I know of.
In the 2024 Summer Olympics Final all 8 runners ran under 10s, as seen in its Wikipedia article:
| Position | Lane | Athlete | Country | Time | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | 7 | Noah Lyles | United States | 9.79 (9.784) | PB |
| 2nd | 4 | Kishane Thompson | Jamaica | 9.79 (9.789) | |
| 3rd | 3 | Fred Kerley | United States | 9.81 | SB |
| 4th | 5 | Akani Simbine | South Africa | 9.82 | NR |
| 5th | 9 | Marcell Jacobs | Italy | 9.85 | SB |
| 6th | 8 | Letsile Tebogo | Botswana | 9.86 | NR |
| 7th | 2 | Kenny Bednarek | United States | 9.88 | |
| 8th | 6 | Oblique Seville | Jamaica | 9.91 |
Before that, this was the answer:
I went through the IAAF site and checked the list of senior outdoor results on 100 metres men over years from 2001 until 2018 (for example, see the results from 2016).
Considering those, I checked the worst position of a runner when running below 10 s, which means that that amount of people ran below that time. These are the results:
On 5 times, 6 men ran below 10 s (see the 6 before the city where the championship was held; it represents the position):
This happened in these races (by order of representation of the result, with a link to the IAAF result page):
Notes:
In 2012 Tyson Gay was 4th on the Olympic Games final with 9.80, only that he was later on disqualified. His result was making that race the fastest ever, since 7 runners ran below 10 s. After his disqualification, this race is in a draw position with the other three races, all of them with 6 men below 10 s.
In 1988 Seoul's World Championships four men ran below 10 s, only that Ben Johnson was later on disqualified. Being considered the dirtiest race in history, Wikipedia says for Linford Christie's result that This was the first time anyone had broken ten seconds and finished third.
Also, these are very fast races for more runners in the race:
That is, in all of these, the result of the 7th runner was 10.00 (10.01 for 2011's result). Strangely enough, in Beijing 3 people ran on 10.00: 6th, 7th and 8th.
This happened in these races (by order of representation of the result, with a link to the IAAF result page):
It is interesting to see how big was the impact of Usain Bolt: before his appearence, no more than 10 results would be below 10 s in a year. From his years, now the number is bigger than 50 even on odd years (that is, without World Championships nor Olympic Games).
I wonder if some open data source exists with all this data to do some mining, likewise for ATP & WTA)
