Meso-pacing in Olympic and World Championship sprints and hurdles: Medallists save their best for the final

Figures & data

Table 1. The number of medallists who won both their heat and semi-final (“Heat and Semi”), won their heat only (“Heat only”), won their semi-final only (“Semi only”) or won neither qualification race (“Neither”) in the 100 m, 200 m, 400 m, 100 m hurdles, 110 m hurdles and 400 m hurdles events. The values in brackets are the mean ranking (percentile) of those athletes in the qualification rounds (heats/semi-finals)

	Heat and Semi	Heat only	Semi only	Neither
	Men’s 100 m
Gold	5 (9/9)	1 (14/25)	0	0
Silver	5 (3/10)	1 (7/25)	0	0
Bronze	1 (4/4)	4 (10/18)	1 (22/17)	0
	Women’s 100 m
Gold	6 (10/8)	0	0	0
Silver	5 (6/9)	1 (22/13)	0	0
Bronze	3 (3/10)	1 (5/13)	1 (26/8)	1 (15/21)
	Men’s 200 m
Gold	5 (20/13)	0	1 (22/5)	0
Silver	5 (8/14)	1 (9/29)	0	0
Bronze	2 (13/10)	3 (6/13)	0	1 (20/17)
	Women’s 200 m
Gold	5 (9/11)	0	0	1 (13/13)
Silver	5 (8/9)	1 (17/17)	0	0
Bronze	2 (4/8)	3 (15/19)	0	1 (32/17)
	Men’s 400 m
Gold	5 (22/9)	1 (16/22)	0	0
Silver	3 (6/8)	2 (13/17)	0	1 (63/25)
Bronze	1 (23/8)	2 (24/30)	2 (24/8)	1 (31/33)
	Women’s 400 m
Gold	4 (13/9)	1 (7/17)	1 (4/17)	0
Silver	5 (11/6)	0	0	1 (8/29)
Bronze	1 (30/8)	3 (32/13)	0	2 (9/13)
	Men’s 110 m Hurdles
Gold	4 (4/5)	1 (3/13)	1 (12/8)	0
Silver	2 (11/16)	3 (16/19)	0	1 (37/13)
Bronze	3 (4/10)	0	2 (10/14)	1 (9/16)
	Women’s 100 m Hurdles
Gold	5 (5/5)	1 (11/8)	0	0
Silver	3 (9/13)	1 (16/25)	2 (15/8)	0
Bronze	4 (7/10)	0	0	2 (16/15)
	Men’s 400 m Hurdles
Gold	3 (17/6)	1 (2/33)	1 (34/4)	1 (26/8)
Silver	4 (11/18)	1 (3/25)	0	1 (19/42)
Bronze	2 (12/6)	2 (27/24)	0	2 (6/27)
	Women’s 400 m Hurdles
Gold	5 (9/5)	1 (8/17)	0	0
Silver	3 (6/13)	2 (6/14)	0	1 (65/33)
Bronze	4 (9/13)	1 (5/8)	0	1 (9/25)

Table 2. Correlations (τ_b) between final position with positional, rank and finishing time data in the preceding qualifying heats and semi-finals (“heat” and “semi”, respectively)

	Heat position	Heat time	Heat ranking	Semi position	Semi time	Semi ranking
Men’s 100 m	τb = 0.42 P < 0.001	τb = 0.24 P = 0.023	τb = 0.31 P = 0.004	τb = 0.53 P < 0.001	τb = 0.32 P = 0.002	τb = 0.47 P < 0.001
Women’s 100 m	τb = 0.32 P = 0.010	τb = 0.25 P = 0.022	τb = 0.22 P = 0.039	τb = 0.56 P < 0.001	τb = 0.49 P < 0.001	τb = 0.59 P < 0.001
Men’s 200 m	τb = 0.30 P = 0.016	τb = 0.03 P = 0.781	τb = 0.01 P = 0.907	τb = 0.41 P = 0.001	τb = 0.32 P = 0.003	τb = 0.37 P = 0.001
Women’s 200 m	τb = 0.34 P = 0.006	τb = 0.09 P = 0.389	τb = 0.11 P = 0.330	τb = 0.56 P < 0.001	τb = 0.37 P = 0.001	τb = 0.55 P < 0.001
Men’s 400 m	τb = 0.12 P = 0.338	τb = – 0.05 P = 0.650	τb = – 0.08 P = 0.453	τb = 0.40 P = 0.001	τb = 0.26 P = 0.014	τb = 0.41 P < 0.001
Women’s 400 m	τb = 0.35 P = 0.005	τb = 0.10 P = 0.365	τb = 0.12 P = 0.254	τb = 0.46 P < 0.001	τb = 0.49 P < 0.001	τb = 0.54 P < 0.001
Men’s 110 m hurdles	τb = 0.38 P = 0.002	τb = 0.36 P = 0.001	τb = 0.35 P = 0.001	τb = 0.44 P < 0.001	τb = 0.48 P < 0.001	τb = 0.54 P < 0.001
Women’s 100 m hurdles	τb = 0.41 P = 0.001	τb = 0.39 P < 0.001	τb = 0.43 P < 0.001	τb = 0.45 P < 0.001	τb = 0.47 P < 0.001	τb = 0.57 P < 0.001
Men’s 400 m hurdles	τb = 0.31 P = 0.009	τb = 0.08 P = 0.470	τb = 0.13 P = 0.228	τb = 0.29 P = 0.016	τb = 0.15 P = 0.171	τb = 0.20 P = 0.070
Women’s 400 m hurdles	τb = 0.45 P < 0.001	τb = 0.25 P = 0.017	τb = 0.38 P < 0.001	τb = 0.48 P < 0.001	τb = 0.37 P = 0.001	τb = 0.47 P < 0.001

Figure 1. (a-f) The mean (+ SD) finishing time for each group of sprinters for all three rounds in each event. Differences between successive segments with a moderate or larger effect size are annotated as P < 0.05 (§). Differences (P < 0.05) with a moderate or larger effect size between medallists and the 4^th-6^th group (*), between medallists and the 7^th-8^th group (#), and between the 4^th-6^th group and the 7^th-8^th group (†) are also annotated

Figure 2. (a-d) The mean (+ SD) finishing time for each group of hurdlers for all three rounds in each event. Differences between successive segments with a moderate or larger effect size are annotated as P < 0.05 (§). Differences (P < 0.05) with a moderate or larger effect size between medallists and the 4^th-6^th group (*), between medallists and the 7^th-8^th group (#), and between the 4^th-6^th group and the 7^th-8^th group (†) are also annotated