Bolt vs Rudisha - Could It Actually Happen?

by Dugald Skene

Two of the brightest stars to come out of the athletics at London 2012 were global superstar Usain Bolt and lesser known but equally impressive Kenyan David Rudisha.

With his Olympic record time of 9.629 seconds in the 100m, Bolt is now the owner of the three quickest times ever recorded over the distance.  When you consider it's not his favoured event and his relatively slow starting for a bigger man, it boggles the mind.

Usain Bolt claiming gold in London

In equal measure, David Rudisha produced the only individual world record on the track in London, breaking his own world record for the second time in the 800m in a time of 1:40.91.  Like Bolt, this makes him the owner of the three fastest times ever recorded over the distance.

David Rudisha with the gold to go with his world record

In the hysteria surrounding each man's achievement s and those happening elsewhere over the week of track and field in London, it seemed inevitable when people started to pit the two against each other in a hypothetical 400m race.

But could it actually ever happen?

Bolt has muttered in the past that he would be interested in taking on the 400m, explaining that he runs the distance regularly in training to build up speed endurance for the shorter sprints.  Bolt clearly has raw speed over the shorter distances, but Rudisha already has the stamina for the distance.

I would stick my neck out and suggest that if they were to race each other tomorrow, Rudisha would win hands down.  In achieving his latest world record in the 800m, he clocked a first lap time of 49.2 seconds, perhaps around 5 seconds off world class and a full 6 seconds off Michael Johnson's 1999 world record.  I'm pretty sure that if he knew his race finished at that point, he could go at least 2 or 3 seconds faster.

The other big question over Bolt is his motivation.  He is a self proclaimed 'bad trainer' and doesn't enjoy the day in-day out drag on the training track of being the fastest man on the planet.  It's therefore hard to imagine him being enthusiastic about training for an event which requires a relative huge amount of additional stamina over the distances he currently runs.  He may have the raw speed from the start but Rudisha would pull him in by the end.

The physical match up is one thing, the incentive to take on such a race is quite another.  There would no doubt be huge public interest and commercial benefits for both athletes, but I can't see it ever happening.

Firstly, both men are bred to be the best, the fastest, the strongest.  Any contest between the two over 400m would be a compromise and would be unlikely to produce a world beating time.  Having said that, if both men were to train specifically for the 400m, say in time for the next Olympic cycle, who knows what time they could run.

The way I see it, both men compete over the distances they do because they are the distances they are strongest over.  If they wanted to race the 400m, they would, but they don't.

Fantasising over these sorts of sporting match ups is fun but fanciful.  It's like asking who would win in a fight between a bear and a shark -  I don't think we'd ever know.