As a unforesightful - distance track and fieldrunnerin high schooltime and college , I often found myself wonder which of the eight or sometimes nine lane on the track was the immobile . It was conventional Wisdom of Solomon that the middle lanes — lane three through six — were the skilful .
This musical theme , in a way , is baked into the rule of track and field . In events with multiple heats — from thecollege levelall the way to theOlympics — the people who run faster times in earlier heats are assigned to middle lane in later heats . In other lyric , thefastest runnersare rewarded with what are , purportedly , better lane assignment .
My short - lived data track vocation is long behind me , but in myprofessional life as an economic expert , I cogitate a great mountain about using statistics to extract meaning from data . With the Olympics on my intellect , I decide to examine the rigor of lane assignment folklore from my days as a sprinter .
Using 20 old age of track and field data from theInternational Association of Athletics Federations , I base that the long - held beliefs about lane advantages are not corroborate by thedata . And in fact , for the 200 - time dash , the evidence suggests that lanes often perceived as the least desirable are actually the truehearted .
Myth of the Middle Lane
If lane duty assignment do matter , their impact would be most noticeable for events where the runners have to stay in their lanes for all of , or at least a large part of , the race , like 100 - time , 200 - meter , 400 - meter and 800 - time events .
In my experience , the myth of the halfway lane being the fastest is most usually associated with fast - paced raceway that also admit corners , so the 200 and 400 . There are two rationales behind this point of position , and they have to do with why the inside and outdoor lanes are risky , more than why middle lanes are better .
The reasoning for why inside lanes are speculative is that in races with turns , the privileged lane are dense because the corner are too sloshed . Indeed , researchers who hit the books the biomechanics of running game happen that tighter corner do irksome contrabandist down .
The rationale behind slow outside lanes has to do with thestaggered startsrequired to verify each racer operate the same distance . Due to this stupefying , runners in the outside lanes can not see their contender for the majority of the airstream . The mentation goes that outside moon curser may haveless motivation to chamfer competitorsor havedifficulty gauge their speedcompared to the face pack if they ca n’t see other racers .
Not All Lanes Are the Same
In most races , thefastest runners are assigned to the middle lanesin accordance with the competition principle . Not astonishingly , the fastest runners — who are in the middle lanes — often deliver the goods . Are these racers winning because those lanes are the fastest or because those runners be given to be the fastest ?
Similar to the mind behind clinical trial run for a drug , the ideal agency to test lane advantages would be to randomly assign runners to lane and see how they do on average . Thankfully , there is a subset of slipstream datum that does this : Typically , runner are haphazardly assigned to lanes in the first warmth of events . By using data only from first heat of elect racecourse and field events , I was able do away with the bias from faster runner being assigned to certain lanes .
Using rough 8,000 individual race results , I found that the " middle is best " belief is not well supported by the data .
For the 100 — which is feed on a straightaway — I found no grounds of lane advantages . The myth is less dominant here , though , so this lack of difference is n’t surprising .
The most dramatic counterpoint to the " middle is best " Assumption of Mary is the 200 . I institute that it is in fact outside lanes that are relate with dissipated airstream time — on fair lane eight is around 0.2 seconds faster than lane two . This is sizable for a race in which theworld record is 19.19 seconds . quicker outside lane make sense biomechanically as mingy corners produce slow race times . But the result seems to disprove the melodic theme that not seeing competitors can slow up a blue runner down .
In the 400 , I find oneself no evidence that midway lane are fastest . All lanes seem to be roughly adequate . It is deserving observe that there is more variability in 400 - meter times , so it is harder to detect minuscule effects , if they exist . But even this nondifference between lane in the 400 is impress .
In the 2016 Olympics , people marveled when Wayde Van Niekerk win the 400 final from lane eight , the farthest outside lane . The astonishment stem from the opinion that lane eight puts runners at a disadvantage . The information does n’t corroborate this . But what is impressive about Van Niekerk ’s win is that he was one of the slower runner to specify for the final — that ’s why he was assigned to one of the " least suitable " lane .
The last event I count at , the 800 , is trenchant from the other events above . It has what is called a " lane prisonbreak , " which is where runner must remain in their assigned lanes for the first 100 meters but are then free to run in any lane they wish . Since the inside lane of a course cover the short distance , runners in outside lanes move in after the break . As they do this , they may have to run a flyspeck bit farther than their challenger and jockey for position with runners who are already in the inside lanes . I found that racing car who start out at the very privileged lanes ran the fast times . While external lane might have a small vantage over the first 100 time , runner who have an established view on the inside of the track seem to have an overall reward .
Next time you ’re ascertain any of the shortsighted track and field event at the Olympics , mind to see if anyone repeats the previous byword that the middle lanes are fastest . The datum pronounce this is n’t genuine , so if someone in the outside lanes accept a surprise atomic number 79 , you ’ll know to be surprised not because of their lane appointment , but because they were a dense qualifier .
This clause is republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons licence . you could find the original article here .
David R. Munro is an adjunct prof of economics at Middlebury , where he joined the faculty in the fall of 2016 , after completing his PhD at the University of California , Santa Cruz . He holds a master ’s degree in economics from Chapman University and a bachelor ’s in engine room from the University of British Columbia .
