Night of Speed

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The Night of Speed was when three sprinters tied the world record in the 100 meters at the same meet. On June 20, 1968, during the AAU National Championships at Hughes Stadium in Sacramento, two semi-finals produced incredibly fast times. Earlier that day, with a tailwind up to 2.0 m/s, Roger Bambuck of France and Charles Greene of the U.S. both tied the world record at 10.0 seconds. In the first semi-final, Jim Hines of the U.S. won in 9.9 seconds with a light tailwind, and Ronnie Ray Smith was also credited with 9.9. In the second semi, Charles Greene again clocked 9.9. At that time, hand timing with three stopwatches was official, though an experimental Accutrack device showed Hines 10.03, Smith 10.14, and Greene 10.10 for statisticians.

That evening, Greene won the national championship with a wind-assisted 10.0, a time shared by Hines, Lennox Miller, Bambuck, Smith, and Mel Pender. Less than four months later, at the Mexico City Olympics, Hines lowered the world record to 9.95 and won the gold. This 9.95 became the first world record to be based on fully automatic timing when the IAAF adopted such timing in 1977. Greene took bronze in the 100 meters and helped the U.S. win gold in the 4x100 meter relay with Pender in a world-record time. In the following eight seasons, several others tied the 9.9 hand-time mark before automatic timing became the standard. The 9.95 mark stood as the automatic record until 1983, when Calvin Smith ran 9.93 at altitude in Colorado. It’s also noted that Bob Hayes ran 9.9 in the 1964 Olympic final, but the official time was 10.0 because of the timing method used then.