100 metres Hurdles (Women's)

Games: 12 games in 11 countries
First Held: 1972 Summer Games
Last Held: 2016 Summer Games

Participants: 300 from 93 countries
Top Athlete Medalist(s): 5 athletes with 2 medals
Top Country Medalist(s): United States (12 medals)

The sprint hurdles at the Summer Olympics have been contested over a variety of distances at the multi-sport event. The men's 110 metres hurdles has been present on the Olympic athletics programme since the first edition in 1896. A men's 200 metres hurdles was also briefly held, from 1900 to 1904. The first women's sprint hurdling event was added to the programme at the 1932 Olympics in the form of the 80 metres hurdles. At the 1972 Games the women's distance was extended to the 100 metres hurdles, which is the current international standard.

The Olympic records are 12.91 seconds for the men's 110 m hurdles, set by Liu Xiang in 2004, and 12.35 seconds for the women's 100 m hurdles, set by Sally Pearson in 2012. The fastest time recorded at the Olympics for the men's 200 m hurdles was 24.6 seconds by 1904 winner Harry Hillman. Maureen Caird won the last women's Olympic 80 m hurdles race in 1968 with a record of 10.39 seconds. The men's 110 m hurdles world record has been broken at the Olympics on six occasions: 1908, 1928, 1932, 1936, 1972 and 2004. The women's 100 m hurdles world record has been broken only once, by Annelie Ehrhardt at the inaugural 1972 Olympic final. In contrast the 80 m hurdles world record was set at the Olympics in 1932 (four times), 1936, and 1952 (twice).

Only three athletes have won two Olympic sprint hurdles gold medals: on the men's side, Lee Calhoun and Roger Kingdom, and on the women's side Shirley Strickland. Strickland is also the only athlete to win three such Olympic medals, having won a bronze medal before her victories.

Alvin Kraenzlein is the only athlete to have won two hurdles medals at the same Olympics, having taken the 110 m and 200 m titles. Historically, hurdlers also competed in other individual sprinting events (Harrison Dillard and Fanny Blankers-Koen were also 100 metres Olympic champions), but this became rare after the 1950s.

The United States has dominated the men's event: with 19 gold medals and 56 medals in total, the nation won over half the available medals in the history of the competition. The United States has swept the medals on eight occasions and an American man has been on the podium every edition except the 1980 Moscow Olympics, which it boycotted. Though less dominant in the women's events, it shares the most number of women's gold medals with Australia, having four each.

Women's 100 metres hurdles

Games	Gold	Silver	Bronze
1972 Munich	Annelie Ehrhardt  East Germany	Valeria Bufanu  Romania	Karin Balzer  East Germany
1976 Montreal	Johanna Schaller-Klier  East Germany	Tatyana Anisimova  Soviet Union	Natalya Lebedeva  Soviet Union
1980 Moscow	Vera Komisova  Soviet Union	Johanna Schaller-Klier  East Germany	Lucyna Langer  Poland
1984 Los Angeles	Benita Fitzgerald  United States	Shirley Strong  Great Britain	Michèle Chardonnet  France
			Kim Turner  United States
1988 Seoul	Yordanka Donkova  Bulgaria	Gloria Siebert  East Germany	Claudia Zackiewicz  West Germany
1992 Barcelona	Voula Patoulidou  Greece	LaVonna Martin  United States	Yordanka Donkova  Bulgaria
1996 Atlanta	Ludmila Engquist  Sweden	Brigita Bukovec  Slovenia	Patricia Girard  France
2000 Sydney	Olga Shishigina  Kazakhstan	Glory Alozie  Nigeria	Melissa Morrison  United States
2004 Athens	Joanna Hayes  United States	Olena Krasovska  Ukraine	Melissa Morrison  United States
2008 Beijing	Dawn Harper  United States	Sally McLellan  Australia	Priscilla Lopes-Schliep  Canada
2012 London	Sally Pearson  Australia	Dawn Harper  United States	Kellie Wells  United States
2016 Rio de Janeiro	Brianna Rollins  United States	Nia Ali  United States	Kristi Castlin  United States

Multiple medalists

Rank	Athlete	Nation	Olympics	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
1	Johanna Schaller	East Germany (GDR)	1976–1980	1	1	0	2
	Sally Pearson	Australia (AUS)	2008–2012	1	1	0	2
	Dawn Harper	United States (USA)	2008–2012	1	1	0	2
4	Yordanka Donkova	Bulgaria (BUL)	1988–1992	1	0	1	2
5	Melissa Morrison	United States (USA)	2000–2004	0	1	1	2

Medalists by country

Rank	Nation	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total
1	United States (USA)	3	2	4	9
2	East Germany (GDR)	2	2	1	5
3	Soviet Union (URS)	1	1	1	3
4	Australia (AUS)	1	1	0	2
5	Bulgaria (BUL)	1	0	1	2
6	Greece (GRE)	1	0	0	1
	Kazakhstan (KAZ)	1	0	0	1
	Sweden (SWE)	1	0	0	1
9	Great Britain (GBR)	0	1	0	1
	Nigeria (NGR)	0	1	0	1
	Romania (ROU)	0	1	0	1
	Slovenia (SLO)	0	1	0	1
	Ukraine (UKR)	0	1	0	1
14	France (FRA)	0	0	2	2
15	Canada (CAN)	0	0	1	1
	Poland (POL)	0	0	1	1
	West Germany (FRG)	0	0	1	1

100 meter Hurdle for Women at Olympics: The hurdling event is a running event, which involve running over hurdles set on the track. The hurdle races are generally held only in the Olympics. The 100 meter hurdle race is the standard sprint

100 meter Hurdle for Women in Summer Olympics: The 100 meter hurdle event was held in the women's athletics program at the 1972 Munich Summer Games. Since the 1972 Games, the event has been held at every Summer Games.

Rules for 100 meter Hurdle for Women at Olympics: The International Association of Athletics Federations or IAAF has set rules to be followed in the track and field athletics events. The rules applicable to the 100 meter hurdle event at the international competitions are-

• Metal and wood are used to make hurdles and the top bars of the hurdles.
• The hurdles are made in such a way, that they can be adjusted at different height for different events.
• The IAAF has specified the length and width of each hurdle. The top bar of each hurdle is painted white and black in color.
• Runners cannot leave or change their respective lanes during the race.
• An athlete is disqualified from the competition if she deliberately knocks down the hurdles in her way. However, if the hurdles are overturned unintentionally, then that is not considered to be an offence.
• An athlete cannot obstruct her competitors' way during the race. If found, an athlete can be disqualified from the competition.
• If an athlete steps out of the track during the race, she is not allowed to join her competitors.
• The athlete, who is unable to finish the race, is not given any credit for her performance.
• The automatic timing device used for measuring the time during the races has to be approved by the IAAF.

In a special series in the run-up to Rio 2016, Steve Smythe looks at the history of events at the Olympics, this time the women’s 100m hurdles

This was a topsy-turvy event in 2015 with Americans running the 18 fastest times of the year but not winning a medal in Beijing.

The 2015 world No.1 at 12.34 and American champion Shakira Nelvis was only eighth in the World Championships. Jasmine Stowers ran 12.35 last year but didn’t make the American team.

Brianna Rollins, the 2013 world champion, who ran 12.26 that year, did make it to Beijing but was not in top form and finished fourth.

Former Olympic champion Dawn Harper Nelson was adjudged to be top-ranked on merit despite crashing out in the world semi-finals and she has been brilliant in the last two Olympics.

Jamaican Danielle Williams won the world title but will be lucky to win gold again with a 12.57 clocking and the other medallists out in China, Cindy Roleder and Alina Talay, are unlikely to win a medal again. Defending champion Sally Pearson was injured for much of 2015.

Britain’s Tiffany Porter could be in the mix for at least a top five place if she can get back to her World Championships medal-winning form.

1932-2012

The first Olympic hurdles champion was Babe Didrikson in Los Angeles in 1932. The talented all-rounder, who had qualified for all five women’s individual events, had to choose three. She was already javelin champion when she equalled the world 80m hurdles record of 11.8 in the heats.

She improved to 11.7 in the final but only won by inches from American team-mate Evelyn Hall. Many thought it should have been a dead heat and it was even closer in 1936 in Berlin when officials took 30 minutes to sort the result, the first four sharing the winning time of 11.7.

The winner, Trebisonda Valla, had run a windy 11.6 in the heats, which equalled the then world’s fastest time, though it only counted as an Olympic record.

In 1948 in London, the record significantly fell to world record-holder Fanny Blankers-Koen, who had already won the 100m. She won only narrowly, though, in 11.2 from Britain’s Maureen Gardner (see “British successes” below). A metre behind in third was 100m medallist Shirley Strickland. The Australian returned in 1952 in Helsinki and there she equalled Blankers-Koen’s world record of 11.0 in her heat and then a windy 10.8 in the semi-final.

In the final, she won easily in a world record 10.9 as a less than fully fit Blankers- Koen failed to finish.

She retained her title in Melbourne in 1956 as she improved her Olympic record to 10.7, though it’s worth noting the electronic time was a mere 10.96.

In Rome in 1960 Irina Press, the younger sister of shot and discus champion Tamara added to the family collection with an easy win. She ran only 10.8 in the final, having run an Olympic record 10.6 in the heats.

Tokyo in 1964 saw a return to close races with the first three separated by two hundredths. Balzer’s 10.5 would have equalled the world record but for the wind being marginally over the limits.

The bronze medallist, Pam Kilborn, was unbeaten in the next four years and favourite for Mexico in 1968 but a slow start in the final meant she couldn’t quite catch her 17-year-old Australian team-mate Maureen Caird. She won in an Olympic record 10.39, which still stands as 1972 saw a change to the 100m hurdles.

The first race at the longer hurdles saw East German Annelie Ehrhardt win very easily in Munich in a world record 12.59. The 1964 champion, Balzer, just edged double medallist Kilborn for bronze.

Ehrhardt injured herself in the Montreal 1976 semi-finals but East Germany nevertheless retained the title with Johanna Schaller narrowly winning as five hundredths covered the top five.

Schaller just lost out in 1980 as Vera Komisova improved by a huge 0.28 seconds in Moscow to win in an Olympic record 12.54.

After the boycott-affected 1984 (see “British successes” below), the standard was better than ever in Seoul in 1988. World record-holder Yordanka Donkova won easily in an Olympic record 12.38.

The 1996 race was a much closer affair. Lyudmila Narozhilenko had fallen in the 1988 semi-finals and withdrew injured from 1992. In 1993 she tested positive for steroids and was initially banned for four years but the IAAF accepted that her husband had spiked her protein drink because she was divorcing him for her Swedish manager. She was then granted Swedish citizenship in June 1996 and the Russians cleared her to compete in July, just before Atlanta.

In America, she competed as Ludmila Engquist and after a 12.47 quarter-final and a 12.51 semi-final, she was less impressive in the final but won in 12.58.

Her reputation was tarnished later, though, as she failed a drugs test when bobsleighing in 2001.

There was also a drugs connection in Sydney in 2000 when Kazakhstan’s Olga Shishigina, who had missed Atlanta because of a drugs ban, won in 12.65.

The times were faster in Athens in 2004, where American Johanna Hayes reduced the Olympic mark to 12.37 as world champion and favourite Perdita Felicien had a heavy fall in the final.

The 2008 Olympics in Beijing saw Sally McClellan lead early on. Lolo Jones went clearly ahead mid-race but she smashed the ninth hurdle, lost momentum and dropped from first to seventh. Dawn Harper came through to win in 12.54.

Four years later in London, McClellan, now named Pearson and world champion with 12.28, won in an Olympic record 12.35 with Harper surprisingly close in a PB 12.37.

Most memorable Olympic 100m hurdles: Barcelona 1992

The race was expected to be between world champion Lyudmila Narozhilenko, who had run the five fastest times that year, and 100m champion Gail Devers, but the Russian strained a hamstring in qualifying. In the final, Devers moved into a clear lead after the fourth hurdle and appeared to be on her way to an easy victory but hit the last hurdle hard and did well to stay on her feet and finish fifth.

With Devers out of it, the race for gold was between defending champion Donkova, LaVonna Martin and Voula Patouildou. The latter had entered the event with a 12.96 PB and wildly celebrated when coming third in her semi-final to become the first Greek woman track finalist. Patoulidou had gone out in the first round of the previous year’s World Championships, but an inspired finish saw her pull off one of the Olympics’ biggest surprises as she won in 12.64 from Martin’s 12.69.

Devers, who won hurdles world titles in 1993, 1995 and 1999 and won Olympic 100m titles in 1992 and 1996, had no such success in the hurdles. She was fourth in 1996 and in 2000 she ran the fastest qualifying round in Australia with a 12.66 heat but pulled up injured in her semi-final.

100 metres Hurdles (Women's) History Year by Year (by IAAF) 1896-2012

100 metres Hurdles (Women's) Progression of Olympic Record

100 metres Hurdles (Women's) 200 All time Best Perfomances