Athletics at the 2012 Summer Olympics – Men's 400 metres hurdles


The Men's 400 metres hurdles competition at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, United Kingdom took place on 3–6 August at the Olympic Stadium.
In the qualifying round, local favorite Dai Greene ran the fastest ever opening round race in the third heat, only to see that mark passed by three athletes in the following heat, led by an eased up Javier Culson. The slowest time qualifier was Kenneth Medwood in 49.78, though Stanislav Melnykov managed to get into the semis automatically with a 50.13 in the slow fifth heat.
With only two automatic qualifiers going to the final from each heat, the first semi-final stacked three former World Champions into one race. Less than a month before his 35th birthday, Félix Sánchez,
the 2001 and 2003 World Champion showed he was still in the game, running a season best 47.76. Jehue Gordon upset the form setting the Trinidad and Tobago national record 47.96 in second, leaving 2007 and 2009 World Champion Kerron Clement in 3rd and 2011 World Champion Dai Greene in 4th to hope to qualify on time. The second semi was dominated by world leader Javier Culson and defending champion Angelo Taylor. In the third semi, American trials champion Michael Tinsley and Leford Green separated from the rest of the field. After a nervous wait Clement and Greene made the final on time.
In the final, Taylor, Culson and Sanchez led the way, arriving at the 8th hurdle about even. Taylor took the hurdle awkwardly and started losing ground. While Culson looked to struggle, Sanchez powered away down the stretch for the win, in exactly the same time as his 2004 victory. Tinsley came back from a couple steps back to pass Culson over the last hurdle for the silver, with Greene also trying to make a stretch run to finish fourth.
This was the second ever Olympic medal in Athletics, and the third gold medal overall for the Dominican Republic, the first being Sanchez' in 2004.
In repeating as Olympic champion non-consecutively, Sánchez joined a rare club including Paavo Nurmi, Volodymyr Holubnychy, Heike Drechsler, Nina Romashkova, Edwin Moses and Angelo Taylor. Both Moses and Taylor were in this same event. Ulrike Meyfarth did it remarkably 12 years apart. Ezekiel Kemboi completed such a double the day before and Meseret Defar would complete one four days later.

Competition format

The Men's 400m Hurdles competition consisted of heats, Semi-finals and a Final. The fastest competitors from each race in the heats qualified for the Semi-finals along with the fastest overall competitors not already qualified that were required to fill the available spaces in the Semi-finals. 24 competitors qualified from the heats for the Semi-finals.

Schedule

All times are British Summer Time
DateTimeRound
Friday, 3 August 201211:15Round 1
Saturday, 4 August 201219:00Semifinals
Monday, 6 August 201220:45Finals

Records

, the existing World and Olympic records were as follows.
The following National records were set during this competition.
Serbia National Record49.21 s
Trinidad and Tobago National Record47.96 s

Results

Round 1

Qual. rule: first 3 of each heat plus the 6 fastest times qualified.

Heat 1

RankAthleteNationalityTimeNotes
1Amaurys Valle49.19Q, PB
2Brendan Cole49.24Q, PB
3Amaechi Morton49.34Q
4Kenneth Medwood49.78q
5Roxroy Cato50.22
6Chen Chieh50.27
7Li Zhilong50.36
Takayuki KishimotoDQ

Heat 2

RankAthleteNationalityTimeNotes
1Michael Tinsley49.13Q
2Leford Green49.30Q
3Kurt Couto49.31Q
4Eric Alejandro49.39q
5Rasmus Mägi50.05
6Winder Cuevas50.15SB
Akihiko NakamuraDQ
Kariem HusseinDNS

Heat 3

RankAthleteNationalityTimeNotes
1Dai Greene48.98Q
2Emir Bekrić49.21Q, NR
3José Reynaldo Bencosme de Leon49.35Q
4Brent Larue49.38q, PB
5Jamele Mason49.89
6Cheng Wen50.38
7Vincent Kiplangat Koskei50.80
8Cornel Fredericks52.29
Lankantien LamboniDQ

Heat 4

RankAthleteNationalityTimeNotes
1Javier Culson48.33Q
2Kerron Clement48.48Q, SB
3Omar Cisneros48.63Q, SB
4Tristan Thomas49.13q, SB
5Rhys Williams49.17q, SB
6Michael Bultheel49.18q, PB
7Viacheslav Sakaev50.36
8Jorge Paula51.40
9Maoulida Daroueche53.49

Heat 5

RankAthleteNationalityTimeNotes
1Angelo Taylor49.29Q
2Jehue Gordon49.37Q
3Stanislav Melnykov50.13Q
4Silvio Schirrmeister50.21
5Periklis Iakovakis50.27
6L. J. van Zyl50.31
7Josef Prorok50.33
8Viktor Leptikov51.67

Heat 6

RankAthleteNationalityTimeNotes
1Félix Sánchez49.24Q
2Jack Green49.49Q
3Mamadou Kasse Hanne49.63Q
4Tetsuya Tateno49.95
5Josef Robertson49.98
6Boniface Mucheru50.33
7Artem Dyatlov51.55
8Andrés Silva53.38

Notes: Q- Qualified by place
q - Qualified by performance
PB - Personal Best
NR - National Record
SB - Seasonal Best
DQ - DisQualified
DNS - Did Not Start

Semifinals

Qual. rule: first 2 of each heat plus the 2 fastest times qualified.

Heat 1

RankAthleteNationalityTimeNotes
1Félix Sánchez47.76Q, SB
2Jehue Gordon47.96Q, NR
3Kerron Clement48.12q, SB
4Dai Greene48.19q
5Mamadou Kasse Hanne48.80PB
6Michael Bultheel49.10PB
7Eric Alejandro49.15
8Kurt Couto51.55

Heat 2

RankAthleteNationalityTimeNotes
1Javier Culson47.93Q
2Angelo Taylor47.95Q, SB
3Omar Cisneros48.23SB
4Emir Bekrić49.62
5Kenneth Medwood49.87
6Stanislav Melnykov50.19
7Tristan Thomas50.55
Jack Green

Heat 3

RankAthleteNationalityTimeNotes
1Michael Tinsley48.18Q, SB
2Leford Green48.61Q, SB
3Brent Larue49.45
4Rhys Williams49.63
5Brendan Cole49.65
6José Reynaldo Bencosme de Leon50.07
7Amaurys Valle50.48
Amaechi Morton

Notes: Q- Qualified by place
q - Qualified by performance
PB - Personal Best
NR - National Record
SB - Seasonal Best
DQ - DisQualified
DNS - Did Not Start

Final