TheNight of Speed was the rare occurrence when three men set the world record in the100 metres in the sametrack meet.[1][2][3][4][5][6] On Thursday, June 20,1968, two semi-final races were held as part of theAAU National Championships atHughes Stadium inSacramento, California.
At the time, theworld record for the 100 metres was 10.0 seconds, hand timed, set, and equaled over the years byArmin Hary (Germany) andHarry Jerome (Canada) in 1960,Horacio Esteves (Venezuela) andBob Hayes (United States) in 1964,Jim Hines (U.S.) andEnrique Figuerola (Cuba) in 1967, and byPaul Nash (South Africa) andOliver Ford (U.S.) earlier in 1968.
Earlier in the day, with themaximum allowable wind of 2.0 metres per second (7.2 km/h; 4.5 mph),Roger Bambuck (France) andCharles Greene (U.S.) had again tied the world record (10.0).
With an aiding wind of 0.8 m/s (2.9 km/h; 1.8 mph), Hines won the first semi-final, timed in 9.9 seconds, to set the new world record, but in second placeRonnie Ray Smith was also credited with the same time, equalling the world record. Minutes later in the second semi-final, with a 0.9 m/s (3.2 km/h; 2.0 mph) aiding wind Greene was also given the same time. As this was before the acceptance offully automatic timing, the hand times were official, each recorded by three separate hand timed stopwatches. An experimental Accutrack automatic timing device was being used for this meet: the times recorded by it showed Hines ran 10.03, Smith 10.14, and Greene 10.10,[7] information held for the interest of future track statisticians.
Later that evening, Greene went on to win the national championship, posting a wind-aided 10.0 seconds in the final, the same time as the next five finishers (Hines,Lennox Miller, Bambruck, Smith, andMel Pender).[8][9]
Less than four months later, with theassistance of the altitude ofMexico City at the1968 Olympics, Hines improved the record to 9.95 while winning the gold medal on October 14,[10] which became the first accepted fully automatic timed world record accepted when theIAAF adopted such times in 1977. At those same Olympics, Greene took the bronze medal and all three teamed withMel Pender to win the gold medal in the4x100 m relay in world record time. Over the next eight seasons, before the IAAF changed their record criteria, six more individuals tied the 9.9 hand timed world record. The automatic 9.95 was not surpassed until 1983, whenCalvin Smith ran 9.93, again at altitude exceeding 7,000 feet (2,130 m), at theU.S. Air Force Academy nearColorado Springs, Colorado.[11][12]
It is worth noting thatBob Hayes was timed at 9.9 seconds four years earlier in the final of the100 metres at the1964 Olympics inTokyo. The official time was given as 10.0 seconds because of an idiosyncratic method of measuring the 'hand' times, which were only used at that Olympics.