1996 Summer Olympics / Athletics - 400 m hurdles (women)

sport	athletics
discipline	400 meter hurdles
gender	Women
Attendees	29 athletes from 22 countries
Competition location	Centennial Olympic Stadium
Competition phase	July 28, 1996 (preliminary round) July 29, 1996 (semi-finals) July 31, 1996 (final)
Medalists Deon Hemmings ( JAM )   Kim Batten ( USA )   Tonja Buford-Bailey ( USA )

The women's 400 meter hurdles at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta was held on July 28, 29 and 31, 1996 at the Centennial Olympic Stadium . 29 athletes took part.

The Jamaican Deon Hemmings became Olympic champion . She won ahead of the Americans Kim Batten and Tonja Buford-Bailey .

Heike Meißner and Silvia Rieger started for Germany . Both reached the final. Meißner was fifth, Rieger eighth.
Switzerland was represented by Michèle Schenk and Martina Stoop. Stoop was eliminated in the preliminary round, Schenk in the semi-finals.
Athletes from Austria and Liechtenstein did not take part.

Current titleholders

Olympic champion in 1992	Sally Gunnell ( Great Britain )	53.23 s	Barcelona 1992
World Champion 1995	Kim Batten ( USA )	52.61 s	Gothenburg 1995
European champion in 1994	Sally Gunnell ( Great Britain )	53.33 s	Helsinki 1994
Pan American Champion 1995	Kim Batten ( USA )	54.74 s	Mar del Plata 1995
Central America and Caribbean champion 1995	Lency Montelier ( Cuba )	56.9 s	Guatemala City 1995
South America Champion 1995	Ximena Restrepo ( Colombia )	57.42 s	Manaus 1995
Asian champion 1995	Hsu Pei-chin ( Chinese Taipei )	56.99 s	Jakarta 1995
African champion 1996	Saidat Onanuga ( Nigeria )	56.64 s	Yaoundé 1996
Oceania champion 1994	Mary-Estelle Kapalu ( Vanuatu )	1: 01.70 min	Auckland 1994

Existing records

World record	52.61 s	Kim Batten ( USA )	Gothenburg , Sweden	August 11, 1995
Olympic record	53.17 s	Debbie Flintoff-King ( Australia )	Final from Seoul , South Korea	September 28, 1988

Note: All times are Atlanta local time ( UTC − 5 ).

Preliminary round

July 28, 1996, from 11:30 a.m.

The athletes competed in a total of four preliminary runs. The first three athletes per run qualified for the quarter-finals. In addition, the four fastest times, the so-called lucky losers , made it through. The directly qualified runners are highlighted in light blue, the lucky losers in light green.

Forward 1

space	Surname	nation	Time (s)	annotation
1	Guðrún Arnardóttir	Iceland	54.88
2	Sandra Farmer-Patrick	United States	55.55
3	Debbie-Ann Parris	Jamaica	55.64
4th	Michèle Schenk	Switzerland	55.70
5	Tazzjana Ljadouskaja	Belarus	55.82
6th	Virna De Angeli	Italy	57.12
7th	Mary-Estelle Kapalu	Vanuatu	58.68
8th	Hsu Pei-chin	Chinese Taipei	58.80

Forward 2

space	Surname	nation	Time (s)	annotation
1	Tonja Buford-Bailey	United States	55.23
2	Sally Gunnell	Great Britain	55.29
3	Silvia Rieger	Germany	55.33
4th	Rosey Edeh	Canada	55.64
5	Natalja Torzina	Kazakhstan	55.94
6th	Martina Stoop	Switzerland	56.32
7th	Miriam Alonso	Spain	56.53
8th	Omolade Akinremi	Nigeria	56.83

Forward 3

space	Surname	nation	Time (s)	annotation
1	Kim Batten	United States	54.92
2	Tetiana Tereshchuk	Ukraine	55.82
3	Ann Mercken	Belgium	55.88
4th	Anna Knoros	Russia	56.21
5	Catherine Scott-Pomales	Jamaica	56.21
6th	Karen van der Veen	South Africa	57.00
7th	Tanja Kurotschkina	Belarus	57.28

Forward 4

space	Surname	nation	Time (s)	annotation
1	Deon Hemmings	Jamaica	54.70
2	Heike Meissner	Germany	55.05
3	Susan Smith	Ireland	55.22
4th	Ionela Târlea	Romania	55.42
5	Lana Jēkabsone	Latvia	56.18
6th	Nelli Voronkova	Belarus	56.97
7th	Eva Paniagua	Spain	58.10

Semifinals

July 29, 1996, from 9:30 p.m.

In each of the two semi-finals, the first four athletes (highlighted in light blue) qualified for the final.

Run 1

The Irish Susan Smith was eliminated as fifth in her semi-final run

space	Surname	nation	Time (s)	annotation
1	Deon Hemmings	Jamaica	52.99
2	Tonja Buford-Bailey	United States	53.38
3	Heike Meissner	Germany	54.27
4th	Ionela Târlea	Romania	54.41
5	Susan Smith	Ireland	54.93
6th	Ann Mercken	Belgium	54.95
7th	Tazzjana Ljadouskaja	Belarus	54.99
8th	Tetiana Tereshchuk	Ukraine	55.34

Run 2

space	Surname	nation	Time (s)	annotation
1	Kim Batten	United States	53.65
2	Silvia Rieger	Germany	54.27
3	Rosey Edeh	Canada	54.49
4th	Debbie-Ann Parris	Jamaica	54.72
5	Sandra Farmer-Patrick	United States	54.73
6th	Guðrún Arnardóttir	Iceland	54.81
7th	Michèle Schenk	Switzerland	55.96
DNF	Sally Gunnell	Great Britain

final

space	Surname	nation	Time (s)	annotation
1	Deon Hemmings	Jamaica	52.82
2	Kim Batten	United States	53.08
3	Tonja Buford-Bailey	United States	53.22
4th	Debbie-Ann Parris	Jamaica	53.97
5	Heike Meissner	Germany	54.03
6th	Rosey Edeh	Canada	54.39
7th	Ionela Târlea	Romania	54.40
8th	Silvia Rieger	Germany	54.57

July 31, 1996

In the final, two US athletes, Jamaicans and Germans each met a starter from Canada and Romania.

A three-way battle was expected between world champion and world record holder Kim Batten from the USA, her compatriot Tonja Buford-Bailey, vice world champion, and the Jamaican World Cup third Deon Hemmings. The British Olympic champion from 1992 Sally Gunnell had to give up due to an injury in her semi-final run.

In the final, Hemmings took the lead from the second hurdle on lane five. She was able to make up for the curve template on Batten, which ran on lane six, on the back straight. But at the eighth hurdle, Hemmings, Batten and Buford-Bailey were almost level again. The three favorites hit the home straight ahead of all other competitors. Hemmings was just ahead of Buford-Bailey, followed by Batten. In the end, Deon Hemmings had the greatest stamina and was Olympic champion more than two meters ahead. Kim Batten won the silver medal a good meter ahead of Tonja Buford-Bailey. Well behind, the Australian Debbie-Ann Parris, Heike Meißner from Germany and the Canadian Rosey Edeh finished fourth to sixth in that order. Ionela Târlea from Romania was seventh ahead of the second German Silvia Rieger.

Deon Hemmings was Jamaica's first ever Olympic champion in this discipline.

Doping controversy surrounding Sandra Farmer-Patrick

The US athlete Sandra Farmer-Patrick was convicted of taking testosterone at the US Olympic elimination in June 1996 . Despite the result, she was admitted to the Olympic Games in Atlanta . It was not until eleven months after the doping evidence was given that she was banned for four years. The delay between proof and judgment was due to the inability to act of the World Athletics Federation IAAF . Since the member associations are autonomous, the IAAF cannot intervene accordingly. So Farmer-Patrick's ban did not come into effect until May 1997.

literature

• Gerd Rubenbauer (ed.), Olympic Summer Games Atlanta 1996 with reports by Britta Kruse, Johannes Ebert, Andreas Schmidt and Ernst Christian Schütt, comments: Gerd Rubenbauer and Hans Schwarz, Chronik Verlag im Bertelsmann Verlag, Gütersloh / Munich 1996, p. 46f

Web links

• SportsReference 400m hurdles , accessed March 8, 2018
• Official Report, Part III on the Olympic Games in Atlanta , p. 84f, English / French (PDF, 13,520 MB), accessed on March 8, 2018

Video

• Women's 400m Hurdles Final Atlanta Olympics 1996 , published June 21, 2016 on youtube.com, accessed March 8, 2018

Individual evidence

1. ↑ IAAF Statistics Handbook, Beijing 2015, page 797 , accessed on March 8, 2018
2. ↑ Official Report, Part III on the Olympic Games in Atlanta ( Memento of the original from October 7, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , P. 84f, English / French (PDF, 13,520 MB), accessed on March 8, 2018 
3. ↑ ^{a b} Official Report, Part III on the Olympic Games in Atlanta ( Memento of the original from October 7, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , P. 85, English / French (PDF, 13,520 MB), accessed on March 8, 2018 
4. ↑ Ralf Junkes: The history of doping in sport and the fight against doping using the example of the sport of athletics . Diplomica, 2002, ISBN 3-8324-4802-0 , p. 55 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed March 18, 2018]).