300 meters hurdles

The 300 metres hurdles (also spelled 300 meters hurdles in American English) is an athletics or track and field event. It is a cut down version of the International event the 400 metres hurdles. It is a standard event under the NFHS in American high school competition and a championship level event in Masters athletics. The two iterations of the event vary somewhat. Common to all long hurdling events, the distance between hurdles is 35 metres.

The high school version uses a standard 45 meter start to the first hurdle. Thus the high school race is equivalent to beginning of a standard 400 meter hurdle race, but its placement on the track is shifted 100 meters around the track so it finishes at the common finish line on the straightaway, where the longer race would reach the same point near the end of the second turn. There are 8 hurdles in the high school version, the last hurdle just 10 meters before the finish line.

High schools began adopting the longer hurdle event state by state starting in the 1960s. At the time, most which school competition was using United States customary units, so the race was the 330 yard hurdles and since that occurred before Title IX, competition was only for boys. By the mid 1970s girls competition had been added, but girls events were still undergoing a stage of evolution. Essentially the administrators did not know the capabilities of women and were overcautious not to put them into too difficult events. Metrication finally took hold in the NFHS in 1980, the last major sports governing body to adopt metric distances. The official distance became 300 meters, but many competitions continued to be in yards because the tracks were still marked for that distance.

Hurdle heights also have undergone a period of evolution. Until 1984, boys ran over low hurdles 30" in height. When girls were introduced to the event around 1981, they ran the same height as the boys until the boys height was raised to the full intermediate hurdle height of 36" for the 1984 season.

Curiously all national record holders have been from California. Gayle Kellon is credited with the first record in 1982 at 41.09m set at the CIF California State Meet. Leslie Maxie improved upon the record in 1984, taking the record first to 40.90 then to 40.18. Her record held for 17 years until Lashinda Demus took the record below 40 to 39.98 in 2001, which remains the girls record. Danny Harris had the low hurdle mark at 35.52 when the height was terminated. The following year, George Porter ran 36.10 over the intermediate hurdles, but his 35.32 in 1985 is the first recognized record. That record held for 22 years until Jeshua Anderson finally nudged it down to 35.28 in 2007. Chasing Anderson to his record was sophomore Reggie Wyatt, who (after losing his junior year to ineligibility) took the record to 35.02 in 2009. All records took place in the finals of the CIF California State Meet except Porter's 35.32, which was set the week before qualifying to the meet. Wyatt set his record in the preliminary round anticipating his successful attempt to double in the 400 meters.

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