The men's 100 metres was an event at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy. The competition was held at the Olympic Stadium on 31 August and 1 September. Sixty-five competitors from 48 nations entered, but 61 competitors from 45 nations participated. Nations were limited to three athletes each under rules set at the 1930 Olympic Congress.

The event was won in a photo finish by Armin Hary of the United Team of Germany, earning the first Olympic title by a German runner in the event (Fritz Hofmann was second in 1896) and breaking the United States' streak of five straight wins. American Dave Sime was the silver medalist, posting the same Olympic record time (10.2 seconds) as Hary (they were separated by a photo-finish).

Summary Since winning the 1958 European Championship, Armin Hary was a known commodity. His incredible reaction time supposedly had been clocked using high speed cameras at .03 of a second, while normal humans react from .15 upward. Some of his competitors thought he was using some sort of trickery.

Along with Enrique Figuerola asking for a pause, the proceedings to start this 10 second race took 20 minutes. Hary's incredible reaction to the gun and sprint form through the acceleration phase has been studied for generations, needless to say it put him in the lead, on the outside of the track in lane 6, putting nearly a 2-metre gap on Peter Radford to his inside. Dave Sime was the slowest out of the blocks with a deficit to make up across the track from Hary in lane 1. But make up the deficit he did, gaining with every step, passing the field by 70 metres and gaining until he was virtually running stride for stride against Hary at the line. Hary held Sime off, leaning at the tape to take the gold. With the fastest closing speed over the last 20 metres, Radford made up a big gap, to take the slight edge over Figueola and Frank Budd all finishing together.

Later, as a professor of sports science, Radford said he thinks he figured out the "tell" Hary used to anticipate the gun.

Hary ran representing the United Team of Germany, a combined team of German athletes from East and West Germany.

Background

This was the fourteenth time the event was held, having appeared at every Olympics since the first in 1896. Manfred Germar, 5th place in 1956, was the only finalist from the Melbourne Games to return in 1960. Notable entrants, along with Hary and Germar, were Americans Ray Norton (U.S. Olympic trial champion), Dave Sime, and Frank Budd, and Canada's Harry Jerome (who shared the world record with Hary at 10 seconds flat).

The British West Indies, Fiji, Kenya, Morocco, South Korea, and Sudan were represented in the event for the first time. The United States was the only nation to have appeared at each of the first fourteen Olympic men's 100 metres events.

Competition format

The event retained the same basic four round format from 1920–1956: heats, quarterfinals, semifinals, and a final. However, the format was tweaked for the first time since 1936. The number of heats was reduced from 12 to 9 (with six or seven athletes per heat), with the number of runners advancing from each heat increased from 2 to 3. This led to 27 quarterfinalists (up from 24), so the 4 quarterfinal heats were now unbalanced: one had 6 athletes while the other three had 7. As before, however, the top 3 in each quarterfinal advanced to the semifinals. There were 2 heats of 6 semifinalists, once again with the top 3 advancing to the 6-man final.

Records

Prior to the competition, the existing World and Olympic records were as follows.

World record 10.0 Armin Hary Zürich, Switzerland 21 June 1960 10.0 Harry Jerome Saskatoon, Canada 15 July 1960 Olympic record 10.3 Eddie Tolan Los Angeles, USA 1 August 1932 10.3 Ralph Metcalfe Los Angeles, USA 1 August 1932 10.3 Jesse Owens Berlin, Germany 2 August 1936 10.3 Harrison Dillard London, United Kingdom 31 July, 1948 10.3 Bobby Morrow Melbourne, Australia 23 November 1956 10.3 Ira Murchison Melbourne, Australia 23 November 1956 10.3 Bobby Morrow Melbourne, Australia 24 November 1956

Armin Hary broke the 28-year-old Olympic record with a 10.2 second run in the quarterfinals. He (along with Dave Sime) matched that 10.2 second result in the final.

Results

Heats

The top three runners in each of the 9 heats advanced.

Heat 1 Wind: -0.3 m/s Rank Athlete Nation Time (hand) Time (automatic) Notes 1 Enrique Figuerola 10.4 10.57 2 Carl Fredrik Bunæs 10.7 10.80 3 Yuriy Konovalov 10.7 10.83 4 Suthi Manyakass 10.8 10.87 5 Mikhail Bachvarov 11.0 10.95 6 Amos Grodzinowsky 11.1 11.19 7 Raj Joshi Tilak 11.3 11.43

Heat 2 Wind: -0.2 m/s Rank Athlete Nation Time (hand) Time (automatic) Notes 1 Seraphino Antao 10.5 10.64 2 Armin Hary 10.6 10.74 3 Heinz Müller 10.8 10.94 4 Gustav Ntiforo 11.0 11.15 5 Isaac Gómez 11.0 11.19 6 Dennis Tipping 11.2 11.30 7 Abdul Khaliq 11.2 11.34

Heat 3 Wind: -0.3 m/s Rank Athlete Nation Time (hand) Time (automatic) Notes 1 Horacio Esteves 10.4 10.62 2 Dennis Johnson 10.4 10.66 3 Dave Sime 10.5 10.75 4 Lynn Eves 10.8 11.01 5 Aggrey Awori 10.9 11.09 6 Patrick Lowry 10.9 11.11 7 Roba Negousse 11.3 11.47

Heat 4 Wind: -0.2 m/s Rank Athlete Nation Time (hand) Time (automatic) Notes 1 Harry Jerome 10.5 10.72 2 Jocelyn Delecour 10.5 10.75 3 Erasmus Amukun 10.6 10.80 4 Affonso da Silva 10.8 10.98 5 Bouchaib El-Maachi 10.9 11.11 6 Shahrudin Mohamed Ali 11.0 11.11 - James Omagbemi –

Heat 5 Wind: -0.2 m/s Rank Athlete Nation Time (hand) Time (automatic) Notes 1 Tom Robinson 10.5 10.68 2 Lloyd Murad 10.7 10.82 3 Sitiveni Moceidreke 10.8 10.92 4 George Short 10.9 11.04 5 Emmanuel Putu 11.2 11.34 6 Kim Jong-cheol 11.5 11.63 Rouhollah Rahmani –

Heat 6 Wind: -0.5 m/s Rank Athlete Nation Time (hand) Time (automatic) Notes 1 Ray Norton 10.7 10.88 2 Gusman Kosanov 10.7 10.90 3 Santiago Plaza 10.8 10.95 4 Walter Mahlendorf 10.8 10.98 5 Romain Poté 11.0 11.19 6 Aydin Onur 11.3 11.45 7 Abdul Hadi Shekaib 11.6 11.79

Heat 7 Wind: -0.3 m/s Rank Athlete Nation Time (hand) Time (automatic) Notes 1 David Jones 10.5 10.69 2 Abdoulaye Seye 10.6 10.75 3 Rafael Romero 10.7 10.89 4 Elmar Kunauer 11.0 11.13 5 Huang Suh-chuang 11.2 11.37 6 Khudhir Zalata 11.3 11.50 Iftikhar Shah –

Heat 8 Wind: -0.1 m/s Rank Athlete Nation Time (hand) Time (automatic) Notes 1 Marian Foik 10.5 – 2 Edward Jefferys 10.6 – 3 Claude Piquemal 10.7 – 4 Jalal Gozal 10.9 – 5 Manfred Germar 11.0 – 6 Hamdan El-Tayeb 11.1 – 7 José Albarrán 11.2 –

Heat 9 Wind: -0.2 m/s Rank Athlete Nation Time (hand) Time (automatic) Notes 1 Peter Radford 10.4 10.51 2 Frank Budd 10.4 10.55 3 Edvin Ozolin 10.7 10.86 4 Hilmar Thorbjörnsson 10.9 11.05 5 Nikolaos Georgopoulos 11.0 11.12 6 Moustafa Abdel Kader 11.2 11.34 7 James Roberts 11.2 11.37

Quarterfinal

The top three runners in each of the four heats advanced to the semifinals.

Quarterfinal 1 Wind: -0.5 m/s Rank Athlete Nation Time (hand) Time (automatic) Notes 1 Horacio Esteves 10.5 10.71 2 Tom Robinson 10.6 10.76 3 Ray Norton 10.6 10.78 4 Jocelyn Delecour 10.7 10.87 5 Edward Jefferys 10.7 10.89 6 Edvins Ozolinš 10.7 10.90 7 Heinz Müller 10.8 10.95

Quarterfinal 2 Wind: -0.3 m/s Rank Athlete Nation Time (hand) Time (automatic) Notes 1 Armin Hary 10.2 10.32 , 2 Dave Sime 10.3 10.37 3 Marian Foik 10.4 10.48 4 Dennis Johnson 10.4 10.51 5 Carl Fredrik Bunæs 10.5 10.69 6 Yuriy Konovalov 10.5 10.69 7 Sitiveni Moceidreke 10.7 10.85

Quarterfinal 3 Wind: -1.3 m/s Rank Athlete Nation Time (hand) Time (automatic) Notes 1 Frank Budd 10.4 10.52 2 Enrique Figuerola 10.4 10.53 3 David Jones 10.5 10.68 4 Erasmus Amukun 10.6 10.75 5 Claude Piquemal 10.6 10.76 6 Gusman Kosanov 10.7 10.87 7 Santiago Plaza 10.8 10.93

Quarterfinal 4 Wind: -2.3 m/s Rank Athlete Nation Time (hand) Time (automatic) Notes 1 Harry Jerome 10.4 10.58 2 Peter Radford 10.4 10.60 3 Seraphino Antao 10.4 10.61 4 Abdoulaye Seye 10.4 10.64 5 Lloyd Murad 10.8 10.97 6 Rafael Romero 11.1 11.23

Semifinals

The top three runners in each of the two semifinals advanced to the final.

Semifinal 1 Wind: 0.0 m/s Rank Athlete Nation Time (hand) Time (automatic) Notes 1 Peter Radford 10.4 10.57 2 Enrique Figuerola 10.4 10.58 3 Frank Budd 10.5 10.65 4 Marian Foik 10.5 10.66 5 Tom Robinson 10.5 10.69 - Harry Jerome –

Semifinal 2 Wind: 0.0 m/s Rank Athlete Nation Time (hand) Time (automatic) Notes 1 Armin Hary 10.3 10.41 2 Dave Sime 10.4 10.46 3 Ray Norton 10.4 10.47 4 David Jones 10.4 10.48 5 Horacio Esteves 10.5 10.57 6 Seraphino Antao 10.6 10.72

Final

Armin Hary and Dave Sime tied the Olympic record.

Wind: 0.0 m/s Rank Athlete Nation Time (hand) Time (automatic) Notes Armin Hary 10.2 10.32 Dave Sime 10.2 10.35 Peter Radford 10.3 10.42 4 Enrique Figuerola 10.3 10.44 5 Frank Budd 10.3 10.46 6 Ray Norton 10.4 10.50

References

External links Olympic Report 1960 Volume 2