What are the longest lived Olympic records? Well, Olympic records can only be set in certain sports. At the Summer Games, this includes athletics (track & field), swimming, shooting, weightlifting, archery, and Olympic bests are usually considered now in rowing and canoeing. At the Winter Games, the measured sports are speed skating and short-track speed skating, with the best jumps measured in ski jumping.

Let’s consider only athletics at the Summer Olympics for starters. And we have to make some assumptions, as we commonly do. We’re going to consider marks that have lasted the most Olympics, because the gap from 1936-48 and 1912-20 artificially made records last longer that were set in 1912 or 1932-36. So we’ll consider Olympics Between (OlyBT below) and Years Between (YrsBT below). Also, some marks were set a number of Olympics ago but are still the best on record. We’ll consider all of those to last until 2016 (at a minimum, that is true).

Given that, here are all the athletics Olympic records that have lasted 20+ years or 5 or more Olympics.

Now there are caveats, as there usually are. Beamon’s miracle long jump in Mexico City will last at least 48 years, through 2016, and likely longer, as there is nobody on the horizon about to better 8.90 metres. But the mark was altitude-aided, and the Association of Track & Field Statisticians (ATFS), of which I am a member, usually considers altitude-aided marks in the sprints and horizontal jumps differently. The next best among men, and the top two marks for women, were both set in the 1980s, and shall we say, there are a number of rumors about marks set in that era. If you look at the women’s marks, unfortunately, everything was set from 1980-88 until we get to Marie-José Péréc’s 400 metre mark of 48.25 set in Atlanta in 1996. Please also note Lina Radke-Batschauer’s 800 metre mark from Amsterdam. While it lasted until 1960, it only lasted 1 Olympics, because women did not run the 800 metres from 1932-56.

Of the remaining men’s marks, the one that looks to me to have the best chance to continue to rule is Kevin Young’s 400 hurdles mark of 46.78, set in Barcelona. He remains the only hurdler to better 47 seconds, and nobody is threatening that mark these days. Among the women, nobody is approaching all those Olympic records from the 1980s.

What about the best marks by event. Here they are, for men and women, with a few extras thrown in to cover the various “yeah, buts …”:

Men

Women

We’ll look at a similar analysis for the swimming Olympic records in a few weeks.