CHAMPIONSHIPS HISTORY: Biggest Blowouts in NCAA DI Meet History

This is the latest in a series of posts based on the USTFCCCA’s newly unveiled NCAA Division I Indoor Track & Field Championships History page – the most comprehensive collection of the meet’s history anywhere on the web – leading up to the 2015 edition March 13-14 in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The page can be viewed in its entirety here.

Throughout the course of the 50 years of NCAA Division I Indoor Track & Field Championship meets (and the 32 years in which women have competed), there have literally been more than a thousand event finals contested by even more thousands of athletes – evidenced by our huge event-by-event finals breakdown for each year of the championships.

Results in those 1,300-plus finals over the years have ranged from massive blowout victories to dramatic draws broken by photo review or tiebreaking procedures, and everything in between.

The “everything in between” performances were great and they make up a majority of the NCAA Championships bell curve, but let’s hone in today on one of the bottom slopes of that curve for the biggest blowouts in meet history. (Check back later for the closest, down-to-the-wire finishes).

Using the “event winners & win margin” report from the newly released USTFCCCA NCAA Division I Indoor Track & Field Championships History Record Book, we’ve compiled some of the meet’s most notable runaway and down-to-the-wire wins.

Most and least dominant performances were determined by calculating the percentage difference between the times/marks posted by the winners and runners-up in each event throughout the course of the meet’s history. Converting margin of victory from seconds, points and meters into a percentage number allows for easier comparison across events.

For reference moving forward, here’s the list of the most dominant athletes of the 2015 regular season in terms of the percentage difference between them and No. 2.

Field Events Dominate the List of Most Dominant Performances

For the meet’s most dominant performances, look no further than the field events. The very top of the list of most lopsided victories is occupied almost exclusively by events that take place off the oval. The very, very top of the list is the territory of the throws, with each of the meet’s five most dominant performances in history coming in the sector in the weight throw and shot put.

Of the seven event finals in meet history that have been won by 10 percent or more, all but one are field events, with the seventh coming in the combined events.

No one in meet history has been a more decisive winner than Southern Illinois weight thrower Brittany Riley, who owns the two most dominant performances in meet history.

In 2007 she launched a collegiate-record 25.56m, on her sixth and final attempt, surpassing by a half-meter the collegiate record of 25.05m she had just set on her fifth throw. That sixth throw secured a 13.45 percent margin of victory over runner-up Jenny Dahlgren of Georgia – a whopping 10 feet.

One year later, Riley was at it again. Though she didn’t break her meet or collegiate record – she only threw 25.34m for the No. 2 throw in both of those categories – she did get the biggest margin of victory in meet history. She won by 3.3 meters over runner-up Jessica Pressley of Arizona State, a margin of nearly 11 feet and 14.97 percent.

The biggest win by percentage in men’s meet history dates all the way back to 1991, again in the weight throw as SMU’s Christophe Epalle heaved 22.73m to win by nearly three meters over runner-up Scott McGee of Oregon – a gap of 13.20 percent.

Rounding out the top-five was a pair of shot put performances. In 2010, Arizona State’s Ryan Whiting won the men’s shot put by 11.73 percent to seal his third title in a row. Back in 2004, Laura Gerraughty of North Carolina launched a then-meet- and then-collegiate record 19.15m heave to win by 10.50 percent.

The other two 10 percent-or-more victories shouldn’t come as any surprise, based on their prominence in world history.

Before 2010 Bowerman Trophy winner Ashton Eaton of Oregon won an Olympic gold medal in 2012 and his multiple world championship titles, he set the world and collegiate record at NCAAs in 2010 with a score of 6499 points. That was 10.41 percent better than runner-up Mateo Sossah of North Carolina.

The other 10-plus-percent win? You have to go all the way back to 1968, when Bob Beamon of UTEP soared in the long jump to a winning mark of 27-2¾ (8.299m), a full 10.20 percent better than runner-up Mike Gregory of Oklahoma, who was two-and-a-half feet behind.

Beamon, of course, went on to break the world record in the outdoor long jump later that summer in the 1968 Olympics, famously flying an unbelievable 8.90m (29-2½) at altitude to break the former record by 55 centimeters.

Can we expect similarly dominant performances this year? Most likely not that dominant, but decisive nonetheless. Based on regular season performances, men’s weight throw collegiate record holder Michael Lihrman has the largest gap between a top seed and No. 2 at 4.88 percent, just ahead of women’s pentathlon collegiate record holder Kendell Williams of Georgia’s 4.21 percent edge in her signature event.

Historic Blowouts in the Track Events

Track events haven’t seen the same enormous lopsided victories as their field counterparts, but they have had their fair share of blowouts.

Chief among those wins was Kay Gooch of Oklahoma winning the women’s 3000-meter title by 3.89 percent. Her winning time of 8:58.85 was nearly 22 seconds better than runner-up Tonya Todd, and it’s a performance that has stood the test of time: it still ranks as the 10th-fastest run in meet history.

Ten years later, another women’s distance runner turned in a pair historically lopsided wins. Kim Smith of Providence ran a then-collegiate-record 15:14.18at 5000 meters to beat runner-up Alicia Craig of Stanford by more than half a minute, or 3.27 percent. Not only is that performance no longer the collegiate record, it’s no longer the school record. Just last weekend, Emily Sisson of Providence ran 15:12.22 to win the BIG EAST title.

In that same meet, she took the 3000 in 8:49.18, winning by 15.84 seconds or 2.91 percent for the third-biggest margin of victory in a women’s track event. That performance again broke the collegiate record of 8:53.54 that had been held since 1983 by PattieSue Plumer of Stanford, and it still stands as the third-fastest in collegiate history to this day.

Women’s events have accounted for nine of the biggest 10 blowouts on the track, seven of which came in the distance events.

That makes the most dominant men’s track performance in meet history a true outlier. In 1999, Terrence Trammell of South Carolina ran a meet record of 7.52 – which would stand until 2006 – to defeat runner-up Aubrey Herring of Indiana State in 7.75 – a 2.97 percent disparity.

The only other men’s track event that was won by more than two percent was the 1997 men’s 4×400 relay, in which Oklahoma won by more than four seconds over runner-up Baylor in a then-meet record 3:04.25. That standard stood for five years.

If the current descending order lists hold to form, a third two-percent-plus performance could join the record books – and potentially take over the top spot on the track list. With his 7.49 to win the SEC 60-meter hurdles title, Omar McLeod of Arkansas has opened up a huge 2.98 percent gap between himself and seven men seeded at either 7.72 or 7.73.