CHAMPIONSHIPS HISTORY: Most Dominant Individual Winners

This is the latest in a series of posts based on the USTFCCCA’s 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 2016 edition March 11-12 in Birmingham, Alabama. The page can be viewed in its entirety here.

NEW ORLEANS – Every year there are winners at the NCAA Division I Indoor Track & Field Champions.

This Friday and Saturday in Birmingham, Alabama, as many as 28 individual event champions (excluding relays) will join a list of 866 men and women who have won a combined 1,162 individual national titles in the 51 years of the men’s meet and the 33 years of women’s competition.

But will any of them join the much more exclusive ranks of those champions who transcended their competition and scored all-time dominant victories?

Today we examine the farthest-right edge on the bell curve of NCAA Championships performances to find those who stood head-and-shoulders above their best-of-the-best collegiate peers.

The beauty of track & field is its numerical objectivity and standardization. Using the “event winners & win margin” report from the USTFCCCA NCAA Division I Indoor Track & Field Championships History Record Book, we converted margins of victory into percentages that can be compared across events, whether they’re on the track or on the field or some combination thereof.

When we apply this formula to the 2016 NCAA Championship entries, here’s how it shook out. "Margin" is the percentage difference between these top seeds and the No. 2 seeds in their respective events.

*Converted for qualifying (due to track)

It’s no surprise that collegiate shot put record-holder Raven Saunders of Ole Miss is the biggest favorite this indoor season, seeded more than seven percent farther than second-seeded Kelsey Card of Wisconsin.

The shot put took the top spot for both genders, with Texas star Ryan Crouser’s collegiate record-tying efforts this season netting him a five percent advantage over the field.

But national titles aren’t won on a calculator or in an Excel spreadsheet; both Saunders and Crouser are proof of that. 

One year ago, Crouser entered as the sixth-biggest favorite of the meet, by the numbers, in line to defend his 2014 national crown. He was upset by Florida’s Stipe Zunic.

Saunders, on the other hand, entered as the underdog to LSU’s Tori Bliss, who went to Fayetteville as the 10th-biggest favorite of the meet. Saunders, then a frosh with Southern Illinois, pulled off the upset in the final stages of the competition to win her first of two NCAA titles in 2015.

In fact, four of the 10 athletes who entered with the biggest margins between them and No. 2 in the seeding (Bliss, Crouser, Stephen F. Austin’s Demi Payne and Georgia’s Garrett Scantling) ended up falling short of NCAA titles. And it took a dramatic final-round comeback for last year’s biggest favorite, collegiate weight throw record-holder Michael Lihrman of Wisconsin, to emerge victorious in his event.

In fact, heptathlete Scantling, who was last year’s seventh-biggest pre-meet favorite, ultimately ended up falling short in one of the Championships’ closest-ever finishes as Luca Wieland of Minnesota took the combined-event title by two points, or by .03 percent.

One who did live up to and ultimately exceeded his billing of overwhelming pre-meet favorite was hurdler Omar McLeod of Arkansas. The Razorback sophomore, who has since turned professional, blasted a collegiate-record 7.45 in the final on his home track to win by 3.12 percent, or nearly a quarter of a second over Chris Caldwell of Texas Tech.

Neither of those numbers may sound like much, but it earned McLeod the biggest margin-of-victory-percentage of any men’s track athlete in any individual event at any year of the NCAA Indoor Championships.

He surpassed another hurdler, Terrence Trammell of South Carolina in 1999, for the top spot on that list.

The following is from last year’s most dominant victories post, updated to reflect 2015 results.

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.

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 her 10th on the Championships’ all-time performers list.

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 year, 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 six of the biggest 10 blowouts on the track, four of which came in the distance events.

That makes the most dominant men’s track performance in meet history a true outlier.

McLeod’s historic 60-meter hurdles performance last year checked in as the biggest men’s track victory, as well as the third-biggest individual track win in meet history, regardless of gender.

The record previously belonged to Terrence Trammell of South Carolina, who in 1999 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.

No other individual men’s track race in meet history has resulted in a two-or-more percent margin of victory.