Athletics at the 1988 Summer Olympics – Women's 400 metres hurdles

The Women's 400 metres Hurdles at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea had an entry list of 35 competitors, with five qualifying heats and two semifinals (16) before the final (8) took place on Wednesday September 28, 1988.[1]

Women's 400 metres hurdles at the Games of the XXIV Olympiad
Venue	Olympic Stadium
Dates	25 September 1988 (heats) 27 September 1988 (semi-finals) 28 September 1988 (final)
Competitors	35 from 25 nations
Winning time	53.17 OR
Medalists
Debbie Flintoff-King  Australia Tatyana Ledovskaya  Soviet Union Ellen Fiedler  East Germany

Athletics at the 1988 Summer Olympics
Track events
100 m	men	women
200 m	men	women
400 m	men	women
800 m	men	women
1500 m	men	women
3000 m		women
5000 m	men
10,000 m	men	women
100 m hurdles		women
110 m hurdles	men
400 m hurdles	men	women
3000 m steeplechase	men
4×100 m relay	men	women
4×400 m relay	men	women
Road events
Marathon	men	women
20 km walk	men
50 km walk	men
Field events
Long jump	men	women
Triple jump	men
High jump	men	women
Pole vault	men
Shot put	men	women
Discus throw	men	women
Javelin throw	men	women
Hammer throw	men
Combined events
Heptathlon		women
Decathlon	men
Wheelchair races

In 1987, the former world record holder Sabine Busch of the GDR, improved her best to 53.24 seconds, before going on to win the World Championship title in Rome in 53.62 secs, with Debbie Flintoff-King of Australia second, GDR team-mate Cornelia Ullrich third, and Jamaica's Sandra Farmer fourth. Both Ullrich and Farmer, who was now competing for the USA as Sandra Farmer-Patrick, failed to make it to Seoul. Farmer-Patrick was disqualified in her semifinal at the US Olympic trials for a lane infringement, while Ullrich missed out on a spot on the GDR Olympic team to Ellen Fiedler and Susanne Losch.

In Seoul, Fiedler set a new Olympic record in the heats, running 54.58 secs. Flintoff-King then further improved the Olympic record to 54.00 in the first semifinal, finishing just ahead of the little-known Soviet Tatyana Ledovskaya, who ran 54.01. Fiedler won the second semifinal in 54.28, with world champion Busch fourth.

In the Final, Ledovskaya (lane 3) made the fastest start and still held a narrow lead at the eighth hurdle, with Fiedler (lane 6) second, Busch (lane 7) third and Flintoff-King (lane 5) back in fifth. By the tenth hurdle, Ledovskaya still led from Fiedler, with Flintoff-King closing and moving into third ahead of Bush. Flintoff-King continued to close on the run-in and passed Ledovskaya in the final stride, winning in the new Olympic record time of 53.17, to move to second on the world all-time list. Ledovskaya took the silver in 53.18, with Fiedler holding off Busch for the bronze, running 53.63 to Busch's 53.69. With six of the top seven running personal bests, the Seoul final rewrote the all-time list, with fifth-placed Sally Gunnell (54.03) and sixth-placed Gudrun Abt (54.04), moving to number 10 and 11 on the all-time list.