Michael Johnson is the most successful athlete of the World Championships 400 m, having won four straight titles from 1993 to 1999.

The most successful women are Marie-José Pérec, Cathy Freeman and Christine Ohuruogu, all of whom have won two world titles.

The United States is comfortably the most successful nation in the discipline – American men have topped the podium ten times and taken 23 medals in total.

Antonio Pettigrew, the 1991 champion, was the first have his results annulled due to doping, although this ban affected his finalist placings from 1997 to 2001 only.

The 2003 sixth-place finish of Calvin Harrison was annulled for doping, as weer the semi-finalist runs of Amaka Ogoegbunam in 2009 and Antonina Yefremova in 2011.