The single exception to this was the United States, which continued to use imperial measurements.
In the 1980s efforts were made to switch track and field in the United States to use metric measurements and the 55 metres was adopted as a close equivalent to 60 yards.
Since the late 1990s there have been very few significant open competitions over 55 metres and the event remains something of a historic anomaly.
Hand-timed results are excluded The websites of World Athletics[4] and tilastopaja.net[5] are often used to generate lists of top performers.
However, the data in these sites is not complete before about 1998 and, as noted above, much of the championship activity in this event (and hence best performances) were before this time.