Silly season arrives at mastersrankings.com: bogus marks
Everyone knows that mastersrankings.com operates on the honor system. You post your own marks and get public credit (or shame). But behind the scenes this weekend, one shot put mark has been deleted by rankings czar John Seto, and another one could go soon. Meanwhile, a recent sprint mark is ripe for removal. According to the M55 sprint list, a gentleman named John Andrew ran 100 meters in 11.40 seconds. The listed world record is 11.44 by Bill Collins. So Iâm kind of doubting Johnâs mark. The 11.40 was supposedly clocked at the recent Texas meet where Marion Jones spoke to kids.
By the time you read this, John Andrewâs name may be gone from list.
In the case of the shot put, Seto zapped an M65 mark of 14.57 meters (47-9 3/4) credited to Dave Marovich. Before it was deep-sixed, the throw was No. 2 in the nation in his age group.
John was informed: âOn 07/22/09 â he threw 8.91 â next day 07/23/09, he threw 14.57
1 week later, 08/05/09, Â he threw 9.18. I know you have good and bad days, BUT a difference of 18 feet!!!!â
So much for Daveâs mark.
A more curious case is that of Chuck Chapin, who is listed as having put the shot 14.94 (best in the nation) in the M60 group on October 3 and then 14.94 (the same distance) in the M65 group on October 18.
Say what? Mistake in one or the other case?Â
Stay tuned.Â
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54 Responses
How in the world do you figure that Chuck Chapin throwing the same distance in the shotput in meets only 2 weeks apart rates as “a more curious case” than Mr. Marovich throwing 5.39 meters less in the same event only a week after being “credited” with a 14.57m throw?
Rather than casting aspersions, let’s congratulate Mr. Chapin on two fronts – 1) his consistency in throwing at a true National Class level and 2) reaching 65 years of age in seemingly terrific physical shape. Happy (belated) Birthday, Chuck!
If you are going to check marks you should check all marks submitted that wern’t at the national championships. How can we trust the others?
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45 Meet Reco: @ 11.20 7/12/2008 Lonnie Hooker, Strive
Name Year Team Finals Wind
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1 Harding, Robert M46 Pony Express 12.23 2.5
Event 16 M50 100 Meter Dash
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50 Meet Reco: @ 11.99 7/12/2008 Tom Jones
Name Year Team Finals Wind
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1 Jones, Thomas M54 Maryland Masters 12.00 2.5
2 Leigh, Gary M53 Philadelphia Mas 12.63 2.5
Event 16 M55 100 Meter Dash
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55 Meet Reco: @ 11.69 7/12/2008 Oscar Peyton
Name Year Team Finals Wind
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1 Peyton, Oscar M57 Unattached 11.46@ 2.5
2 Sanders, Leo M58 Unattached 12.53 2.5
These marks are over the wind allowed so why are they posted?
Now, that you mention it…there is a 23.80 time in the M55 200 that is not accurate. The meet director posted the time so they are giving it to the athlete. But the correct time is more like 28.30. I wrote the person in charge of making the correction but they wouldn’t correct it, because the meet director made a mistake, we are validating that mistake.
By the way….people who submit Canadian rankings must, at the same time include verification with a website showing meet results or some other way to prove your time or distance. We should do the same here.
ALL of the times at the U.S. Nationals in the 100 were hugely wind aided. Same thing, wind is not mentioned at all so it looks like, when you read the rankings that the times are legal. Same with the Long Jump at Oshkosh, a lot of people set seasonal pr’s and get a number one ranking with a big windy jump. I thought that there was one place we can an accurate accounting with the rankings and that would be masterstrack.com. But in many, many cases, wind-aided marks are ranked above wind legal times.
Lack of the requirement to input wind readings in the sprints and horizontal jumps not only provides an inaccurate picture of the ranking of the year’s best performances, but also muddies the waters when Mr. Gasselsberger compiles his world rankings. Those countries that have performance/rankings lists are one of the sources Martin uses to compile his world lists. He seems to include windy performances, but only up to about 3.0 metres per second. As Mr. Kemp mentions above, Oshkosh was unfortunately a windy meet and with no indication of that in the US Rankings, those marks (some well over 4.5) are transferred to the World Rankings.
No one dies and no fortunes are won or lost over this, but at some point we should move towards an international standard.
In my country are both results without wind readings and with >2 m/s left out of the rankings. Simple. And organisers learn to do a better job when they see their results are left out.
Hehehe…Come on now folks, let’s live and let live. When arguements were raised many times on this blog site about having sanctioned qualifying standards for masters national and world championships, everyone was in an uproar about it because the thought was, everyone should have the chance to compete at any level of athletism no matter how small the field was. Now because some are not at the top of a list because of a little wind blowing, they want to change the requirements for posting results? Mr. Seto and Mr. Stone have done an outstanding job at finding bogus times, heights and marks on the performance lists. Most meets have had official web-sites to verify submitted marks, others have been investigated and if found to be bogus, deleted from the list. Who cares who’s first or second on a performance list or who gets competes at a championships. It’s all about the comradery, brotherhood and sisterhood of masters athletes, competing in the joy of athletics. If false results are submitted, they will be found, one way or another. If this subject of bogus entries still bothers, you should repeat this mantra until you feel better, “…Happy , Happy, Joy , Joy…”
I agree with Weia. The short sprints have a list for hand times and wind information should also be a factor. If wind or timing information is not available, it should be listed with the hand wind aided group.
That said, many of the meets available to Masters will not have wind gauges nor will they have electronic timing, let alone enough qualified officials to handle everything.
If you have been involved in track and field your whole life, as I have, you are just accustomed to making sure that marks are accurate. If they are not, then what have you got?
That is the very reason that there are rules in place, regarding wind. If we ignore the fact that there were officials taking wind readings, then why do we have them do it?
Fact is, the marks in the U.S. Nationals in Oshkosh DID have wind readings. Masterstrack.com just doesn’t post them. For those people who actually do care where the rankings put them at the end of the year, almost all the sprints and jumps are misleading when windy marks are placed above legal marks.
When in doubt, consult the experts. Track and Field News has always listed First: Legal Marks
Second: NWI (no wind information) and Wind-Aided marks at the bottom of the list. If some complain their meet does not have wind gauges, that falls in the category of NWI. They even have a category called “doubtful marks”, which means someone who usually runs a 10.5, runs a 10.0, or something similiar. It’s all about just common sense. I still think track and field is fun though!
Maybe Dave Marovich’s SP mark was wind aided?
The masters World list: http://www.mastersathletics.net, you can pretty much look at any sprint, hurdle or jump and see a trend that American marks don’t mention wind readings and nearly all other countries do. Just pick any event at random: M55 long jump, 11 non Americans in the top 15, 100% of them list the wind reading or an indoor jump designation. All 4 Americans have no wind and were done outdoors. Check M50 200 meters, all the Americans, no wind reading. All the non-Americans do have the wind reading. It just looks like our track meets are half assed here. Maybe we do football 40 starts too….where we have someone drop their hand and we just start the watches when we see them start running!
Ken,
Don’t you think you ought to get out a bit more?! (LOL) It’s all a big game, though I do agree that however it’s played, I’d prefer to see it being played properly.
But what is “properly” anyway? Sure, there needs to be a means to correct errors (my own position in the UK/world rankings has been affected by just this) but how do you ever do that if a meet director stands by his results, right or wrong? And given the range of meets we Masters attend, who can ever expect accuracy or even consistency? I don’t think that something like a WMA meet is any less likely to screw up a result than some of the hand-timed local league fixtures I run in most of the summer, so who’s most to be trusted? Which events produce the results that deserve to be ranked and which don’t? Bottom line, is it stuff like that which bugs us? Stuff no one can answer.
Where Masters meets are concerned, no one’s out there calibrating the watches, checking the electronic timing systems for accuracy, guaranteeing wind measurement always takes place, and so on. It’s all on trust. If all the ranked times came from a single race, those interested in ranking might at least be able to compare like with like. But of course, that’s impossible, and it still doesn’t guarantee accuracy. Also, what about notoriously fast surfaces, marks set at altitude, and so on? There’s more than errors, wind and timing methods at issue!
But yes, is someone going to own up to what “John Andrew” actually ran, and say what else he’s run? Is he even an M55? I assume he wasn’t alone in the Austin race. It would be bad form for us M55 sprinters to have a new WR whose holder and provenance no one could verify. Play the game fairly, at least!
With tongue in cheek, yours,
Tom
A couple of clarifying points here:
1 – Chuck Chapinâs mark was not removed because of the coincidence that he threw the exact same distance two weeks in a row; there were 4 meets that appeared to be a few people getting together more like an organized practice as opposed to an organized meet. Normally, I would send an e-mail to verify conditions before I removed a meet. None of the athletes submitted an e-mail address so I could not verify. If someone were to demonstrate the meets were an organized with open participation, officials, etc, I would reinstate the meets.
2 – It is my understanding that wind aided marks have been included in USATF results since the inception. It was explained to me when I was getting involved in rankings in 2006 that the rankings are intended on being athlete friendly. Pardon my ignorance as a thrower where wind does not give a competitive advantage to a 16, 35 and 56# ball. By the end of the year I will have imported over 250 meet results (including about 30,000 individual results) pulled from the web. The majority of those results do not list winds. Doesnât mean that they werenât legitimate marks. So giving the benefit to the athletes, most of these marks are accepted into the rankings.
An additional comment: There has been much debate over why to allow wind aided, why not limit to sanctioned meets, etc that resulted in the current rankings policies. (Again, I stress my ignorance as a thrower and person who canât be that intelligent since I throw blocks of lead that weigh more than 1 ½ times my bodyweight.) I donât see the benefit to re-hash the merits of including wind aided results. There is also a practical reality that the significant majority of the more than 30,000, 2009, outdoor results from around 1,000 meets do not have listed wind readings. I suspect that the majority of the 30,000 results were under legal wind.
Again, my question is…What purpose then does an official doing wind readings serve…if it is apparently no longer important to list the wind in the rankings? After all, the results of the meet itself does not change if the gauge is there or not. Only a World or National record is affected, which is probably rare.
But if we want to follow the rules (remember them?), the wind DOES matter. What I am hearing is that in the United States, Masters Track and Field is just all for fun anyways so accurate rankings are superfluous. But this is simply false. The only issue is that our rankings are false. Legitimate legal times and distances are placed below wind-aided and NWI times and distances. And the U.S. is the only place to do it this way.
Our rankings, by omission, is that our meets in the U.S. are not following USATF or WAVA rules. I suggest that in fairness to those athletes who did run in sanctioned meets (normally they have wind gauges working), with legal marks, they get listed first. Those who may have run in an all comers meet or meet with either NWI or wind aided, they are listed as such at the bottom of the legal marks, exactly how Track and Field News does it. Why not?
FR: David E. Ortman (M56) Seattle, WA
First, a big thank you to John and the rest for offering an easy to use masters ranking system. It is somewhat self-policing. I occasionally scan through results looking for names spelled slightly differently, or results that just look weird.
If it did not add to John’s workload, I would agree with Steve Kemp that any submitted marks that exceed acceptable wind speed should be dropped to the bottom, just like hand times in the sprints are. Of course, many all comers meets don’t use wind gauges, so not much help there.
Not to beat a dead horse but wind reading screwups at the 2006 National Masters Multi- Events Championships (e.g. Decathlon) cost one competitor an American age-group record.
http://www.polevaultpower.com/decathlon/m50.htm
In 2009, the same National Masters venue again posted results with NWI.
http://www.polevaultpower.com/decathlon/09results.htm
So yes, some of our U.S. national meets are half-assed.
To view my July 1999 National Masters News “False Start” article on “‘Wind-Aided’ My Foot” see:
http://www.ortmanmarchand.com/fs2.html
just a quick interjection…i agree with most comments. as far as wind aided, what about wind impaired ? in 07 at orno there was a very stiff headwind on the straightaway. how many of us have had to ” run against the wind ” a few years back at our new jersey championships we had a choice of two runways..one slightly uphill and into a stiff headwind, and the reverse, slightly downhill with a strong wind at our backs. at age 50 plus at the time, i lobbied for the latter. anyway, i have always preferred indoors … no arguments…no elements
Steve,
I can speak to âwhy notâ regarding my administering the rankings. Practical reality I have to deal with in compiling the rankings is time limitations. I spend a significant amount of time each year compiling and administering the rankings and system. Managing, policing and administering wind legal times is impossible for me. Ideally, I would love to improve the rankings to differentiate between wind legal and not. Complying with what was done before me is certainly easier for me.
.The rankings are not false. The significant majority of the results in the rankings are âlegalâ. Many of the events do not even have wind standards or wind will not significantly alter the rankings (less than hurricane force wind will not make a significant rankings difference with a 16# shot put). The rankings are certainly not perfect. The rankings are a continuous improvement as they have always been. I think Jerry Wojcik and team, Dave Clingan and Larry Patz did a remarkable job through the years compiling the rankings and making some hard decisions what constitutes fair and practical rankings. I have a lot of trust and confidence in my predecessorsâ knowledge and decisions and therefore donât see the benefit in re-opening debates about including wind aided times ESPECIALLY without a practical solution for how to manage, police and administer wind legal times.
Anyone with a without a practical solution for how to manage, police and administer wind legal times can certainly reach out to me.
Re David Marovich’s ‘inconsistent’ shot put results – Do you know what weight of shot was being used? Is it possible that the 9 metre throws were with a heavier weight?
In some meetings he might have been using the Olympic/open weight (which I believe is 7.26Kg) and in the 23 July meeting, perhaps the standard weight for men over 65 (which I believe is 5Kg). This might account for the different distances.
Re records and wind readings – in the UK I understand that the rule is no wind gauge = no record. I know several UK athletes have produced results better than those recorded, but without a wind gauge and accredited electronic timing they are not accepted.
Thanks, John, for all you do. It really is MUCH appreciated.
Frank Morton, M55 1-mile has the same race listed for both the indoor and outdoor season. Is this common practice? Did the race exit and re-enter the building đ
http://www.mastersrankings.com/indresults.php?pseason=Indoor&cyear=2009&idno=01112302195448094824
Maybe someone like an official can explain it better than me. I’m just one who believes that if a rule is in place we follow it. Wind gauges and officials who operate them are part of the record of the event. If you don’t think wind matters, talk to a pole vaulter! lol
Someone, please explain this better than I am!
I have read Track and Field News magazine since I was in high school and they always categorize wind-aided times (over the allowable 2.0 mps) separately because these times have been assisted. In fact, they have devised a formula that compares times with various headwinds, no wind and wind assisted. There is no dispute that wind DOES improve performance. And wind “over the allowable” greatly improves times, so much so that they are not valid as any type of record, we just need to denotate them as such.
I don’t have the answer about how other countries rankings show wind aided times but if they can do it, we can. Maybe we can get in touch with mastersathletics.net or the Canadian group and ask them. I am sure they will tell us how they do it. Besides, for purpose of rankings, aren’t we only talking about the top 25? The results of meets that do record the wind, show the wind reading right next to the time, so just stick that number next to the time and there you are!
In the end, when our rankings show a 100 meter time of say, 11.20 that was wind-aided and let’s say this runner’s best legal time was 11.38, (over 2 mps) yet this runner is ranked #1 in the U.S., and the second place runner does 11.25 legal. The legal runner would not get the #1 ranking. And to me, this is unfair to him/her.
Steve Kemp, I am sure John Seto could use an extra hand assimilating all of the results from all of the events that he tracks. Why don’t you volunteer. YOU could be in charge of wind readings.
Shall do.
Well, if ya submit a time that is false, you know you did. I’m sure your conscious will haunt you! Well, probably not. It’s all good! You know when you line up against your rivals a little wind won’t help you or even a hand held stop watch!
Here is a nice quote:
“Most dreams of glory are safe because we never venture to put them into practice”
~Charles Curothe~
I’ll start this post by sending out kudos to Ken Stone and John Seto for giving us the website and the rankings, which allow us to voice all of our differing points of view and to track and compare our performances against ourselves and each other.
Wind, temperature, and altitude all have an effect on performance. Flat, banked, and oversized indoor tracks will all produce different marks. Why don’t we just shoot for total overkill and list every other factor that could possibly come into play? LOL!
Finally, the rankings may not be perfect, but they are still pretty darn good and I think that anyone who wants them to be improved should volunteer their time to facilitate the process.
Just wanted to give props to John Seto too. He does a great job with the rankings system, and it is very much appreciated.
Greg
Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t each of us just submitting our own results? I notice that when I submit a time, it appears within seconds automatically in the right spot in the rankings. Is somebody secretly working 24 hours a day, just waiting for someone to submit something and then they post the result faster than Usain Bolt runs a 100? I don’t get it.
I see that this was quickly corrected after my post! Fast work!
Seems to me the headline should be “Thank you, John Seto: mastersrankings.com’s honor system working perfectly for 99.99% of us and corrections are almost instantaneous.”
Click on this link
http://www.ontariomasters.ca/inoutdoor.php?comp=outdoor
Then click on either: 100, 200, LJ, TJ and short hurdles.
If the consensus of USA Masters is that you would like YOUR ranked performances to look this this and look the way Track and Field News magazine has printed all of the World and U.S., Collegiate and High School rankings for 50 years, I will volunteer to help to do so.
The only condition is…that I am doing this because YOU want it. If not, that’s cool with me. So, let’s take a poll here. Provided you can sign your name to your vote, If you want to get consistent with the other World Masters organizations in the World, speak up. If you want to keep everything the way it is now, speak up. And I will abide by whatever we as group decide. Fair enough?
JOHN SETO does a great job and his efforts are very much appreciated. Get that hamstring healed, John- you need to keep weightlifting with the kids!
I “vote” like Steve Kemp proposes, to “get consistent with the other world Masters organizations” in moving NWI marks down to the bottom of the list, and also wind-aided marks.
There are a couple of huge differences between the T&FN yearly rankings for the short sprints/high hurdles/LJ/TJ and the Master’s rankings. At most open meets,large NCAA meets, large HS meets, there are wind gauges and officials to run them. If an open sprinter or jumper competes in a dozen meets during a season, chances are that most, if not all of the meets will have a wind gauge reading for their marks/times.
I compete in about 6-8 Masters meets a year. There is only one meet I’ve ever competed in that has had a wind gauge-and that meet is the USATF National meet. Even at the National meet the use of wind gauges is inconsistent. Of the 4 National meets I’ve competed in, only 3 had a wind gauge for the LJ. None of the other meets I compete in use wind gauges, nor do they have enough officials to run the wind gauges.
Most age group ranking lists have 100+ listings. How many of these marks will have wind gauge readings? 10? 20? My guess is not many have wind readings.
I also believe that the use of wind gauges is to verify records, not to create ranking lists. In the case of open t&F, there are enough marks with wind reading results, to make it a useful exercise for a publication like T&FN to exclude marks with no verification. The opposite is true in masters: there are not enough marks with wind readings to make any ranking list based on wind reading results meaningful.
I rely on head to head competition to determine the higher ranking. The track, altitude, weather conditions and all other circumstances are identical. But what about if you or your competition is injured? We should have a place on the submission form to submit injuries along with a severity scale from 1-10, while we are at it.
When I started to compete as a master in 1996 only about half of the meets had FAT and wind readings, in the horizontal jumps even much less. But now it is hard to find a meet in my (small) country where there is no FAT and wind reading and even the situation in the jumps is much improved. One of the things triggering this improvement maybe was that results of hand times or no wind marking were placed outside the official rankings. Organisers do not like that.
I’m just happy to find Masters meets to compete in. I don’t expect world or national class run meets. Just meets with knowledgeable officials (certified or not) that can accurately mark my throws. I do this for fun, serious fun but still fun. I do very much enjoy the rankings and thank John Seto for his efforts. I’m sure the John Andrew 100m mark will shake out after John and Seth Brower (meet director) communicate. I was at the meet and FAT was used. Maybe it’s just me, but as soon as we move out of Open competition I don’t expect the same level of service. Thanks to all that have anything to do with Masters meets, rankings and info!
So, your vote is a “no”? Leave the lists alone?
When I clicked on the Canadian lists with the link on one of the above comments and saw virtually 100% of the marks listed with the wind reading or NWI, it just seems to be more accurate than here in the advanced United States. Did you take a look at their lists at all? Just because we have been doing things a certain way doesn’t mean we can’t improve them.
most of the time the times used to be chk from race resolts but im shore I have people ranked above me that I now never beat me in any race,and some that never post times but thats not the way to do things, PLEASE DONT BRING SHAME TO THE SPORT WE ALL NOW AND LOVE,
We should use the rankings as a general guide to help us evaluate our performances within our age bracket, declines to expect as we move to older brackets, whether performances of each age bracket are improving over time as our program grows and the competitors we hope to meet at future meets.
Forget about expecting rankings to be overly accurate or the basis for recognizing the “best” performances. The Championship meets should be the forum for identifying the real winners.
We need to pressure USATF headquarters and Associations to stage first class Association Masters Championships so that performances at these meets are valid. There are some super star masters, particularly in the oldest age brackets, who cannot afford or otherwise cannot attend World, National or Regional Championship meets. I treasure the annual ranking books produced by Haig Bohigian. I wonder what his thoughts would be about this debate.
Thanks John for creating a system and Ken and others for identifying truly questionable performances.
Aloha, Jack Karbens, USATF National Wind Gauge Offical
Rankings or seasonal best lists for Masters sprints, hurdles and horizontal jumps are an inexact science. The only way to get a precise and accurate list is to do as the IAAF does:
http://www.iaaf.org/statistics/toplists/inout=o/age=n/season=2009/sex=M/all=n/legal=A/disc=100/detail.html). Legal wind marks are listed first, wind-assisted marks second, questionable marks next, followed by hand timed marks. This gets a bit cumbersome for the Masters list maker – in essence four separate lists in each gender and age group. John (and his predecessors Larry and Dave, I believe) have settled on two lists – FAT and hand-timed – with 25 marks showing for the former and 10 for the latter in each group. You can click on the “Show complete” for all marks that have been entered – in the M50 100 for example, that is currently 168 FAT and 69 Hand-timed.
If you could indulge my babbling for another paragraph, I could shed some light on the Canadian rankings. After complaining that we didn’t have our own rankings I was sent a blank Excel spreadsheet with a list of events and told “go for it.” Somewhat of a daunting task but I did the sprints and then others pitched in for the other events. Then the Ontario Masters got a new web site and agreed to host the list, then a program was written to help the ranking team fill in the blanks – so it is still a work in progress. Now we have enough people on board that I just do the men’s sprints and hurdles. We find the meets through each province’s calender of events, find the results, then find the masters involved and enter their results. Its rather time-consuming but it does give us a list. If we miss an athlete’s event, there is a feature on the page (“Update Your Ranking”) whereby an individual can provide a link to meet results so we can verify the mark and then post it.
This works for us (so far) because of numbers. For example, all told, we have just under 300 sprinters – men and women, ages 30 and up. By contrast the US rankings list has some age categories in one gender that have at least half of that number. So the numbers that your rankings are dealing with are way larger than ours (something to do with our population being at 33 million to your 308 million). Most meets that our masters compete in are open ones thus the majority of our marks have the wind readings. I tried putting the hand times and wind assisted times at the bottom for awhile, but wound up just including them in one list as it was less confusing. If someone had a No Wind Indicated, a windy time, or a hand time, I included that until they had a legal time. If the illegal time was faster, I put in their best legal time as well. Not perfect, but I think necessary as some people only run a few races and if they get stuck with a windy day or no readings they should still be counted. It encourages everyone to see where they are in the national scope, as many will never get to a National meet to compete and everyone who trains and has the guts to race deserves to be mentioned. The list, hopefully, encourages people to train and participate and is not meant to be comparable to the list of National Records – which is an exact science (I know – I won’t get into that or we’ll be on this thread all year đ )
Suggestions:
1) Stay the course with John’s excellent, mostly automated system and live with the fact that rankings for masters are imprecise. Those who would like to volunteer could find and send in to Martin Gasselsberger, all of the US readings that are missing from the World rankings.
2) Maybe John could add a spot to put wind readings when an athlete submits their marks – and just have one big list where you could see the various wind factors (less confusing then several lists)
3) List only legal times – and live with the fact that many athletes wouldn’t get their names on the list because they aren’t able to get to a major meet with wind guages or FAT equipment.
4) As some have implied (probably distance runners :-))we could just shut up and hand out Participant ribbons at our meets while we chant our mantra of Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy and we wouldn’t have to worry about this.
My thoughts anyway – hope to see you in Kamloops – I’ll be the one in a red toque and spikes – and we won’t need a wind gauge!
Try this link for above.
http://www.iaaf.org/statistics/toplists/inout=o/age=n/season=2009/sex=M/all=n/legal=A/disc=100/detail.html
Thanks for taking the time, Dave to help us all understand how the Canadian Masters prints such informative and accurate lists. You are right that the list serves several purposes. It can motivate some to “make the list” and others who use it as a competitive tool with our masters friends and rivals.
One good idea you had was to split up the events among several people, not just have the same single person doing all the work. Maybe we can try the same thing here in the U.S. at some point and have maybe 8 or 10 people working with the lists and rotating responsibility.
One reason that I think lists are fun is because of the sheer magnitude of distance from coast to coast and age group changes, often some athletes never or rarely get to compete against each other. So, if we know that the rankings really are as accurate as can be, with the technology we have, then at the end of the year, at least there can be some semblance of satisfaction for a lot of hard training that we all do, seeing ourselves rank on the list. I know several of my friends, for example, if they were 15th, this year, their goal will be to get into the top 10 next year!
Track and field is so awesome because of standarized rules we adhere to. Hurdle height, implement weight, allowable wind readings, even slope of throwing landing area and pole vault pit size. So you really CAN compare yourself against anyone, anywhere in the world in your event because the officials make sure the rules get followed! To answer some earlier comments, if the track is sloped downhill or otherwise non conforming, it is an illegal track and no marks are valid on it. We can depend that the marks on the list are going to be 99.9% valid, I believe.
Don’t have anything to say about rankings, but reading Steve Kemp, Dave Brown, and others above underscores for me one of the factors that distinguishes masters T&F from most other activities. To use a popular word in a different context, it’s “diversity.” And it’s a word that tells me that in masters we are unlikely to get high levels of agreement on anything.
Do you want to tee it up tomorrow morning with Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, or even Anthony Kim? Somehow I don’t think you will get to play with any of them. How about Serena or Venus Williams for your doubles match this weekend? Probably not.
But in masters T&F, even if you’re a complete schlub, you can go head to head with Bill Collins (All-American at Texas Christian University, superstar in masters) or Oscar Peyton (superstar in masters, no college track) if you’re in M55. If you’re in M50, you can go against Bruce McBarnette in the high jump (lifetime best of 7’1″ and still sensational) even if you can’t clear 1 meter (39.37 inches).
If the discus is your fancy and you’re in the right age group, you can grapple with the mighty Tom Fahey. Never mind that he and most of the other throwers would register surprise if you said “Can I throw this in any direction, or does it have to be in this direction (pointing generally forward)”?
What’s this about? As a general principle, the high-end performers care a great deal about the rules of the game and want to do things the right way. Some others might say, “What’s the big deal? Just get out there and enjoy it. Rules? I didn’t even know they had rules.” Thus, I have used the word “diversity” to describe what we have.
Masters T&F is unlike open or collegiate track and is certainly unlike most of what I know about tennis and golf. It’s a mix of absolutely elite athletes, very good performers, intermediate-level people, and the less gifted. And they (or we) are all in it together. Given the many different backgrounds, levels of ability, interest in the sport, etc., we are unlikely to completely agree on much, whether that be rankings or something else.
If you ever do play golf with Tiger or Phil, you had better not walk in their line (to the hole) when you are on the green. And you had better mark your ball the right way. But you won’t be playing with those gentlemen any time soon. In masters T&F, in contrast, you will be right in there with the superstars. Again, it’s an odd sport, a great one, but it definitely is different from other sports. So…let’s keep the discussions going, and let’s thank Ken Stone for his forum and John Seto for what he has done with rankings.
I agree with Peter Taylor. âDiversityâ is very beautiful. My personal âhighâ levels are clear under the high levels of Collins and company. And this diversity makes that I have a great respect for the high levels of Collins and company.
But thatâs why the lists are also important. I am M55 and my private game (sorry that I make it public) is to compare also my levels with the stars of the M70/M75 (Guido MĂźller and company). So I am grateful when the lists are right and well done (wind, weights and so on).
Thanks to Ken and thanks to all the people who works on the different lists.
Pino Pilotto, M55, Switzerland
Don’t feel bad, Pino. My private game is trying to beat the sprint marks of W65 and W70 stars. (I did this year!)
Congratulations Ken! But you did it this year only because ‘they’ were ill or injured. Won’t happen again.
One of the nice things of rankings is to read all those unbelievable marks. Just for fun.
That women of 67 pole vaulting 3.19 oops.
(And my private game is to beat a lot of M65 high jumpers…)
My preference would be to have the uniformity that seems to exist outside the USA (use of wind gauges as the rule, not the exception). But given the state of track and field in the US, and the red headed step child status of masters t&F I don’t see it happening soon.
Currently many performances in the US come from meets that do not use wind gauges. Certainly some of these performances will be wind aided, but most are probably not. I just don’t see excluding marks from the yearly list until we get to the point of near universal use of wind gauges at our masters meets.
There was no mention of exclusion. Just to allow mention of wind readings when it is recorded into the meet results.
And meets that have no gauges set up are also mentioned as such (NWI is the correct term for that). If you just bunch everything together, it implies that the top marks in the rankings are without wind info when I know a lot of them are because they were done at the Nationals and Worlds.
Peter Taylor, I think explains the idiosyncracies of masters track quite accurately. Those of us to whom “following the rules is everything” are using the same standard
of expectation when we view meet results, which was my point. We just don’t want to omit wind readings and we do want to rank events which are affected by wind accordingly.
The above was from me….Happy Thanksgiving everybody! Time to go eat some turkey!
To John Seto,
Thank you for all your efforts in the Masters Rankings. You and the staff do a great job and you should not be deterred from the “naysayers” of the community.
If someone is inclined to give a false result, that is on their conscience, not yours.
Stay tuff and report & comment on what you feel is correct, and not apologize for it.
If it is not reported correctly, or that person feels that they are wronged, let them respond to you with simple prrof that the mark they posted is correct!
J. Kessell
John Seto writes (today):
Hopefully I am sending this to all whom I have corresponded regarding some of Chuck Chapin’s results. There were questions about the validity of some marks because they did not appear to come from organized meets. I have just spoken to Chuck and asked him several questions about the sector, ring, landing area, means of officiating the marks… The meets are legitimate all-comer meets and are reinstated within the rankings. I thought you would like to know.
last year I ran a PR in the 60M HURDLES I posted my time and someway it got put under 55Meter ONLY becuse I RAN with m40 hurdlers to help his time (DAVE ASHFORD) HIS TIME WAS POSTED IN THE 60M RANKING AT 8.59 I ran 8.89 in the same heat,dont know how it got posted in the 55meter ranking,most of the meets results show up when you post date you ran how is the times changed.most usatf meets have results and most collage meets.
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