Mastersrankings.com plans ‘World Rankings Awards’ in 2015
The late Olga Kotelko would likely be No. 1 in any 2014 rankings.
Here’s the text of a recent email blast from John:
Someone recently told me that they didn’t think most people understood that my rankings system will not continue without sustainable funding. Their statement, at least the last part, is very true. I am not trying to alarm anyone; merely pointing out the brutal reality that I cannot continue much longer to put most of my life on hold to try and develop this. I am still very hopeful I can obtain sustainable funding (I am starting to approach potential benefactors and sponsors in the next few days) and really appreciate the advice, feedback and help as well as the donations; I couldn’t do this without you.
You can help this system survive and excel by:
· Visiting the site often and encouraging others to do so (potential Benefactors and Sponsors will like to see many visitors to the site);
· Take the online improvement survey and encouraging others to do so (I use this for insight how I can make the system better);
· Post a testimonial to the site and encouraging others to do so (this will help potential Benefactors and Sponsors understand how much this system benefits);
· Like the rankings Facebook page (this, like the other things above, help potential Benefactors and Sponsors see the “beneficiaries”). It is also the place where I post notifications when most meet results are uploaded – it’s been quiet as I’ve focused on the site improvements, switchover and funding like I said in these communications;
· Providing advice, ideas and help finding Benefactors and Sponsors as well as forward contact information for any possible Benefactors or Sponsors so I can make my pitch to them;
· Donate and encouraging others to do so if you can afford to and think this is support worthy.
Site Move & Improvement Status:The move is mostly complete, some database improvements have been made, thousands of corrections are done (many more to be done), site appearance has been changed and navigation improvements are done. One of the goals was to improve performance by moving to a different host. This does not seem to be the case with speed (the site seems much slower to me) but the site has not crashed since it was switched (it happened several times a day before until I put a temporary replacement page in place of the athletes’ profile page). All the changes over the next several days (more database improvements, tweaks on some pages and adding a couple of new features) will be not impact the site availability. The site may be moved once again and the submission form will be turned off for about two hours during this transition. Some of you have noticed the site is now athleticsrankings.net. This is the temporary site I am testing. The US site will return to mastersrankings.com and the world site will be permanently available at athleticsrankings.com when I decide on its permanent home.
Rankings Awards:
It is early to think about this since the site’s future is not certain but since I am confident on securing sustainable funding, I intend on starting World Rankings Awards for 2015! Athletes will get points for their ranking (legal wind performances only) in each ranked event and the athlete with the most combined points in each WMA region after the 2015 rankings are finished in early 2016 will receive an award. The athlete who earns the most points worldwide may get a different award (I haven’t thought this through that far yet – just came up with the idea during my annual shower this morning).
What Else:
· LEGAL WIND PERFORMANCES!!!!…will be coming. The way this will work is the performance profile will have performances with excessive wind as the profiles are used by many to log their performances. The ranking list will not have the performance; there will be a separate all performance list including excessive wind.
· A Rankings Advisory Board will be established. The board will fill a valuable role advising on the myriad of issues affecting these rankings. More information on this to come in the next email (probably next month).
18 Responses
But some single-event athletes may consider this unfair.
Not this one. The rankings are my reward. There are people who love entering fifteen events and they deserve the points prizes.
John Seto. I think your World Ranking lists should exclude all results that do not have a legitimate wind reading. Otherwise they become mere results lists. Also there is too much work involved. Same goes for any World Rankings Award.
wind reading is fine for many events – but for something like a 1500m, 3k, 5k, race walks etc on the track – what is the point of wind reading?
Having run races on outdoor tracks with high wind blowing directly in my face no matter where I am on the track, rain, and even over the ankle deep water – how about some extra points for that – or at considerable altitude – which is always challenging for those of us who live at sea level.
Seriously -nice program for the multi event folks who work very hard while I am just running around an oval grinding out laps.
Clearly this is a program for those who compete in a number of events and not for those whose competition is limited to a couple of runs or walks.
Hi Folks,
This is a program I am developing (please see http://www.mastersathletics.co/Awards/awards.php) and intended to help motivate participation and promote track and field. I seek to keep this simple and favor people who work to improve in more than one event like people running around the oval in several events or jumping and throwing. Multi-event competitors certainly fit into that category but are not necessarily going to score high enough over someone who excels in the 200 – 5000. I am looking for ideas before I finalize the program.
Anthony, Legal wind performances for all events that need legal winds for records (sprints, short hurdles and horizontal jumps) are the only performances that will appear on the rankings lists and counted toward these awards.
The focus of this report on John Seto’s masters rankings, as well as some of the prior comments, is on the possibility of prizes for outstanding performance.
Whether there are prizes, and the fair criteria for such prizes, is really a trivial issue. It is totally unimportant to me if I ever qualify to receive some monetary prize. At best, it might represent a few percent of the amount I spend annually on meet entry fees and meet travel and housing expenses.
The main issue and an extremely important issue is that John receive the financial support from the masters track and field community that will permit him to continue development of the ranking system and to continue to pursue funding his efforts.
What John is undertaking is a massive programming job. Consider how often you have gone to a website of a multi-billion dollar corporation or major public institution and how difficult it is to do such simple tasks as placing an order, acquiring medical insurance, changing an address, even putting a vacation stop on your newspaper. I run into such problems frequently and I am fairly tech savvy.
Those institutions and corporations have massive information technology staffs and still their websites are inadequate. John is a one-man operation on a project that would benefit from a staff of several programmers.
The service he is providing to the masters track and field community is of immense value. All of us have our unique motivations for participating is this wonderful sport. For me, and for many others, the rankings are intrinsically bound with our motivations.
How important is it to you to know how well you perform compared to the rest of the world? I compete in several events in a meet both in track and in field. While I enjoy a relatively high rank in some, I am not so good in others. Even so, if I can move up from 24th to 18th in a meet, that improvement creates satisfaction that keeps me training for that event. Late in the year, I may travel hundreds of miles to a meet just so I make an attempt to get into the top five or the top ten in the national rankings in an event.
I came to track and field in my seventies, with no background in the sport and little expectation of particular success – in the year that I ran track in high school, the coach never entered me into a single meet. With the encouragement I found by seeing my improvement in John’s rankings, I was encouraged to enter the national meets and delighted to find some success at that level. Would I have even entered a national meet without the national rankings? Probably not.
So, get out your credit card, go to the site and make a contribution. And, be thankful we have John Seto to carry this massive effort forward.
And, if you know anyone on important committees in the USATF Masters hierarchy, encourage him or her to try to get the USATF to provide substantial funds to supporting the Masters Rankings.
FYI. Wind readings are used in 100m, 200m, 100m/110 m hurdles, LJ, and TJ.
Roger, John Seto gets $4,000 from USATF, half of what Bob Weiner gets for masters media:
http://masterstrack.com/wp-content/uploads/2014MTF-Budget.pdf
The USATF masters website is budgeted for $4,500.
Should Media and website budgets be shifted to John?
Ken,
If one were contract a software development firm to design and program the system the John is aiming to produce, I suspect it would be, at minimum, ten times that budget allocation of $4,000 and probably much more.
The development and programming of the system is just part of the work. The entering of data from meets is also a massive job as David Ortman has written in comments several times on Masterstrack.com. Also, John pays some cost for hosting the site, though I have no idea of the amount.
If his ranking system is completed, it will get wide usage, not just in the USA, but throughout the world. John might then be able to generate some revenue from banner ads as you are able to do with Masterstrack.com and perhaps even some sponsorship from World Masters Athletics and from foreign country athletic associations.
It seems such a shame and a missed opportunity for the major athletic apparel companies to completely ignore the masters track and field athletic market. Recently Nike gave Kevin Durant a $260 million dollar contract over ten years, plus many other non-monetary benefits. A couple of masters athletes who hold multiple world records have told me of their attempts to get such minor sponsorships as entry fees and travel expenses from the shoe companies in return for them providing real promotional activity. One got a “No, thank you. We are concentrating on the youth market.” The other received no reply at all.
By my elementary calculation, Durant will receive $71,000 a day for the next the ten years for promoting Nike. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if one of the major shoe corporations could take a single day of such compensation and allocate it to an effort such as John Seto is giving to masters track.
Ken, as far as your question of whether money should be shifted from media and website allocation in the USATF Masters budget, those amounts are already small and minimal to handle those two activities. What I had suggested in my comment number four above is that it depends on athletes like you and me and the rest of the track and field masters community to give John the financial and other support he needs to produce the outstanding system for which he is aiming.
Random donations cannot provide John Seto with a regular income. The athletes who are listed cannot be required to pay for the rankings. And of course neither can athletes who are not listed.
I would be prepared to submit a motion to my national masters federation BMAF to contribute to the Masters Rankings.
But the national federations are unlikely to pay individually without a lead from WMA. And what are the numbers?
How much does John require from the masters athletics community? Thank you Roger Vergin for broaching the question. In fact it would be justified to give John Seto more like 20 times that USATF $4,000 = $80,000 per annum. That corresponds to a monthly taxable income of some $7,000. Feasible?
Let John Seto confirm his target taxable income first and then people (us? WMA?) can start thinking about whether or not they want to raise the money and how. Then maybe WMA could contact the national federations like BMAF with a statement of intent supporting the Masters Rankings and inviting financing proposals.
Bob and John
Need more cash and help
Hey we need to get
Off the back row
We need TV
Are we nonprfit
If athletes want WMA to help finance mastersrankings.com, they will have to demand it. Write to these folks:
http://www.world-masters-athletics.org/addresses
I think that John Seto first must (publicly?) approach WMA and specify the amount he requires. Only then will the athletes know what is involved and can support him via their national federations.
Folks,
A post of mine above was delayed getting posted so you may have missed my comment 4 above. Please read the post on the rankings website (see link above) and call or email me your ideas and thoughts how the program should be done. Also it is a response to Anthony’s and Mary’s posts 2 & 3.
For clarity, USATF gives me $4,000 to compile an indoor and outdoor top 25 list each year. The all inclusive list that I try to keep up-to-date all year is all my volunteering my abilities and time with, proportionally, little help. Roger is spot on with his insightful comments so I won’t repeat or comment but keep that in mind for the rest of my post.
Many countries cannot afford anything significant (one country spoke with me about $200 would be all they could afford) and I suspect that the WMA cannot afford much either. There is a harsh reality why USATF Masters’ budget is a very small portion of USATF’s overall. Therefore, the funding for a rankings system must come from other sources. There are people within the WMA who are working hard on trying to help, really like the system and understand that there is much work to develop and maintain a system.
How much money is needed, like everything, depends on how much is involved and how much is going to be done for free (volunteers). Rankings has been a labor of love for me combining my passion for track & field and helping people. I am tremendously blessed and honored to be doing my little part to benefit so many. But considering this effort has taken me between 700 to over 1,000 hours a year and this year has taken over 2,800 hours since February, I cannot continue to devote this percentage of my time due to the impact on my business. Additionally, this effort is so much more than I can accomplish so part of my plan is to hire a staff presuming I can obtain the funding. I have estimated it take 15,000 man hours to maintain the worldwide T&F vision. Anyone who has experienced trying to get information should understand these are not exagerations.
My funding Plan A is to approach ultra-wealthy people looking for someone who wants to support the mission and vision. These are the people who can fund this much easier than any company and therefore are the right group to try first. Everyone can help by putting me in touch with someone like this. I am working on Plans B and C too (approaching companies, etc). Ideally, the site should be uncluttered by a lot of advertising.
I am optimistic about getting enough funding to finish developing the T&F portion of this vision. Part of my confidence is the belief that this network of athletes must have connections to benefactors. Hopefully, funding agreements can be made quickly. I have decided that
John. You are doing a great job. And I have always understood that all ranking lists are not essentially about monetary compensation but about the sheer volumes and all the work involved. It looks like you will have to unload that burden, either expanding your own operation (money again), devolving certain tasks to the athletes, WMA and our national masters federations (who all hopefully support the Masters Rankings concept?), or maybe tapping into the infrastructure of other successful results and rankings organisations?
Thank you Anthony. I knew you understood it all along. I strongly feel all-inclusive lists are important because that is where the broadest benefits are and sought by so many people. My plan is to expand my operation. Collaborating with national masters federations like Poland, Canada (Poland, Canada and I are collaborating), the UK and France to name a few should happen. France and the UK should be able to provide database exports like Canada does. Otherwise, the remaining tasks are mostly not practically or dependably devolvable. There are things I could set up for national federations (which was my original plan) but I don’t see that as practical now without universal acceptance which will take time.
I think I’ve considered many of the barriers, variables and my plan takes these into account so I can make this great as quickly as possible. The funding committed over the next couple of months will determine how much of my plan can be executed and adjust the plan accordingly.
I understand what is being said about the big sponsors like Nike,etc.. However, I tend to think that Masters get shun a little bit by them because well for a lot of us, though we love the T&F sport, it’s not our primary thing. Most of us probably are professionals in other fields (or retired from other fields) compared to an elite or professional athlete that uses their sponsorship as one of their main sources of income. Sometimes the sponsor has to make a business decision and place their money in what is the better investment. However, a lot us do feel that the Masters Ranking system is a valuable system and it should be taken on a WMA thing. Whether he need to reach out to other master athletes that may also be programmers, or solicit funds funds from masters athletes around the world, this is a system worth saving..
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