Darts and daggers to the wrongheaded WMA medals table
Before turning our attention to the Boston masters indoor nationals this weekend, I have a beef to unload (again). It’s the bogus and misleading medal chart posted on the Linz site. Besides contradicting the original ethos of masters track, it leads visitors to believe that Germans and Britons overwhelmingly supply the best masters tracksters in the world.
Their prowess is outstanding, yeah, but gimme a break!
When you send 900 athletes to a world meet (as Germany did), you’d better cream a team (like the United States) that sends fewer than 100.
But a rough calculation finds that if the American team had the same numbers as the Germans, the U.S. team could have won nine times as many medals. The Germans won a total of 471 to the USA’s 52. But 9 times 52 equals 468. So ounce-for-ounce, we’re just as good as the Germans.
In terms of gold medals won, with Germany tallying 182 to our 24, the “9x” formula gives the USA the equivalent of 216 titles. And in terms of world records set, Team USA is even more impressive –with 10 to our name. How many world age-group records did 900 Germans set? Ten as well.
My fear is that clueless sportswriters will take a look at the medal table (unaware that athletes pay their own way and nations don’t send them to the WMA meet) and conclude that Germans, Brits, Austrians and Italians grow faster and stronger geezers than Uncle Sam does.
Until we have honest-to-goodness dual meets between nations (with USATF and the German track federation helping subsidize travel), we’ll never know for sure how we stack up against each other. But with the likes of Bill Collins standing tall (at the starting line), the world knows that Americans are the ones to beat.
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6 Responses
You are right, Ken, gimme a break! The medal chart is not bogus and misleading. Statistics are damn statistics, nothing more, nothing less. Whoever would visit an obscure website like linz2006.com would be knowledgeable enough to come to the right conclusions. I see differences in the total participation of Germans in their championships and US championships, i.e. 1600 athletes in the German indoors last year and less than half in ours. 295,734,134 Americans vs. roughly 85 million Germans are statistics as well. An annual 500 page book by the German statistician Joerg Reckemeier analyses hundreds of masters events and sells well at $ 15.00! In short, the masters movement is strong in Germany (and in Britain) and we are struggling.
Hi!
You are both rigth. We thought about the medal statistics for a while, but in the end we posted only the hard fact – the number of medals.
2 reasons: it´s not easy to sort out the real number of entered competitors who realy competed in their event (f.e. the US-Team entered 97 athletes at the entry-closing date, but how many of them did really compete?). And if you divide medals and competitors the Netherland Antilles will win this statistic with one Silver coming from one competitor. This method seems not perfect.
And the second reason is cause that from Austria and sourrounding countries also a lot of “lower level”-athletes traveled to the world champs in Linz, so we think that their average level is lowered by this reason, and the statistic method is bad again.
I hope you understand our consideration to post it only this way?
By your math then Canada with it’s 14 athletes finished ahead of the US. They finished with 7-1-2 and four of these athletes are from the same club (Toronto based Etobicoke Gladstone). These four won between them seven gold and one bronze. Unfortunately Earl Fee was DQ’d in his 400 metres. The others from this club are Kerry Smith (M50 60 and 200), Nanci Patten Sweazey (W50 3000MRW) and Karla del Grande (W50 60, 200 and 400)
Bill
By your math then Canada with it’s 14 athletes finished ahead of the US. They finished with 7-1-2 and four of these athletes are from the same club (Toronto based Etobicoke Gladstone). These four won between them seven gold and one bronze. Unfortunately Earl Fee was DQ’d in his 400 metres. The others from this club are Kerry Smith (M50 60 and 200), Nanci Patten Sweazey (W50 3000MRW) and Karla del Grande (W50 60, 200 and 400)
Bill
Hey Ken:
I guess, as Stefan pointed out in the first comment, that the masters track movement is much more advanced, especially in Germany, than in North America.
I noticed that many of the Germans I competed against in the World games the last few times had their clubs pay their way to the competition. And this was even to, say, Buffalo. And I’m talking about not only the elite guys but many middle-of the road-types of competitors.
Fact is, track is a much bigger sport in Europe than in North America. And that is going to be reflected in all strata of competition, including masters. Get used to it.
-Grant Lamothe
Vancouver, Canada
Give me a break! In the history of the Olympics the USA has won 764 medals in T & F, 324 of them Gold, while East and West Germany combined have won 152 total medals with 50 golds. You can drive from one end of Germany to the other in about 12 hours. It takes 3 days to cross Texas and 2 days to go from the southern to the northern border of California. If you live somewhere in central Germany you can get anywhere in 3-4 hours, compete and drive back home. Many German Masters athletes do get support from their provence, city and club so it is cheaper for them to travel. At WAVA meets the German teams have many runners who don’t even run the 100 or 400 and have practiced at length before they get to the meet. The USA picks their team at the meet, some don’t even know each other, they go to the track and practice once for 20 minutes and are good to go. Ever wonder why the Germans win or place in EVERY WAVA relay?
We also have football, basketball and baseball here in the USA. Many seniors participate in basketball, softball or baseball into their 70’s.
TYrack and field is doing fine here in the USA, thank you very much.
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