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I think the age-graded tables should be based on performances at the World Championships. The facilities are surveyed by the WMA (and usually by the IAAF), include head to head competition between the best athletes, and include drug testing. The performances at these competitions are more representative of the physical capacities of each age group.

Tom Fahey M60

More representative than what?
My personal opinion is that they should be based on the very very best age records, otherwise they lead to overestimating in the older categories, as the current gradings do.

Does anyone know, of all the events contested at the World Champs in Riccione, how many of them had the world record holder competing in that event and age group? Or another way of looking at it, how many events had the top 1, 2 or 3 performers of the year compete in that event? I have no idea and I thought it would be very interesting to know.

- master

Good question! Would be interesting to know about all big championships, how representative are the results of the potential in the world?
I competed in two events in Riccione, one had both the world record holder and the top 3 of the year in it, the other had the top three of the year, but not the much better ones of last year...

My concern is that some world records are significantly out of line with marks set in major championships. For example, in Riccioni the M50-54 discus was one of the best masters competitions I've ever seen, yet the winning mark was about 7 meters less than the worlds record. The conditions in Italy were excellent and the field was extremely competitive. In that age group, past world and major national championships produced similar disparities. The same can be said for other events. The age graded tables should not be based on statistical outliers.

As I've gotten older, I have gained an appreciation for the performances of older athletes. One way to be successful in older age groups is to stay alive and remain healthy enough to compete. That in itself can be a challenge. Our capacity to train hard diminishes with age.I don't think that relatively poor performances in older age groups reflect a lack of will. Rather, it reflects reduced capacity and adaptability. I'm sure that many people in their 70s and 80s would love to run 60 second 400 meter intervals and take 100 throws in a workout. The will is there but the body isn't.

Tom Fahey M60

I disagree... The gradings suggest a comparison with the open class marks and so the outliers should count most as is the case with open class records. The population of athletes doing say W55 or M60 athletics is very small compared to the number of athletes in the open class and so it becomes statistically normal that sometimes the competition results are far below the world records. It can be a lovely competition nevertheless but in my view the gradings are not designed to grade the loveliness of the competition but the strength compared to all statistical data available. The loveliness we estimate ourselves! And I have had some 65% marks in a very lovely competition but I have had some disappointing above 90% results too.

I'm not sure where I got this notion, but I thought the tables used the world records but with some statistical smoothing. Am I wrong?

- master

I do not know all details, but as far as I know the intention is that at the moment of calculating the best world records in each discipline get a 100 % grading. The curves or lines are always smooth, so less good world records get less than 100%.
Some extraordinary marks are not taken into account, so they will have above 100%. I do not agree with that, I would prefer the reverse: take only the extreme age records and try to extrapolate from those ones to other disciplines. Guesswork..., and leading to lower gradings for most of us. The difficult point is that the most talented are not into masters athletics, therefore the gradings showe too high percentages. In my opinion.

I can't upload pictures. I have some graphs from Rex Harvey's work on the gradings where you can see the (mostly) straight lines giving the gradings.