Geoff Bramley of Brisbane, Australia, didn’t take baby steps when he conceived his marvelous masters Web site. He chose a domain name with grown-up ambitions: mastersathletics.info. Although the site launched last November, I wasn’t aware of it until he contacted me this month. And I immediately replied, calling his site “WONDERFUL!” And I sent some questions as well. “What started as a small local site is growing to encompass the whole of the Masters Athletics community with visitors from all over the world,” Geoff wrote me. “Hopefully I can continue to build on this interest and introduce new features to assist in the growth and interest in Masters
Athletics.”

Geoff used the content management system Joomla to build his masterful site.

Still mostly Aussie-centric, Geoff’s site has the potential to be a leading archive of masters track videos worldwide. Hundreds are posted already, including many from Lahti worlds (many of which I hadn’t seen before).

He also introduces a seasonal masters rankings for Aussie masters track — similar to what John Seto has done in America with his USATF-backed mastersrankings.com.

His site now immediately becomes one of the Big Five, including this site and the Austrian-based mastersathletics.net, primarily devoted to world masters rankings and records. (The others are WMA and EVAA.)

Here’s what Geoff told me in the course of an email interview:

The Web site has been online since last November. I had competed in the Oceania masters athletics championships and had bought myself a video camera just prior to the event, so in between competing I was madly rushing around videotaping everything, quite a few competitors approached me to get a video of their event so the easiest way seemed to put them online.

I build and design Web sites for my job. I am a work-from-home dad with a wife and two children living in Brisbane, Australia.
I am self-taught and have been building Web sites for about 15 years. I also have an interest in digital art, though I don’t seem to get much time to create any pieces these days.

I have used a content management system, Joomla, to build the Web site and use Photoshop to edit the images and video editing software plus numerous other small programs for various tasks. The Web site can be edited online, so I can update it from anywhere I have Internet access.

The Web site is actually two Web sites . . . with the rankings section being a totally independent site with its own database. I have incorporated the menu systems to marry into each other and duplicated the template to match each other. The reason for the dual sites is because of the video component and the rankings are both heavy on database usage and also the amont of work required to assemble each of these sections. By splitting the load, I am hoping to ease the burden on the database and the inherent risk of data loss.

I actually had no idea that Masters Athletics existed (until July 2007). My children compete in Little Athletics and I saw a link on the Little A’s Web site one day and assumed it was for the top rung of junior athIetes. Little did I know! I read through the Queensland Masters Athletics Web site and was intrigued. I picked a random contact number from the contact list and called. My fate was sealed.

Not having done any sport for 20 years, I sure went through a period of muscle soreness, and having never done athletics except for the annual sports day at school. I have started from scratch.

The Masters community is such a wonderful supportive community to newcomers, and I was welcomed from Day One with some very experienced athletes who are very willing to impart their knowledge and to help me improve.

I am in the M50 age group (51 years) and compete in the Queensland Masters Athletics Association. I am about to commence my third season and am improving each season, (hoping for a few PB’s this season as my technique improves).

I achieved the most improved male athlete across all age groups in the QMA this last season with two gold, two silver and two bronze at the Oceania championships — winning the 400-metre hurdles and the pole vault and placing in long jump, triple and high jumps and pentathlon. I also placed in the jumps and long hurdles at the Pan Pacific Games with two silver and four bronze.

During the season I placed third in the Australian Masters Decathlon and won the Queensland pentathlon championships. I was also fortunate to run in two 4×200 relay teams which set Queensland records.

I approached the QMA before I built the Web site and also before I built the rankings section to ensure that I was not going to do anything that was not in keeping with Masters Athletics, and they were very supportive of my ideas.

I host the Web site and do all of the upkeep myself. I welcome anyone who has videos and content which can be used to contact me. What started as a small local site is growing to encompass the whole of the Masters Athletics community with visitors from all over the world.

Hopefully I can continue to build on this interest and to introduce new features to assist in the growth and interest in Masters Athletics.

One of the main reasons for building the website and one that is becoming increasingly important to me is just to give a little something back to an organisation and community of people that is giving me so much in so many ways.

Geoff jumps during the M50 pentathlon at the 2008 Australian masters nationals.