M65 WR sprinter-out-of-the-woodwork is likely mistake
Pete Clarke, an M65 sprinter down in Texas, is ranked No. 1 in his age group for 100 meters on mastersrankings.com — the official USATF seasonal outdoor list. In fact, his mark is an incredible 12.33 seconds — easily bettering the listed world record of 12.53 by fellow American Paul Edens. Don’t believe it. It’s a typo. Seth Brower directed the meet in question (a Nov. 3 affair in Austin), and brother Jeff writes: “(Seth is) checking into it, reviewing the heat sheets. I was not present at this event. The track events were hand-timed, not certified, no wind gauge. It’s no WR.”
Since meet results aren’t posted online, Jeff points out, someone must have entered the mark into the rankings via the online submission form.
More evidence that Pete isn’t a 12.3 sprinter: Results from the same meet last May:
M65 100 Meter Dash
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Name Age Team Finals H# Points
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1 DENSON, DON M66 UNATTACHED 13.48 5
2 CLARKE, PETE M65 UNATTACHED 14.28 2
3 ISETT, DON M68 UNATTACHED 14.81 4
4 ELLINGTON, RICHARD M67 UNATTACHED 15.68 2
This is the tradeoff with self-posted rankings: In exchange for seeing the latest marks, sometimes you get GIGO (garbage-in, garbage-out).
But it’s still better than the old system — where a team of volunteer rankers comb the results of National Masters News and produce a seasonal list long after the season is complete, and publish the list as a booklet for purchase at masters indoor nationals.
Under current conditions, with a handful of rankers assembling the lists with the help of custom software, mistakes will creep in. So it’s always helpful to note any oddities and write to John Seto, USATF Rankings Committee chairman, if such marks are spotted. He’s a good guy, but he can’t be on top of all events and age groups 24/7/365.
One Response
FR: David E. Ortman (M54) Seattle, WA
Since this is Turkey Day, a big “Thanks” to John Seto, Dave Clingan and Larry Patz (and Ken for hosting the rankings on the web). I haven’t been able to attend a national masters outdoors championship meet in the last nine years, so the rankings are my consolation prize, and I’m sure for many others as well.
Trust me, if you were ever a ranking and had to scour through back issues of NMN for field event marks and poke around the web for results not reported in NMN, retype them in, convert inches to meters, check for dups and name misspellings, sort the rankings by hand and then reformat them to fit the NMN column widths, you can’t begin to appreciate the current system. And the changes are pretty good that if a typo or honest mistake appears it will be spotted and corrected and not be doomed to exist in print form forever.
To all competitors, officials, and meet managers without whom our sport would be nonexistent, happy holidays, may the wind (under 2.0 mps) be at your back, and thank goodness for the age-graded tables.
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