Mastersrankings.com is named official WMA site for seasonal lists

For the second time this millennium, World Masters Athletics has named a rankings site as its official home for seasonal age-group lists. John Seto formally announced Monday that WMA “has endorsed MastersRankings.com (aka athleticsrankings.com) as the official WMA Rankings list for masters athletics.” A dozen years ago, WMA rankings fell apart amid mediocrity and no funding. The late Ross Dunton pulled the plug amid criticism, including my own. I may have been too harsh, asking for IAAF quality lists. Now John’s site is getting recognition — and possibly WMA funding. (He says it may pay for one of eight staffers needed.) This is huge — and long overdue. Rankings, albeit a misnomer, are expected of any sports body. The IAAF Top Lists are the gold standard. They should be our model. Here’s my quickie Q&A with John about WMA’s endorsement.

Here's what the WMA rankings site, kept by Ross Dunton, looked like in 2003.

Here’s what the WMA rankings site, kept by Ross Dunton, looked like in 2003.

Masterstrack.com: Did you approach WMA President Stan Perkins in Lyon about WMA blessing, or has this been in the works?

John Seto: I reached out to Stan on February 19, 2014, and he graciously and quickly replied within hours. Stan has been great. He asked me for some information, stated what he was going to do and did it. Plus he has even helped make sure I received information like complete meet results from some championships. Stan also understands what the rankings mean to most athletes so I think he felt it was very important to do this for the athletes.

What will WMA recognition do for the site?

It will give the site more credibility. Credibility, recognition and awareness have been growing through the grass-roots efforts we’ve been doing. I hope that this will significantly help the grass grow faster. Companies should realize that MastersRankings.com (aka athleticsrankings.com) is real, does a lot and accomplished some amazing things with little resources.

They should also realize that we will do some really amazing things when they provide a tax deductible donation to help us fund this immense effort. These companies can promote that they support an organization that motivates many people worldwide being active and healthier. The WMA recognition should help get this message heard by people within these companies who can do something to provide the financial support essential to helping us fulfill our mission and execute our plan to motivate hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.

How will WMA promote mastersrankings.com?

I don’t remember ever asking or them saying anything about this. I think they want to link to the site and don’t know that the WMA promoting the site beyond that is appropriate. A link and endorsement is appropriate in my opinion. The WMA and MastersRankings.com are committed to promoting masters athletics and participation so MastersRankings.com intends on promoting the WMA and participation in WMA events like we do for USATF and their events.

Will WMA funding help relieve pressure on you to fund-raise?

I don’t think the majority of funding should come from nations and the WMA. USATF’s masters budget is below $150,000 and includes a $5,000 stipend for rankings. Other nations have little or no masters budget so if the 152 listed nations and the WMA give what they can afford, it will probably pay for one or less of the 8 staff members I think it is going to take to maintain the site and execute the long term plan.

Will nations not in the rankings be urged to contribute?

That has not been discussed, and I think it is premature to discuss. I think MastersRankings.com needs to clearly communicate what nations can expect and what they get from this site plus demonstrate they we can deliver. I think nations and the WMA should contribute within their budget partially because it demonstrates their commitment to their athletes. It means so much to athletes when their national federation supports something meaningful like this.

Will your rankings, especially for top 20 or 30, have same statistical authority as the IAAF’s Top Lists?

I’ve always tried to compile rankings lists with integrity, fairly and consistently. We are trying to continue but improve the integrity and accuracy. Very common, incorrect perceptions are the rankings are self-serve, on the honor system and the other results are autoloaded from meet results sent to us. This could not be further from reality. Only 7 percent of the results in the system are athlete-submitted. I receive a report every day what performances have been submitted by athletes which I scan for any obvious issues plus people contact me frequently about questionable marks.

Not one result is auto loaded. Meet results can take from 2 minutes (up to about 200 results) to dozens of hours to process. Results are sent to us from meet officials, and now athletes can submit complete meet results but proportionally very few are sent. We rely on athlete submissions with some indication of where results can be found and either search the web or contact meet officials for results.

Will you be working with other national rankings sites, like Britain’s Powers of 10?

Hope to collaborate with every national rankings sites and federation. Any nation that does not have a rankings or prefers what we do can use this site as their official rankings. We are not trying to replace nor compete with any national rankings site – we want to include every and any masters athlete and ensure that there are meaningful and accurate continental and world rankings. It is essential that we collaborate with every nation to make this happen.

There are many collaborators now and several have asked to collaborate. I suspect some of the latter have not received my response so they should reach out again and check their junk mailbox for my response.

Will you have a title within WMA?

I didn’t even think about that and my knee-jerk reaction is it is not appropriate as I am not an employee or official within the WMA. I also hate titles – just want to work toward making this benefit many more people worldwide!

Will you be working with USATF’s Jeff Brower and WMA’s Sandy Pashkin on records updates?

Of course, if I can help. But I don’t know how they would need MastersRankings.com. Jeff and Sandy have always been very helpful to the rankings, and I really appreciate their guidance and help.

Does WMA recognition assure the longterm survival of the site?

No – there are never any guarantees. Bluntly speaking, it only means they recognize how we are committed to providing accurate lists with integrity. As we harshly say here: that and $5.50 will get you a Starbucks Latte. I am much more confident that the site and the longterm vision will be successful because there are so much more things happening, so it is only a matter of time before sustainable funding comes and we can afford to execute the well-developed plan.

WMA has recognized rankings sites in the past, such as Ross Dunton’s poor version. How will this pan out better?

I am embarrassed to say I know nothing about Ross Dunton’s site, so I cannot say how this will pan out better. There is a plan for this site to be successful. We have a long way to go to complete the first part of the plan (a real-time, worldwide, accurate, all-inclusive, athletics rankings system) but look at what one person, with help from others, has accomplished.

So many have said that trying to create an all-inclusive system is way too ambitious, if not impossible. We can get there quickly with a little more collaboration and the funding to sustain the relatively small staff. With all this in mind, I think that the WMA and MastersRankings.com Inc. will be doing great things together for masters athletes for a long time.

Anything else athletes should know about the new arrangement?

We were hoping this would come sooner than later so we could continue working to make this site fantastic and providing athletes what they want (this promotes the sport, participation and motivates people to be active and healthier). Our discussions about nations using this site for their rankings potentially become a lot easier and hopefully collaboration will, too.

Masters athletes listed on the IAAF site will be on MastersRankings.com. We grab the information from their lists 2–3 times a year (hope to increase that when we get the staff) and process into the rankings. Another planned improvement will be to incorporate best practices so this site includes all the best features of other sites (not necessarily rankings sites) and there are clearly some things that the IAAF site does well, which we should emulate.

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August 31, 2015

10 Responses

  1. Weia Reinboud - August 31, 2015

    Good news!

  2. Simon Martin - August 31, 2015

    How amazing that John has a) perservered and b) now deservedly got this recognition. Thanks John!

  3. John - August 31, 2015

    Excellent news. You hard work is much appreciated!

  4. Joe Kessell - August 31, 2015

    John,
    You are the BEST!

    Your friend,

  5. Peter Hlavin - August 31, 2015

    Thanks for all the elbow grease you have put into the rankings!

  6. Jeff Davison - September 1, 2015

    Thank you John.

  7. Ken Stone - September 1, 2015

    Here is John’s formal announcement:
    http://myemail.constantcontact.com/WMA-Endorses-MastersRankings-com—.html?soid=1118815971391&aid=RCJ6mx3wx1M

  8. Charles Roll - September 2, 2015

    Congrats John. All the best.

    Charlie Roll

  9. Ken Stone - January 9, 2017

    Athletics Weekly ranks Brits. Wonder if they are cribbing John’s site?

    http://www.athleticsweekly.com/featured/uk-masters-outdoor-rankings-2016-55398

  10. tb - January 9, 2017

    They are not. They have an excellent site called “powerof10” or something like that.

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