Masters world
rankings add spice to the season
Note: This was originally written for National
Masters News
By Ken
Stone
In spring 1972, the Omaha
World-Herald was worth its
weight in gold to me. Statewide rankings in high school
track ran weekly in the sports agate. And I was in
heaven.
Who moved up? Who moved down? How did those devils from
Grand Island and Scottsbluff do last weekend? How did I
compare? I never thought about the hours it took some
angel to compile the list. All I knew was I couldn’t
live without it.
Nearly 30 years later, I’m still looking to see how
I rate against hurdlers in my age group. But there’s
no Omaha World-Herald to turn to. National Masters News
doesn’t print a seasonal rankings until months after
the season is over. And a world list has never been
published.
So what’s a rankings ravenous athlete to do? Go
online.
For the first time in masters history, world rankings are
available. Three independently produced lists -- two for
the 1999 season and one for 1998 -- have been posted on
the Web. And one for 2000 is under way. Far from complete
and completely unofficial, they still represent
milestones in masters track.
Seattle hurdler Dave Ortman, the NMN
columnist, has compiled a 1998 world list, while masters
thrower Clay Hull of Arizona
and WAVA 800 finalist Dave Clingan of Oregon have produced competing 1999 world
seasonal lists (with Clingan confining himself to track
events and Hull fielding marks in all events and age
groups).
So who’s the fastest M70 100-meter sprinter of 1999?
Hull lists Alan Meddings of Britain
first at 13.46. Clingan lists Wolfgang Reuter of
Germany uber alles at 13.27 -- and Meddings fourth at
13.35.
Curiously, Clingan’s 2:01.13 finish at Gateshead in
M45 ranks fourth on Hull’s site -- and eighth on the
Clingan site. Differences of time and methodology account
for many variations. Hull relied on voluntary
submissions, while Clingan counted more on published and
posted meet results.
In 2000, however, Hull says he will bow out of the
rankings game, citing family, business and other track
obligations. Still, he thinks a voluntary submissions
list is “viable -- and the four to five responses I
get daily from around the world convinces me so.
’’
Clingan has expanded his own rankings site -- now merged with my Masters Track & Field
Home Page. His unofficial 2000 rankings add field events
to track, in all men’s and women’s age groups.
However, both Hull and Clingan would he happiest if WAVA
took the lead in producing and updating a seasonal list
online.
Bob Fine of Florida, a WAVA founder and still an active delegate, frets
that “you'd have to get some ‘dedicated’
individual who has plenty of time. I think it would be
easier to find an honest politician.”
And Rex Harvey of Ohio, another WAVA
official, says of the annual U.S. rankings book:
“Just for the two pages I volunteer for the 50-page
book, I personally rescore 3,000 to 5,000 performance to
make sure that they are calculated correctly as they
frequently are not when they are first published. That's
a lot of e-mails, calls, letters and legwork to get the
data and to verify the scoring.”
And still he gets complaints, he says
Hull and Clingan -- along with others -- think a seasonal
list is doable, especially if WAVA mandates cooperation
from its 125 member nations. (Motto: Just e-mail it.) And
W45 Gateshead silver medalist Weia Reinboud
of the Netherlands, a high jumper, strongly recommends a
“clear bottom for the list, say above 90 percent of
the world records.”
For Hull’s part: A timely, comprehensive seasonal
list is possible “with solid leadership and the
world body making it a priority. . . WAVA must commit to
the establishment of such a list and provide the means
for the list to be kept.”
But Clingan says: “Although rankings can be
maintained by an individual working independently of
other data processing and publication efforts, I strongly
believe that is NOT the best way to approach this
task.Instead, I recommend that all available meet results
be centrally collected and entered into a prescribed
database format.”
Doug Schneebeck of New Mexico helped
Clingan with the hurdle rankings on the 1999 list but has
doubts about the rankings’ utility if it comes too
late in the year.
“The concept is good,” he says, “but in
practice what we got was a very thin reporting of
performances up until the WAVA meet, then a list that
looked a lot like the WAVA results -- a monumental waste
of time, in my opinion. The problem is the accessibility
to timely results.
“Most folks would be interested in the results
BEFORE nationals or WAVA, but, even with reasonable
vigilance, we had little of substance until the big meets
were over.”
So what does WAVA have to say on the matter?
Torsten Carlius of
Sweden, who plans to run for re-election as WAVA
president at the 2001 Brisbane meet, wrote me: “Our
resources are unfortunately too small today to have an
administration on the same level as IAAF (which has an
office producing a regularly updated list of seasonal
bests), but it is my and our ambition to improve and give
more information and publicity of best performances.
“This might mean that we have to increase support
for our Web site, and the (WAVA) Council will study the
issue in March.”
Where to find world rankings online
David Ortman’s 1998 world rankings:
http://www.geocities.com:80/Heartland/Shores/7081/1998wr.html
Clay Hull’s 1999 rankings:
http://members.aol.com/clayhull47/travel/index.htm
Dave Clingan’s 1999 and 2000
rankings
http://www.masterstrack.com/rankings.html
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