Thanks to Ken Stone for posting this and giving me an opportunity to get off
the rant I've been thinking about since last week's long run:
> Fantastic 5000: The British track and field newsletter Athletics
> International reports in its latest edition that a remarkable women's
masters
> track record went unspotted last summer. Romanian Elena Fidatov (born July
> 24, 1960) ran the 5000 meters in 15:20.59 in Bucharest on August 7,
> obliterating the previous masters WR of 15:51.7 by Nicole Leveque in 1994.
>
> Me again: That's sub-5-minute mile pace for 3.1 miles. Incredible. Perhaps
as
> amazing is the fact that this didn't come to light until now -- nine
months
> after the fact. Quite a gestation period for a mark worth 14:37 when
> age-graded to compare with open (elite) competition. (The outdoor women's
WR
> for 5000 is 14:28.09.)
Ok, I have no idea how you go about converting this performance to within 10
seconds of the world record. But there is only one relevant conversion
device in track - it is called a watch, and it converts races to times.
(They use a different device, called a measuring tape, to convert in field
events.) This woman's race converts to 15:20, and until they start running
handicap races at the Olympics that is all it will ever convert to.
I realize (or hope) that on this list I am mostly preaching to the choir
here, but there are so many screwed up ideas rolled into this that it has to
be pointed out:
- First, the idea that age group (on the old side) track is even remotely
comparable to open competition, or even to juniors. With juniors you have a
lot more people competing, a higher percentage of them really trying to
maximize their performances, and - most important - they have relevance
because THEY WILL GET BETTER.
- The concept that you can use the age-graded tables - which I think somehow
are related to the best performances previously done in an age-group - to
show that someone is equivalent to a world championships medalist. No, what
you have shown is that no one really good has tried really hard at that age
before. Until you have the same number of people training at the same
intensity as we see in open competition, no mark can be "age-graded" to
produce a world-record equivalent. You want the age-graded equivalent of
Michael Johnson's 200m WR? It's what would happen when the person at a
particular age with the best combination of talent and resistance to aging
trained just as hard and smart as the Olympic finalists, and used the same
drugs if the open guys were using them (insert your own assumption here.)
Guess what - the odds are astronomical against that happening, given how few
people in older age groups train like that.
- The idea that women distance runners who turn 40 should get some major
boost in the conversion tables, even if we do admit the concept of
age-grading is legitimate. Have we not seen enough examples of women from
the mile to the marathon who were world class - real world class, against
people of any age - to know that not everyone at that age needs a handicap?
Then by definition, isn't a 3.5 sec/lap handicap a little ridiculous?
- Finally (though it wasn't mentioned here) the idea that women become
masters competitors at 35. This rule exists solely to create more
competitors for masters track, because there are not many women competing
(thus confirming my first two points.) Anecdotal evidence from watching
world class track tells me women are substantially LESS likely to suffer
major drops in performance in the 35-39 age bracket than men. If you want to
take these ladies entry fees at local meets, fine. But don't insult a
world-ranked 36-year-old by calling a good race a "world masters record" or
whatever it was.
I'm closer to being a master than a junior, and I hope I can have fun and
run fast in how ever many age groups I make it into. But I won't kid myself
that the sport doesn't rightly belong to the people whose competition gets
faster every year.
david
p.s. - my apologies to all those on digest for forgetting to turn off the
HTML-text on my last two messages. If you use Outlook Express or Netscape
for your mail and DON'T know what I am talking about, then please do not
send another message to the list without going to the format menu and
choosing "plain text" when you are composing.
