About World Masters Rankings

Revised April 17, 2022

USA & World Masters Rankings
MastersRankings.com, Inc.
The official rankings for World Masters Athletics
a US 501(c)(3) Public Charity

PO Box 624
Pleasant Valley, NY 12569
USA
+1 845.635.9487

MastersRankings.com, aka World Masters Rankings, is the official rankings of World Masters Athletics and USATF MTF. The site’s mission is to enhance people’s experiences in Masters Athletics by filling needs: how am I doing; where can I compete, what is happening. The rest of this page has information on and links to features within this site filling those needs and plans / timelines for feature development and improvements. Improvements, including adding features, are made weekly (most are not obvious), many come from your comments, requests and suggestions.

There is much to this site with over 100 static pages (hundreds of thousands of dynamic pages). Consequently, it can be difficult to find things. The User’s Guide includes a summary of the features (more than below) and tips on how to find anything quickly.

2022 Plan

Much progress was made during the lull in competitions. Some of what we worked on, like All-Time and Age Best lists, might not be evident because we were working on database designs and cleaning up data (removing duplicates, correcting spelling, etc.). Goals this year are:

  • Redesign website and databases (target => before end of year)
  • Update Age Grades using proposed WMA 2023 factors (target => by end of May)
  • Finish setting up Age Best lists and management tools (target => before end of year)

Other goals, activities and targets are within the sections below.

How are you doing?

Many athletes want to know how they are doing compared to others. To that end, MastersRankings gathers and compiles performances from meets and national rankings lists adding thousands to our databases every week. Gathered and submitted performances are displayed on several lists and athletes’ performance logs. The most popular lists are rankings and athletes’ performance logs.

Want to be listed and are not? Submit your result(s) here – it is easy!

World and Regional Rankings Lists

Ideally, Rankings lists include every performance by Masters Athletes at organized, officiated competitions run fully in accordance with WMA rules. That is the goal of this site. It is also a major undertaking where cooperation and collaboration is essential to success. All World and Regional Rankings lists on this site are incomplete as we still strive to compile reasonably complete rankings from 2013 forward.

There are 3,272,442 performances listed representing 357,236 athletes from 216 nations!

Year
Performances
Athletes
Nations
Completion
2013
190,452
45,247
160
52%
2014
203,042
48,651
154
55%
2015
298,321
72,642
171
76%
2016
321,569
74,095
181
83%
2017
310,296
87,884
178
71%
2018
340,163
80,011
188
81%
2019
401,392
95,394
197
87%
2020
134,051
33,563
131
38%
2021
225,582
53,603
169
56%
2022
352,141
76,229
199
79%
2023
45,339
14,149
114
17%

* completion percentages are estimated

Rankings lists are

Action Plan

  • Gather and insert competition results (ongoing activity)
  • Increasing and improving collaboration with competition organizers and national statisticians (ongoing activity)

Your Watchlist

Follow your friends and fellow competitors on one handy page! Your watchlist includes all performances for you and those you have tagged. This feature is fully functional and all updates are real time (added performances are instantly listed on your watchlist).

Age Graded Rankings

Age grading is a method of handicapping athletes based on their age (more on age grading). Age grades are displayed next to every applicable performance plus there are age-graded rankings for each event. This site uses the proposed 2023 tables to calculate age grades since they cover all ages and most listed events. They represent performance decline over time much better than any previous version. This feature is fully functional and all updates are real time (Age Grades are updated when performances are inserted or changed so lists are also updated instantly).

Age Best Performances

The best performance for single ages – essentially, unofficial, single age records. An athlete, who has compiled their own list, has been reviewing MastersRankings’ combined performance data and verifying each best performance.

Action Plan

  • Insert historic performances into Rankings databases. Several people have compiled lists, typically in their interest areas, of best performances and have graciously shared with MastersRankings. Most of those performances have been loaded into the databases. (complete)
  • Age Best Manager verify Age Best Performances (complete to date and ongoing for new performances)
  • MastersRankings finish programs that facilitate maintaining lists (target => end of 2022)
  • Publish verified lists (target => June 2022)
  • Verification of potential new Age Best Performances and updating lists (ongoing after publishing verified lists)

All-Time Lists

The best performances ever are included in these lists. All-Time performances were gathered from many sources including mastersathletics.net and Jim Sorensen plus include best performances from MastersRankings. More historical performances are being gathered so these will be more accurate.

Some events, like 1 Mile, are not listed because historical (international before 2013 and US before 2006) performances are not readily available. Combined events, in spite of having different scoring tables, are included to solicit your feedback (please comment at the bottom of this post).

Merging gathered information includes making fully compatible with MastersRankings system and correcting name spelling. Incorrect spellings or birth dates often result in duplicate athletes. Please help make corrections by clicking on the performance (time, height, distance or score). This will open a correction request form and provide us with a link to the athletes information. Please be specific what is the issue.

Thousands of performances for each event can be listed for many events since millions of performances are available. Please consider whether it will be meaningful to display all available performances as it will be difficult, if not impossible, to compile historical performances with the same level of depth as are currently compiled.

What do you think:

  • What events should be listed?
  • How many performances should be listed?
  • What makes performances eligible?

Please provide your feedback and suggestions for the All-Time lists below or send private comments.

Where can you compete?

Many athletes cannot or have trouble finding enough places to compete. Meet organizers face increasing challenges to putting on competitions. MastersRankings is determined to help athletes find competitions and meet organizers increase participation which helps offset costs. We think this is done in two ways: providing athletes with an easily searched list of upcoming competitions; promoting competitions.

Frankly, MastersRankings’ efforts to provide athletes with a comprehensive list of upcoming competitions has not come close to our expectations but we haven’t given up. There are significant challenges to accomplish the goal and we have yet to find solutions. Check back here for progress updates.

MastersRankings promotes select competitions using this site, social media and our email communications (click here to subscribe). Many of these promotions provide information about what you can do outside of the competitions so you can make more informed decisions whether travel to the competition is worthwhile.

What is happening?

MastersRankings’ has a news feed which has featured articles written by reporters, athletes, representatives of World Masters Athletics & Affiliates and us. Articles have been about WMA Athletes of the Year, record reports, athlete profiles, special events, championships, WMA (including regional & affiliate) news, interest stories and much more. This site is a phenomenal place for a news feed because it receives tens of thousands of hits per day. With your help, we can post frequently and keep athletes well informed worldwide. Additionally, we periodically send out email communications (click to subscribe).

Action Plan

The above items are the priorities for the moment. MastersRankings is still committed to meeting Masters Athletes’ needs so this is still a goal. Our original plan was to host articles provided by people around the world. This plan should work so, for the short term, we will be posting articles as we can and working toward a scalable solution as we can focus on it more.

14 responses to “About World Masters Rankings”

    • Hi Kevin, hope you are doing great. Thank you for identifying I inserted too many events into the All-Time lists. 60m was not included because I do not have good historical information internationally before 2013. This can be added to the list if we can find a way to compile reasonably accurate All-Time best performances.

  1. I noticed that in the pentathlon all time list, M55 for example is listing both indoor and outdoor pentathlon scores in the same list…even though each of these is comprised of different events so it isn’t comparing apples with apples to list them this way. Also what happened to scores on other lists such as M45 and M50 that was before 2006? Don’t see any of those.

    • Hi Steve, hope you are doing great. Thank you for pointing this out. I made a mistake when I inserted the performances into the lists. The lists now only cover events for which we were able to gather historical performances (from Masters inception) plus Indoor Pentathlon. The Indoor Pentathlon includes international performances from 2013 and US from 2006.

      What does everyone think of including scores from different tables?

      What does everyone think of lists that do not include accurate historical (pre-2013) performances?

  2. I think it is worth listing the multi event all-time lists even though they are not going to be completely accurate for various reasons. Maybe you could put a disclaimer at the top of the multi lists to explain the limitations. At least that way we can have a general idea of the all-time rankings.

    I think I noticed another wrinkle/flaw in the way your pentathlon / indoor pentathlon lists have been compiled. It looks like if an individual has competed in both indoor and outdoor pentathlons, you only have them showing on the list with their better score, which will usually be indoor. I have not done an indoor so I correctly show only on the outdoor list. But I know of others who only show on the indoor list, even though they have a lower outdoor score that should show on the outdoor list.

  3. I see a link on my profile for the top 10 USA award, but why are there no award links for regional or World rankings awards for 2018. Is this still in progress?

    • Hello Jace, hope you are doing great. Correct, there are no awards for World and Regional Rankings available yet because those are not final.

    • Hello Freddie, hope you are doing great. The All-American standards were developed by the USATF Masters Track & Field task force. They used historical performances to derive the standards.

  4. I (and have been for some time) am “Life Member” and for some unknown reason (to me), can not open US or World Rankings….. why? What am I not doing or doing wrong????

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14 Replies to “About World Masters Rankings

    1. Hi Kevin, hope you are doing great. Thank you for identifying I inserted too many events into the All-Time lists. 60m was not included because I do not have good historical information internationally before 2013. This can be added to the list if we can find a way to compile reasonably accurate All-Time best performances.

  1. I noticed that in the pentathlon all time list, M55 for example is listing both indoor and outdoor pentathlon scores in the same list…even though each of these is comprised of different events so it isn’t comparing apples with apples to list them this way. Also what happened to scores on other lists such as M45 and M50 that was before 2006? Don’t see any of those.

    1. Hi Steve, hope you are doing great. Thank you for pointing this out. I made a mistake when I inserted the performances into the lists. The lists now only cover events for which we were able to gather historical performances (from Masters inception) plus Indoor Pentathlon. The Indoor Pentathlon includes international performances from 2013 and US from 2006.

      What does everyone think of including scores from different tables?

      What does everyone think of lists that do not include accurate historical (pre-2013) performances?

  2. I think it is worth listing the multi event all-time lists even though they are not going to be completely accurate for various reasons. Maybe you could put a disclaimer at the top of the multi lists to explain the limitations. At least that way we can have a general idea of the all-time rankings.

    I think I noticed another wrinkle/flaw in the way your pentathlon / indoor pentathlon lists have been compiled. It looks like if an individual has competed in both indoor and outdoor pentathlons, you only have them showing on the list with their better score, which will usually be indoor. I have not done an indoor so I correctly show only on the outdoor list. But I know of others who only show on the indoor list, even though they have a lower outdoor score that should show on the outdoor list.

  3. I see a link on my profile for the top 10 USA award, but why are there no award links for regional or World rankings awards for 2018. Is this still in progress?

    1. Hello Jace, hope you are doing great. Correct, there are no awards for World and Regional Rankings available yet because those are not final.

    1. Hello Freddie, hope you are doing great. The All-American standards were developed by the USATF Masters Track & Field task force. They used historical performances to derive the standards.

  4. I (and have been for some time) am “Life Member” and for some unknown reason (to me), can not open US or World Rankings….. why? What am I not doing or doing wrong????

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Yes, I would like to receive emails from MastersRankings.com, Inc.. Sign me up!



By submitting this form, you are consenting to receive marketing emails from: MastersRankings.com, Inc., PO Box 624, Pleasant Valley, NY, 12569, https://www.mastersrankings.com. You can revoke your consent to receive emails at any time by using the SafeUnsubscribe® link, found at the bottom of every email. Emails are serviced by Constant Contact