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Lead Stories: Sunday, November 23, 2008

IAAF World Top-50 Lists
Now Available Online

Posted November 9th, 2007 at 1:50 PM by David Monti

Section: News & Results, Marathons, Track & Field

With the main track and field season completed, the definitive Top 50 per event World Lists for 2007 are now posted on the IAAF website.

These lists are for those disciplines covered by Rule 261 – ‘Events for which World Records are Recognized’.

To access each event’s Top 50 list, please visit:
http://www.iaaf.org/statistics/toplists/index.html

The full set of statistics is also available to download and print in both txt and pdf formats.
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“Soft” and “Hard” Records in Track & Field

Posted September 29th, 2007 at 8:00 AM by Jimmie R. Markham

Section: News & Results, Track & Field

I love manipulating statistics, so it’s no surprise that my two favorite sports are track & field and baseball. Now that the 2007 track & field season is over, I thought it would be interesting to try and determine which world records are soft (easy to break) and which are hard (either not so easy to break or impossible to break based on current dope-detection methods that weren’t available when some of the records were set).

But how does one go about accomplishing such an arduous task? I tried trusty old Google (Yes! I actually succeeded in not using the word Google as a verb this time!), but to no avail. People obviously don’t have as much spare time as I do, because I couldn’t find a single documented method for determining whether a track & field record (or any sports record, for that matter) is soft or hard. I know they’re out there because I catch wind of it all the time: “so and so’s record is soft so it’s bound to be broken this season.” Are these pundits simply going by feel, or are they, like your humble correspondent, taking the time to actually crunch the numbers so that they can offer solid evidence for their claims?
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