IAAF World rankings officially launched

[Occasional Hope]

Looking at the rankings, I see MHS is ranked #2, despite not having run at all this year (is he injured???) based entirely on last year's performances.

A lot of athletes who are performing at a high level this season still aren't on the lists at all. Something is not right.

[LuckySpikes]

The one issue I can see with world rankings (WR) is the top athletes getting injured. Is there a 'protected ranking' system? Rojas was injured all outdoor season last year and is not in the ranking for triple jump. She should be no1 or no 2 (with Ibarguen) if we are to respect true value. She is not on the list as she hasn't had 5 events. There will always be athletes coming from injuries taking part in 1 -2 events before a major championship and they will be potential gold medal winners. Do you allow them in or not?

When the rankings start to be used to determine major championship entries, there is provision for top athletes who haven't competed enough to get a ranking to still be able to compete at the championships. An "exceptional performance standard" will be set for each event so that such an athlete can qualify if s/he has hit that standard within the last 12* months. It was suggested that this standard might be equal to the 10th best performance on the world list for the previous year.

* Something I read a while back suggested rankings may be done over 18 months not 12 and so the window for exceptional performances might also be extended to 18 months?

[nilsbrown5]

The one issue I can see with world rankings (WR) is the top athletes getting injured. Is there a 'protected ranking' system? Rojas was injured all outdoor season last year and is not in the ranking for triple jump. She should be no1 or no 2 (with Ibarguen) if we are to respect true value. She is not on the list as she hasn't had 5 events. There will always be athletes coming from injuries taking part in 1 -2 events before a major championship and they will be potential gold medal winners. Do you allow them in or not?

[Occasional Hope]

One thing that it underlines is that it's going to be harder for athletes to double especially at longer distances. Laura Muir is ranked #1 in 1500, but not at all in the 5000 afaics (which includes 3000 for ranking purposes), so on that metric wouldn't have the opportunity to do the double she's aiming for at the Euro indoors.

[larkim]

I suspect they'll just run this year's rankings and see how it goes. The issue with event quality is no different to tennis rankings for example, and it seems to work fine. The different I suppose might be the highly limited fields in some T&F high scoring events (e.g. diamond league).

Clearly when the rankings start to be used "in anger" for champs selection etc then there may be some difficult scenarios presented, but I think we need this "shadow running" mode for the year first of all to see it all play out.

[LuckySpikes]

It doesn't look like they've changed the formula since the previous incarnation, I presumed the delay in bringing the rankings system was to give them time to tweak it. It doesnt look like they have, so you will still get athletes picking up decent bonus points and being artificially raised up the rankings when they have access to better events than similarly capable athletes

I think they're still taking feedback from parties concerned. Hopefully, athletes and coaches will complain when their performances aren't given due reward relative to other performances.

[treadwater1]

It doesn't look like they've changed the formula since the previous incarnation, I presumed the delay in bringing the rankings system was to give them time to tweak it. It doesnt look like they have, so you will still get athletes picking up decent bonus points and being artificially raised up the rankings when they have access to better events than similarly capable athletes

[LuckySpikes]

I see that they've also added a World Rankings tab to athletes' profiles showing their current rankings and their highest rankings - e.g., see https://www.iaaf.org/athletes/great-...ra-muir-272459

[larkim]

Press release - https://www.iaaf.org/news/press-rele...kings-launched

Live listings - https://www.iaaf.org/world-rankings/introduction

Will be interesting to watch and see how it progresses thought the year - if nothing else, it gives a little context when reviewing start lists for some of the less well known athletes who might not be tip-of-the-tongue names.