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Athletics abbreviations

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The sports under the umbrella of athletics, particularly track and field use a great deal of statistics. In order to report that information efficiently, numerous abbreviations have grown to be common in the sport.

Starting in 1948 by Bert Nelson and Cordner Nelson, Track and Field News became the leader in creating and defining abbreviations. But these abbreviations have also been adopted by, among others, the IAAF; the world governing body, various domestic governing bodies, the Association of Track and Field Statisticians, the Association of Road Racing Statisticians, the Associated Press and the individual media outlets who receive their reports. These abbreviations also appear in Wikipedia.

Times and marks

Almost all races record a time. Evolving since experiments in the 1930s, to their official use at the 1968 Summer Olympics and official acceptance in 1977, fully automatic times have become common. As this evolution has occurred, the rare early times were specified as FAT times. As they are now commonplace, automatic times are now expressed using the hundredths of a second. Hand times are not regarded as accurate and thus are only accepted to the accuracy of a tenth of a second. Times that do not display the extra digit indicate a hand time. Over this period of evolution, some reports show hand times also followed with an "h" or "ht" to distinguish hand times.

With two different timing methods came the inevitable desire to compare times. Track and Field News initiated adding .24 to hand times as a conversion factor. Many electronic hand stopwatches display times to the hundredth. Frequently those readings are recorded, but are not accepted as valid (leading to confused results). Some low level meets have even hand timed runners and have switched places according to the time displayed on the stopwatch. All of this is, of course, wrong. Hand times are not accurate enough to be accepted for record purposes for short races. Human reaction time is not perfectly identical between different human beings. Hand times involve human beings reacting, pushing the stopwatch button when they see the smoke or hear the sound of the Starting pistol, then reacting (possibly anticipating) the runner crossing the finish line. The proper procedure for converting hand times would be to round any hundredths up to the next higher even tenth of a second and then add the .24 to get a time for comparison purposes only.[1] But many meets displayed the converted marks accurate to the hundredth making the results look like they were taken with fully automatic timing. In these cases, some meets have displayed a 4 or a 0 in the hundredths column for all races. When detected, reports of these times are followed by a "c" or ' to indicate converted times.

Road race times are only considered accurate to a full second. To distinguish a full second time with hours, from a minute time with hundredths of a second, colons are used to separate hours from minutes, and minutes from seconds. A period is used to separate seconds from hundredths of a second.

Occasionally, when breaking ties using photofinish, times are displayed to the thousandth of a second. These times to the thousandth are not used for record purposes but times to the thousandth can be used to break ties between adjacent heats. Rules specify if a tie is broken this way, that all heats involved are recorded with the same timing system.

Records

Most records are subject to ratification by the governing body for that record. On the world level that is the IAAF. Each body has their own procedure for ratifying the records. For example, USATF, the governing body for the United States, only ratifies records once a year at their annual meeting at the beginning of December. Until a record is ratified, it is regarded as "Pending" which is sometimes indicated by a following P

When a J is added, it indicates a junior record (a junior does not reach their 20th birthday in the calendar year of the mark)

  • WJR = World Junior Record
  • AJR = Area (or continental) Junior Record
  • NJR = National Junior Record (for a specific country)
  • # = indicates a record has not been accepted. The same mark is also used to indicate some sort of irregularity with a result
  • X = indicates the athlete has been disqualified after the performance (usually being caught taking Performance-enhancing drugs)

Bests

Some records are ratified or tracked, but they are not to the same standard of quality or accuracy as a record. The term is "bests." IAAF lists bests for the Youth division and for road racing records such as the marathon. It also tracks athlete personal achievements as bests. A Y indicates Youth. A youth athlete has not reached or will not reach their 18th birthday in the calendar year of competition.

  • WYB = World Youth Best
  • WB = World Best
  • PB = Personal Best
  • SB = Season Best
  • WL = World Leader (the best mark worldwide in the current season)

Circumstances and conditions

For events where wind assistance is a factor, the wind reading is usually reported in meters per second or "m/s"

  • a = in a road race, indicates a course that has conditions that assist the athlete (downhill, favoring wind)
  • + = indicates a time was taken at an intermediate distance in a longer race
  • c = indicates a converted mark
  • DNF = Did not finish
  • DNS = Did not start
  • DQ = Disqualified
  • i = indoors
  • n = non-winning time
  • NH = No height
  • NM = No mark
  • Q = automatic qualifier in a major competition See Qualifying standards in athletics
  • q = secondary qualifier, by time or distance rather than achieving a place or measurement goal
  • y = race measurement was in yards

Acronyms

Organising bodies

The various organizing bodies of the sport are abbreviated into alphabet soup.

  • AAU = Amateur Athletic Union USA amateur sports umbrella governing body formed 1887 until broken up in 1979 - USA

Publications and statisticians

Events

Due to the large number of athletics events that are regularly contested, presentations of results and statistics often use abbreviations to refer to the events, rather than the full form.

Competitions

References

  1. ^ http://www.ocmstrackmeet.com/fat-vs-handheld-times.html
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