As I was a teen during the eighties I used to be a fanatic of athletic races and athletic statistics. I always tried to make my own ranking of the best athletes in every event but infructuously: you did not have back then the useful help of the Internet and you were always missing some results or some marks. Now I am back. It started as a game but, after some months, I was hooked again and decided to finish what I could not do 25 years ago, as a souvenir of that happy school days. Eventually I accomplished my dream: I got to rank the 4 years Olympic cycle 2005-2008. It was so hard I just finished the work two years afterwards. Now I am trying again for 2009-2012.
I did not publish my statistical study between Helsinki World Champs and Beijing Olympics but now I intend to do it in the Internet for the 4 years cycle, which will bring to London Olympic Games. I am not "the Bible of the Sport" but what I am doing is rather ambitious: I will decide who are the 50 best athletes in every one of the 47 Olympic athletic disciplines, according to their marks and performances at major championships between 2009-2012. My final winner in every event will score 100 points, the runner-up 90, the third 85... Thus it will also be possible counting the points to do a ranking by nations for every discipline and overall.
With this purpose, I will be creating 50 different blogs, one for each Olympic event, plus another one for Cross Country, another dedicated to history of athletics and, finally, another one (this one) which will serve to coordinate every effort and compile the different articles I will be writing. For the moment just 17 blogs are open but I will be adding the others in the following weeks and months. I should be catching up by the beginning of the Olympics.
If you want to know about let us say the women's pole vault, just go to the left side and you will find a link under the epigraph "events". Then once you are in the chosen discipline, look above for the head bar, where you can access the ranking tables for 2009-2012 and also for 2005-2008, which I am adding too. At the tables there are the main results and seasonal bests Murer, Feofanova, Rogowska or Isinbayeva have achieved during the four year period. This is my main goal: you get at a glance over a single table all the basic information from the statistical point of view about what happened in a discipline in the last four years. I think it is very handy.
The data used to elaborate these ranking tables are mainly collected from Mirko Jalava's website http://www.tilastopaja.org/ with permission.
As you can see there are also articles. I do not intend to follow in my blogs the daily news and results all over the athletics world. This is well covered by many people, starting by the IAAF itself. I will only write now and then an article about an athlete or a topic I am interested in as for example why Kenyans are so good at the marathon or Russians at race walking. Anyway, I promise to write a final review, at the end of the Olympics, for each of the 47 events about the main highlights in the four years period, as complementary material for the ranking tables. I am reading a lot to give information as much accurate as possible: in the end of every entry in my blogs you can always find my sources. I highly recommend you to read every cited article in order to know more about the subject.
For the moment I have not talked about Usain Bolt, who I admire deeply. Maybe I will do in the future, but as for now I would like to say to the world there is something more than Bolt in athletics. You can see it through my articles.
I was an enthusiast of slides, blingees and emeens in my Hi5 page so I try now in my athletic blogs to achieve the cutest design and compile the best photos all around the net. Anyway if you come here just to find a hot picture of Silke Spiegelburg or Lisa Ryzih you are just losing your time and mine.
I guess it is really exhausting to keep no less than 50 blogs about athletics and often it is too much to handle for me. However, thanks to many people dedication, I have been able of gathering for years a lot of valuable information I have been looking for, on the Internet, specially about music. Now, I would like my effort could be of use for other people interested in athletics. I will also be very glad if someone want to contribute with their own articles and ideas to my blogs. I just said it is too much for me alone. I do not know for how long I will be able to keep all this energy. Maybe for 20 more years or just until the end of London Olympics. It will probably depend on my readers.
30th September 2011
I did not publish my statistical study between Helsinki World Champs and Beijing Olympics but now I intend to do it in the Internet for the 4 years cycle, which will bring to London Olympic Games. I am not "the Bible of the Sport" but what I am doing is rather ambitious: I will decide who are the 50 best athletes in every one of the 47 Olympic athletic disciplines, according to their marks and performances at major championships between 2009-2012. My final winner in every event will score 100 points, the runner-up 90, the third 85... Thus it will also be possible counting the points to do a ranking by nations for every discipline and overall.
With this purpose, I will be creating 50 different blogs, one for each Olympic event, plus another one for Cross Country, another dedicated to history of athletics and, finally, another one (this one) which will serve to coordinate every effort and compile the different articles I will be writing. For the moment just 17 blogs are open but I will be adding the others in the following weeks and months. I should be catching up by the beginning of the Olympics.
If you want to know about let us say the women's pole vault, just go to the left side and you will find a link under the epigraph "events". Then once you are in the chosen discipline, look above for the head bar, where you can access the ranking tables for 2009-2012 and also for 2005-2008, which I am adding too. At the tables there are the main results and seasonal bests Murer, Feofanova, Rogowska or Isinbayeva have achieved during the four year period. This is my main goal: you get at a glance over a single table all the basic information from the statistical point of view about what happened in a discipline in the last four years. I think it is very handy.
The data used to elaborate these ranking tables are mainly collected from Mirko Jalava's website http://www.tilastopaja.org/ with permission.
As you can see there are also articles. I do not intend to follow in my blogs the daily news and results all over the athletics world. This is well covered by many people, starting by the IAAF itself. I will only write now and then an article about an athlete or a topic I am interested in as for example why Kenyans are so good at the marathon or Russians at race walking. Anyway, I promise to write a final review, at the end of the Olympics, for each of the 47 events about the main highlights in the four years period, as complementary material for the ranking tables. I am reading a lot to give information as much accurate as possible: in the end of every entry in my blogs you can always find my sources. I highly recommend you to read every cited article in order to know more about the subject.
For the moment I have not talked about Usain Bolt, who I admire deeply. Maybe I will do in the future, but as for now I would like to say to the world there is something more than Bolt in athletics. You can see it through my articles.
I was an enthusiast of slides, blingees and emeens in my Hi5 page so I try now in my athletic blogs to achieve the cutest design and compile the best photos all around the net. Anyway if you come here just to find a hot picture of Silke Spiegelburg or Lisa Ryzih you are just losing your time and mine.
I guess it is really exhausting to keep no less than 50 blogs about athletics and often it is too much to handle for me. However, thanks to many people dedication, I have been able of gathering for years a lot of valuable information I have been looking for, on the Internet, specially about music. Now, I would like my effort could be of use for other people interested in athletics. I will also be very glad if someone want to contribute with their own articles and ideas to my blogs. I just said it is too much for me alone. I do not know for how long I will be able to keep all this energy. Maybe for 20 more years or just until the end of London Olympics. It will probably depend on my readers.
30th September 2011
