After the embarrassment of calculating masters ages incorrectly from
the 2004 women's list and after replacing those with data from Jalava's
current list, I hoped to be through with that. However, off-list, two
correspondents whose opinions I value highly, remarked two apparent
problems with the men's list. I'll deal with them separately:
One asked where I was finding a tilastopaja list with a threshold of
49.00 (ranked to #2392), remarking that the only lists he sees there
are cut off at 48.00. When I checked the 2008 400m list again, the
48.00 threshold (n=1186) was what I found, too. My immediate assumption
was that I had again sorted the wrong year's list. However, when I
checked each of the eleven names against their entries in Jalava's
biography section, I found all exactly as I had given them in the prior
masters posting, including birthdates, 2008 seasonal bests, dates and
venue, and rankings (to Mashchenko's #2326). So what happened? Then I
remembered that two weeks ago, when Mirko gave me permission to use
this years lists, he cautioned that "in the future" he probably
wouldn't have time to maintain lists as long as had been the case.
Apparently, "the future" arrived sooner than I had expected. My
computer files show that the list I sorted to send to t-and-f was
copied on September 22nd. I sent the masters sort on September 25th.
The list was changed in those three days. But please remember that the
rankings on 9-22 were exactly the same as on 9-25--it's just that there
were more available in the earlier list.
The second criticism was that my list of masters included Johnny Thomas
(48.76 at age 44) and Kevin Hawkins (48.62 at age 43) and that the date
of birth must have been copied incorrectly, since both Thomas and
Hawkins were "kids," Johnny competing for a Texas high school and Kevin
for the Air Force Academy. This was a little easier to deal with,
because in checking the biographies for the earlier matter I already
knew there were two athletes named Johnny Thomas and two named Kevin
Hawkins. The younger Thomas did compete for Texas City High School in
2008 and set a PB of 48.86 at Huntsville on 25 April to rank #2171. The
Johnny Thomas on my list set his PB of 46.91 at Indianapolis on 5 June
1986. The younger Hawkins was co-captain of the Air Force Academy team
in 2008 and primarily an 800-meter runner. His 800m PB was 1:48.62
(#300) set on May 31 at the Colorado College Championships. The Kevin
Hawkins on my list set his 400m PB of 46.16 at Santa Monica on 5 May
1984. Another duplication of names that was not noticed was a younger
Sean Adams, a hurdler at USC in 2008, with a 400H PB of 52.41 at
Westwood on 3 May.
Okay, enough of 400 meters? Just to make it worse, I've always disliked
the event, since the only times I ever ran it competitively was when
Coach Welch had caught me smoking during the previous week.
Thanks to both of my correspondents, though, for their careful
attention.
