Talk:Athletics abbreviations

Unsourced claims

This is a great page with a lot of needed basic information on track acronyms, timing issues etc.

I made a change, omitting a line which stated the commonly held belief that if a time is rendered to the tenth, it means it was hand-timed. This is simply not true, as many meets in the 70s and 60s reported their marks to the tenth - as per the rules then in effect - but were recorded electronically. Steve Ovett, for example, set a world record in the 1500 m in 1980 at 3:31.4, the time it was ratified in. The next year, once times to the 100th were accepted for record purposes in middle-distance events, the time to the 100th became the official record - 3:31.36. But the original record was, of course, electronically recorded, not hand-timed. There are numerous examples of this - Peter Snell's 1964 mile record was ratified as 3:54.1 but was electronically timed to the 100th of a second as 3:54.02 - and the electronic time was rounded to the nearest tenth. The Mexico world records of 1968 were all electronically timed and rounded to the tenth for record purposes. It is true that many meets had electronic timing AND hand-timing, and often the latter took precedence (like, say, the 1500 m men's final of 1952), but this was not always so, so the blanket statement that "all" times to the tenth were hand-timed should not stand.

As for the ".24" rule - where Track and Field News added that to a hand-timed result to allow for the approximate delayed reaction, this entire section somewhat misstates the issue, and is need of some more sources. Experienced timers, for example, routinely adjusted their stop time to coincide with their reaction time for the start. So, if you started the watch a beat after the gun, you'd replicate that beat at the end - this would have the additional effect of negating "anticipating" the finish. All this to say that human reaction time was not as big a factor to experienced timers as is suggested here. Good timers could be within .10 of an electronically timed event, which probbaly explains the refinement in the 30s or whenever (maybe the 50s!) of accepting records to the tenth of a second instead of to the fifth of a second as before. Canada Jack (talk) 20:31, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

FR?

What is FR, as used in Michael Norman (sprinter)'s two records from today. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Abcdet44 (talk • contribs)

@Abcdet44: I'm going to guess it means "Freshman record" for first year college students. It's not an abbreviation I've seen in use in any statistics website. SFB 18:58, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

There's also NCAAR, used here. And here is used "EYL". --Pelmeen10 (talk) 21:28, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Late response, but I've more often seen FR used to mean "Facility Record" rather than "Freshman Record", the latter of which I'm pretty sure is not seriously tracked because of the difficulty of determining who is a freshman. NCAAR means NCAA record, and EYL could mean European U18 (Youth) Lead, the best mark by a European teenager (who will still be a teen at the end of the calendar year) so far in that year. --Habst (talk) 23:53, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

r

An "r" is sometimes used standing for (I guess) "refused/refusal", for instance here in the 2nd row. I beg a ping whenever there is a reply note. — Hamid Hassani (talk) 14:58, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

@Hamid Hassani: It's for when a high jumper or pole vaulter has retired from the competition rather than continue to the next height. Added it to the abbreviations link now too. SFB 01:20, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

@Sillyfolkboy: Got it. Thanks. — Hamid Hassani (talk) 03:52, 2 October 2019 (UTC)