IAAF World Rankings, Men's 1500m/Mile

Alan Webb, with his 2007 world-best time of 3:51.71 for the mile in the Drake Relays on April 29th, ought to crack the top 50 of the IAAF's World Rankings list the next time it's updated. That's not a sure thing, though, because it's quite a convoluted ranking system. Let's see if we can get through this together: First a "result" score is tallied, based on the athletes' time or distance in an event. Then a "placing score" is determined. This is based not only on the individual's place in the event but weighted into 9 different categories based on the competitive level of the track meet. The Drake Relays (like just about any major American meet except for the Pre Classic) are weighted only 7th out of 9 weighting categories, compared to, say, the Olympics or the World Championships which both get the... uhh, weightiest weight. Then the "performance" score is tallied by adding the "result" score to the "placing" score. Finally all of the "performance" scores are averaged, giving an individual a "ranking" score.

Exhausted? Me, too. I still haven't been able to calculate Webb's "ranking" score and I've been working on it for an hour. I'm old school , I guess. I figure that the best time of the year in any given event should earn the runner a number 1 ranking. We'll see if such an accomplishment earns Webb a place in the top 50. As of May 7th (with results tallied through April 23rd) he's not even in the top 100 [4 zipped PDF files from www.iaaf.com].