Posted: July 1, 2004

Athletics: Radcliffe Loses And Then Regains Top Spot In ARRS Rankings

Kenenisa Bekele (ETH) picked up his 14th straight win at the Norwich Union Grand Prix (ENG) 3000m at Gateshead. Though NOT a world record, this means he has run ten, won ten this year.

Inactivity by Paula Radcliffe enabled Kenyan Lucy Wangui to briefly take the lead in the women's rankings but Wangui ended her streak of 6 successive wins when she was beaten by Alice Timbilil over 10,000m on June 25th. This was to push her back into second place, not Radcliffe's return with wins at 5 000 and 10 000 m.

Major moves since the last rankings.

John Kibowen (KEN) with his performances in the Bislett Games (NOR) 5000m and Kenyan Olympic Trials (KEN) 5000m is the biggest mover in the men's list, along with John C Korir (KEN) for his run in the Kenyan Olympic Trials (KEN) 10000m. Hicham El Guerrouj MAR dropped out of the top twenty.

Elvan Abeylegesse (TUR) with her world record 14:24.68 improved her position in the women's rankings.

Other major moves include Sergey Yemelyanov and Alla Zhilyayeva in the Russian 10000m national championships, and Abdellah Behar in the French. Another Russian Pavel Andreyev for his run in Grandma's Marathon. Mikhail Iveruk UKR improved with his run in Darmstadter 7.8K.

John Mayock (ENG) with his run in the European Cup 5000m, Jonathan Brown (WAL) in the Victoria 5000m and Vancouver HfMara and Joe McAlister (NIR)in the NCAA 10000m all moved up as did Marla Runyan (OR) and Amy Rudolph (RI) for their Freihofer's Run 5K and Oregon 3000m runs respectively.

Ayumi Hashimoto JPN improved with a Japanese Champship 10000m run, Simon Field AUS in the Victorian 10K and Mustapha El Ahmadi of France at the Angers (FRA) 10K

These competitive rankings [which are attached] are based on a point exchange system, i.e. if Runner A beats Runner B, Runner A takes points from Runner B. Runner A could beat Runner B by one second or one minute, it makes no difference. All that counts is that Runner A beat Runner B.

For further details of the point exchange system, please see the ARRS website

The point exchange system is designed to respond fairly rapidly to changes in a runner's fitness level so that performances more than a year old generally have little influence on a runner's current point level.

The second column provides the relative frequency of road (R), track (T), or crosscountry (C) races for that runner with the first letter indicating the venue most frequently raced (over the past 12 months).

A lower case letter in the first position indicates that fewer than 50% of the performances were of that type; in the second position, it is less than 30%, and in the third position, it is less than 10%.

The rankings will be released weekly over the next few weeks as the Olympics draws closer. They are normally available on a weekly basis by subscribing to the Analytical Distance Runner [ARRS newsletter](contact Ken Young at (kcy@inreach.com ) or by becoming a member of the Association of Road Racing Statisticians (contact Andy Milroy at AndyMilroy@blueyonder.co.uk)

The current top ten listings for the major distance running nations are also shown below.

Feedback is requested on these ARRS listings. Are they confusing or are they easy to understand? Do they provide useful or interesting information? Contact Andy Milroy at AndyMilroy@blueyonder.co.uk.

Further information about ARRS and its detailed road, track and cross country racing statistics can be found on our website - www.arrs.net/ . Further information about ARRS itself is available on that website in numerous languages.