Truth is stranger than fiction. This is a a real story. USATF adds age 25-29 group to 'masters' category

I am 33 and have raced since college with a 1500m PR of 3:50. They don't need this category. There are tons of open meets and invitationals to enter. Most don't even have a time cutoff. I could race a dozen times every season if I wanted to.

question, then... wrote:

jhlkjhlkjhjlkhkl wrote:

i literally thought this headline was a joke. masters is 40+. anything younger than that is just trying to appeal to slow hobbyjoggers who don't train and want to feel special

Not being sarcastic - where should young people go if they want to have an organized system of competition, but are not good enough to run competitively at an international level? Who is this younger "masters" division hurting? Some people just want to enjoy competition, not get a participation trophy.

To a country with a decent club system. Your system sucks after your permitted NCAA eligibility runs out.

This is great for the BYU men's team. Two birds with one stone.

I thought it was ridiculous when I first read it but am more supportive after thinking about it. I think naming it something other than masters is a must. After college, I felt like a weirdo signing up for unattached runs when I wasn’t going to qualify for anything due to a 15:00 5k Pr. But I actually really enjoyed track but was put off because I didn’t feel like there was a place for me to race other than the roads.

sbeefyk2 wrote:

Sounds like an extension of the “everyone gets a medal” mentality. Now the runner who are too slow for real races can take part in a masters events and win some medals and feel better about themselves.

I sort of agree with your point, our sport is becoming like triathlon. Should we not scrap the women's category as well?

The NBA started it when it launched the D-League.

Now ALL college players demand money.

Not just Basketball, but every Olympics sports college player wants at least a stipend of at least $18,000 from local car dealerships, furniture stores, and farmers co-ops .

No mystery that USATF is now going after B-Elites to make money from upcoming wonders from Satellite TV and Home TV entreprenuers.

jhlkjhlkjhjlkhkl wrote:

i literally thought this headline was a joke. masters is 40+. anything younger than that is just trying to appeal to slow hobbyjoggers who don't train and want to feel special

No, Masters is 52+. (Yet another random # plucked out of the air).

This is a great way for US masters to keep people in the sport and bring a few extra dollars in to help run make there meets profitable. If you look at the sprint events and field events there is almost zero participation in the sport from the ages of 23 to 35 if a person is not a professional. Masters promotes life long participation in athletics but if they lose 95% plus of the potential participants from the ages of 23-34 before they get to masters that hurts there bottom line. Athletics in the US is basically setup around the high school and collegiate system and this is a way to break free of that. Also people need to escape from the notion that you should quit the sport if you are not an elite. There is no physiological reason someone should peak in the sprints and field events by the age of 22 so giving people an avenue to participate and see how far they can push themselves is great. If someone wants to train there should be a place for them to race somewhere and that is not necessarily the case currently.

One solution is to rebrand ages 20-39 as "O-20", to distinguish it as open competition "Over-20", as opposed to currently recognized "U-20". Masters cold revert to it's original over-40 designation.

Funny... around age 24-25 I started to come into my own as an athlete, and didn't make a national team til age 27. Pretty absurd.

Bekele was 22-23 when he set the 5 and 10k world records?

El G was 24 when he set the 1500m world record?

The point is you will likely stay around the same time or get slower when you get to your mid 20s on the track. So why not give non world class athletes the opportunity to still compete. They’re too fast for the oldies and too slow to be world class. But like others said this is mostly for the sprinters, jumpers, and throwers anyway.

people forgetting about USATF regional open meets....those are pretty sparse and are where this is better spent. not a super JV meet where people will declare themselves the national championship after running a 17 min 5k at 25

TV Broadband channels are being overhauled for 1,000+ more channels. Even during this pandemic the Oly sports marketing guys are in a frenzy re-positioning games, matches, races, and meets for sponsors and TV watchers.

Hey Boomer. No one is going to pretend they are best in the country for winning their age group. No different than winning the 25-29 year old age group at you local 5k while coming in 5th place overall. You take the gift certificate or whatever the prize for first in the age group is but you didn't win the race.

Wouldn't it just be easier to include an open category in their meets?

The entire concept of Masters (or juniors) for that matter is provide relative competition prior to and beyond the period when athletes could compete in the open category.

Agreed with the posters that said that we need to remove the masters label from this. With that said, if you are a sprinter/jumper/thrower, you are largely sh1t out of luck with getting into local meets. I have a lifetime best of 10.2low and consistently ran 10.3-10.4 throughout my mid and late 20s with a full-time job and struggled to consistently get into decent college meets. It is a weird spot where you aren't fast enough to be the guy in lane 8 at a pro meet and the good college meets have steadily been making it more difficult for unattached athletes to run. Yeah, maybe you get into a joke of a D3 or NAIA meet or a D1 school let's you run in a special heat in March with no competition, but then really what is the point? The only meets I could consistently get in that are fast were in Clermont, but that is a significant cost of flight + hotel to run a 100m because the D1 schools in my area thought they were above having unattached athletes run in their meets.