Talk:Masters M80 200 metres world record progression

Hand?

Several articles in this series have a table with a "Hand" column, which is invariably empty. What is the purpose of the "Hand" column? If it refers to the athlete's handedness, it seems silly for articles on running, and this column doesn't exist in articles on events where handedness might be relevant, like the javelin throw. RCTodd (talk) 17:45, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hand timing (any manual timing that is not fully automatic timing FAT) is common in historical track and field articles. In the open division, FAT became mandatory for records in 1977, meaning the systems became common enough on a global basis to make it expected for high level competitions. In Masters, the technology was not as commonly available for significantly longer. Since meets happened without the required facilities, records needed to be accepted using hand times often enough that it needed to be a potential value in the formatting of all these articles. I had to clean this article up because Packard's 1984 record was a hand time. We know that because no 1/100ths column value was included. That is common T&F statistical jargon. Trackinfo (talk) 18:19, 5 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]