The World Masters Athletics (WMA), formerly World Association of Veteran Athletes (WAVA), Age Graded Tables first published in 1989 provide the basis for comparing athletic performances for different ages, genders, and between different events.
These tables are based on the world best times or distances either actually recorded or calculated for each age between 8 and 100 years for every recognised track and field and road race event.
Because they provide a world standard for each event at each age they enable each performance by an athlete, male or female, junior or senior, to be compared with the recognised world best for their age and expressed as a percentage.
For example, a 17 year old male sprinter runs 13.5s for 100m and the Age Graded Tables give the world best time as 10.16s for this age. The age graded percentage is calculated as 10.16/13.5 x 100% or 75.3%. We as a Club use these tables for calculating the Grand Prix scores for our three Grand Prix competitions – Junior GP, Road Race GP and Senior Track & Field GP.
There are now on-line calculators for calculating a WMA score for any performance. For the 2024 Grand Prix competitions we use updated calculators which use most recent performance data for all age groups. For the Road race results we now use the Howard Grubb calculator based on 2020 performance data - and for Track & Field we use the Masters Athletics Age Grading Calculator for 2023 - EML Sports.
Sevenoaks AC - organiser of the Sevenoaks Seven - also has its own (road only) calculator.
For up to date club Grand Prix tables see Tables section of this site.