About Association of Road Racing Statisticians

David Blaikie from Canada is a former journalist and now works in public relations. He is an athletics historian and statistician and did much to establish a solid statistical base for Canadian ultrarunning. David is well known for being the webmaster of the highly respected Ultramarathon World website (ultramarathonworld.com). He is one of the ARRS founding members.

Ian Champion from England is one of the ARRS founding members. He has many years experience and knowledge (98% road running). Ian has been competitive throughout his service with Metropolitan Police. He has been the organiser for many years of the “London to Brighton” Ultra Marathon, and a volunteeer worker with the “London Marathon” for all twenty-eight years. He is also a Council member of the Road Runners Club since 1976, a Vice President and current Chairman. He holds a vast collection of running magazines, annuals and books, and is archivist for the RRC, and a licensed track/road running official.

Andy Milroy is the ARRS Co-ordinator as well as a global road running historian, writer and statistician. He is the author of “The Long Distance Record Book,” editor of books on training for ultradistance events, and the primary originator of the “Ultra Marathon Race Handbook,” the accepted rule book for ultrarunning. He is retired from a long career as a teacher. He is the co-ordinator for the Ultramarathon working group and one of the ARRS founding members.

Luis Arribas Sandonis from Spain is one of the ARRS founding members.

Indro Neri from Italy is one of the ARRS founding members. Born in 1964, he started running in 1973. For three decades he has been the editor of the Italian running magazine “Podismo”, now “ePodismo” (epodismo.com), the founder with Jennifer Walker of the website Run The Planet, and the webmaster of the Italian branch of the Dead Runners Society. He has completed seven marathons to date and two 100km, plus other various interesting races (including backward running). He is the author of a couple of books on running with a humorous accent, an historical book on a local trail to hike and other publications on different subjects.

Ken Nakamura from Japan is one of the ARRS founding members.

Gunars Akerbergs was born in 1947 in Saulkrasti, 47 km from Riga. Studies at Latvian University brought him to Riga. From 1973 until 1991 he worked on Latvian Sports Committee but since January 1992 he has been an official at Latvian Football federation. Gunars ran his first marathon in 1969, at the age 22 and in 1975 he began keeping statistics on Latvian marathon runners. He published three handbooks of Latvian marathon statistics, the last covering the period of 1927-1999. Since the end of 1996 he edited the newsletter “Maratona Zinas” (Marathon News) and his website www.marathon.lv. Gunars Akerbergs passed away on January 3, 2008.

For over 35 years Wim vanHemert was a sport journalist for the National Press Agency (ANP, Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau). He covered every Olympic Games from 1968 to 1992, every World Championships from Helsinki thru Stuttgart, every European championships from 1962. He also worked (freelance) for Eurosport and Dutch radio. In 1981 he was co-founder of the “Rotterdam Marathon”. He has translated some 20 books from English and German to Dutch, and has written several books about marathoning. He produces the press kits for the Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Enschede and Eindhoven marathons. A marathon runner, he has kept marathon lists (world, European and Dutch) since 1981.

Zbigniew Jonik from Poland is one of the ARRS founding members. He is an ATFS (Association of Track & Field Statisticians) member since 1998 and he is specifically interested in statistics (all-time lists, national records, etc.).

Riël Hauman started his career in journalism at the newspaper “Die Burger” in 1968 and has been working in newspaper, magazine and book publishing for forty years. He retired as Operations Manager of the Cape Town publishing firm Human & Rousseau at the beginning of 1999. He has been active in athletics since 1960 and still participates in track, road and cross-country events. He completed eleven “Two Oceans” marathons and more than a hundred marathons and ultras. He received Western Province Veterans colours for track. He was a Western Province road running administrator for an uninterrupted period of 23 years until early 1999, and served as vice-chairman, chairman, member of the disciplinary committee, chairman of selectors and statistician of Western Province Athletics Road Running. He resumed duty as statistician and chairman of selectors in 2000 (he retired from the latter post at the end of 2006). He acted as manager of Western Province road running teams on numerous occasions. He was a member of the Committee of Seven that steered Western Province athletics through the unity process, was chairman of the committee that drew up the new Western Province Athletics Constitution after unity in 1994, and served on the Executive Committee of Western Province Athletics. He served on the Western Province Athletics Road Running Commission for a second period from 2001 until 2007 and also served on the Western Province Athletics Constitution & Rules Committee, and has now been active in the administration of the sport in the province for 33 years. He is also a Western Province technical official, acting as referee at road races. He was a national road running selector for the Souh African Road Running Association (SARRA) in the eighties and represented Western Province at national level at council meetings of the South African Athletics Union and SARRA. He was also the official SARRA statistician. He has organised a number of road races, among them two South African championships. He received honours colours of both WP Athletics and WP Veterans Athletics. He has been a member of the South African Athletics Statisticians (SAAS) since 1969 and was awarded life membership of the association in 1998; he is currently also vice-chairman. He is a member of the international Association of Track and Field Statisticians and a co-founder of the international Association of Road Racing Statisticians. He started compiling South African road running statistics in 1979 and has built up a huge database from which information is supplied to statisticians all over the world. He was founding editor of the magazine “South African Athlete” in 1972 and served as editor of “Running Free” in 1999. He served as Statistical Editor and columnist of “Runner’s World” (South African edition) for many years, and also writes for the Internet publications “Race Results Weekly” and “The Analytical Distance Runner”, as well as “Athletics International” (UK). He publishes Distance Running Results, a weekly newsletter distributed by e-mail. He is Editor of the South African Athletics Annual published by SAAS. He is the South African public relations officer for AIMS (the Association of International Marathons and Road Races). He is often invited to give talks on athletics and is a regular announcer at road races in the Western Cape such as the Two Oceans, Voet van Afrika, Whale Half Marathon, Niel Joubert Plaaswedloop and others. He has done television commentary on the Comrades, Two Oceans, South African road championships and other races on numerous occasions, among them the Berlin Marathon. He has coached a number of runners over the years, and still does. He has a library of more than 300 books on all aspects of athletics. He has written two books on athletics. The first, “Hardloop en lééf”, was published in 1979 and is still the only Afrikaans book on running training methods in existence. The second, “Century of the Marathon 1896-1996”, was published in 1996 and details the history of the first century of the modern marathon, including the first published study on the history of the marathon in South Africa. It was distributed in South Africa and a number of overseas countries and received wide international acclaim.

Sergey Krashnoshchekov from Russia is one of the ARRS founding members.

Juraj Gasparovic from Slovakia is one of the ARRS founding members.

Tomas Magnusson from Switzerland is one of the ARRS founding members.

Birger Falt from Sweden is a race walker at the highest level; he competed in the 1999 World Championships at 20km; he is a race walking and long distance running statistician and also a course measurer. He is the co-ordinator of the Race Walking working group and is one of the ARRS founding members.

Pete Riegel (United States) is a former IAAF Measurement Co-ordinator for the Americas; Chairman of the USA federation Road Running Technical Council for many years, and founding editor of “Measurement News”, the newsletter that disseminated good practice in course measurement worldwide. He is the co-ordinator of the Certified Courses working group and is one of the ARRS founding members.

Ken Young set USA records at 40 miles and the indoor marathon in the early 1970s while earning a PhD in geophysical sciences with a minor in statistics. He learned to program computers in 1965 and has been working with computers ever since. He first used a computer to produce race results in 1970, and produced computer-based running performance rankings in 1975 while teaching at the University of Arizona. By 1980, these rankings had developed into the National Running Data Center which pioneered and developed road records in the United States (now operated as the RRIC by the USAT&F;). In the 1990s Ken developed a relational database for distance running and began the “Analytical Distance Runner” newsletter. Co-founder of ARRS, Ken maintains the ARRS database of more than 400,000 performances and is one of the webmasters for the ARRS website.

Races are expected to support the goals of the ARRS in the conduct of their race and are expected to provide results from their race or races to the depth needed by ARRS. This does not mean that all race courses have to have their start and finish within the 30% stipulated separation and courses may drop more than the stipulated 1.0 m/km. Performances from such courses simply would not be considered for ARRS records altho they may still be eligible for ARRS rankings lists.

It is expected (but not required) that separate early starts for the elite women be established such that the first woman finishes before the first man, thereby maintaining the elite women’s race as a “women-only” race. It is also expected that times be reported to tenths of seconds for races 100 km and shorter and that the ARRS criteria on timing be adhered to.