About · Updated 1 Sep 2026
Data & methodology
Where the numbers come from, what they cover, and what they do not.
Independent and non-commercial
Athletics Stats is an independent, personal, non-commercial statistics project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by World Athletics or any national federation. It carries no advertising and sells nothing.
Sources
Every source is documented before it is used, and each imported fact keeps its provenance. Only sources whose terms permit reuse are imported automatically; others are consulted by hand or not at all.
| Source | Licence | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| Wikidata | CC0 1.0 | Structured data from Wikidata (CC0). |
| Wikimedia Commons | Per-file | Images from Wikimedia Commons; per-file license and attribution apply. |
| Wikipedia (English) | CC BY-SA 4.0 | Contains data from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. |
| Manual research | Cited | Hand-entered facts, each with a published reference |
How the counts are defined
Every number on the home, country and athlete pages is computed from the published Best by athlete lists only.
Published top lists
One list per event and sex.
Athletes in published lists
Each athlete counted once across all lists.
Federations represented
Distinct federation codes on those rows.
World records shown
Canonical records for events that have a published list.
All-performances lists are never added to these counts.
What "Top 25" means here
A list is labelled by what its source publishes. Wikipedia's all-time tables cover the top 25 athletes and the top 25 performances, so those lists are shown as "top 25", never as a "top 100". Ties are ranked competition-style (1, 2, 2, 4), and an athlete tied at the cutoff is never dropped to make a round number.
Best by athlete and all performances
Best by athlete shows one row per athlete: their best eligible mark in the selected scope. All performances lists individual performances, so the same athlete can appear several times.
Completeness
Athlete pages show the best performance in our data, not a career personal best, unless a complete history has been imported. Season lists appear only where a permitted source exists. Coverage grows over time, and absence from the site is not a statement about an athlete, country or event.
Licence
The compiled list data is published under CC BY-SA 4.0. Photographs keep their own licence and attribution, shown on the athlete page. Flags are public-domain images from Wikimedia Commons.
Corrections
Corrections are welcome and are recorded with their evidence rather than silently overwriting the source data.
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