Statistics in the latest issue of AW tell us which events are struggling or thriving

As we enter Olympic year, British athletes need to raise their game if they want to make their mark on the world scene. During 2019 there were only 11 British athletes ranked in the world’s top 10 in their event compared to 17 athletes in 2016 and 2017 and 15 in 2018.

It is the worst showing since 2006 and is just one of the many stats in the latest (Dec 19) issue of AW magazine. Such facts and figures paint a picture of the strongest and weakest events in British athletics and which ones are on the way up (or down).

These have been produced primarily by statisticians Peter Matthews and Mel Watman, co-editors of the Athletics International newsletter, who have once again teamed up with AW to produce our annual stats special. Incredibly, for Matthews, it is his 52nd successive year of compiling merit rankings for British athletes.

One obvious statistic from 2019 is that the women are out-performing their male team-mates. Led by world champions Katarina Johnson-Thompson and Dina Asher-Smith, the females have excelled and the best-placed British male athlete in our world merit rankings is hammer thrower Nick Miller in fifth place globally, whereas no British man won a medal at the World Championships in Doha.

For many years it was the other way around. Just over 20 years ago, at the 1998 European Championships in Budapest, eight of the nine gold medals won by the Brits at the event came from men, with heptathlete Denise Lewis the sole female winner for Britain.

The British women’s team was also in a lower league compared to the men in the European Cup. But Lewis, together with Kelly Holmes, Paula Radcliffe, Jessica Ennis-Hill and others began to improve the standard of women’s athletics and now they are leading the way when it comes to medal hopes at major events.

As for events, here are a few of the risers and fallers in 2019…

Rising

Falling