World Athletics Rankings

[1] WA President Sebastian Coe said the goal of this system is so athletes and fans "have a clear understanding of the hierarchy of competitions from national through to area and up to global events, allowing them to follow a logical season-long path to the pinnacle of athletics' top two competitions".

[2] Based on the work of the late Dr. Bojidar Spiriev and his son Attila, elite athletes are assigned a "ranking score" based on the average of their best performances within a 12-month ranking period, or 18-month period for combined events and distance events of 10,000 m or more.

A world record bonus score may be added directly to the athlete's ranking score where an athlete has equalled or broken a world record within the ranking period.

[3] They were announced in November 2017 and were originally intended to determine qualification for the 2019 World Athletics Championships,[4] but after initial pushback the IAAF announced in November 2018 that it would run the rankings system in 2019 as a dry run without affecting qualification for the 2019 World Championships.

[7] A similar ranking system was introduced in 2003 as part of the IAAF World Outdoor Meetings series, though these rankings were only used for qualification to the season-ending IAAF World Athletics Final rather than entry to international competitions.

There are a total of ten competition categories, which affect the number of points given for a placing score.

A lack of a wind speed reading (noted as NWI) in any of these events results in an automatic 30-point deduction from the performance score.

A lack of a wind reading results in an automatic 24-point deduction from the performance score.

[9][11][10][12] An overweighting rule is applied to performances at the Olympic Games or World Championships (OW), and Diamond League finals (DF).