Athlete pathways

• Shows: the season-best journeys of athletes who later reached the selected championship level.
• Does not show: a qualification standard, a support-selection threshold or an individual forecast.
• Coverage: points with few athletes are directional; cohorts with no regional match are labelled.

Each athlete contributes once per exact event and championship age category, anchored to their first recorded top-eight appearance in the archive at the selected level. This is not necessarily their first career appearance. Global top-eight athletes are excluded from regional comparison groups for that same category and event, even if they also competed regionally. Groups are descriptive, not predictions of senior success.

The lines use one cached season-best mark per athlete and year, from four years before the endpoint to the endpoint season. The archive includes only athletes reaching these outcomes; it cannot estimate the probability of success for an athlete following a similar pathway. Regional groups depend on which championships are available.

Shading around each line is the middle 50% of athlete marks (25th to 75th percentile), not a confidence interval or acceptable-performance boundary. The faint area between the two lines is a reference corridor only. Lines may overlap or cross. Faster times are plotted higher, as are longer distances and higher points.

Available histories use different contributors when earlier results are missing. Complete-history mode holds the same athletes across all five points, but favours athletes with more complete records. Missing years are never filled or connected across a gap. Thin samples are flagged; the minimum sample setting hides unsupported points.

Event specifications remain separate: implement weights, hurdle heights and combined-event variants are never converted or pooled. Season-best records are matched directly to the exact event, bypassing legacy event mappings. Known indoor/short-track results and recorded excessive wind are excluded; unknown wind remains included and is counted in the values table. The cache may not contain an alternative outdoor/legal result. These are best available cached season marks, not a newly verified complete performance history.

Endpoint-year season bests can occur after the championship. Years before an appearance are not chronological-age bands; the table gives median age at the recorded mark where dates are known. Senior mode looks backwards from recorded senior top-eight outcomes but does not reconstruct performances with different junior implements. Relays and cross-country are excluded because comparable individual marks are not available.