This page runs one live query, cached for a week. For each athlete in each competition/event/gender, it finds their mark from the last round they took part in before the final, choosing the round by date rather than assuming a fixed round name (round structure varies by event and has changed over the 26 years covered). It then ranks those marks and takes the 8th-best (timed events) or 12th-best (jumps and throws) as that edition's cutoff mark.

An earlier version of this query instead matched each pre-final mark to the athletes who actually started the final, and took the worst mark among them. That is a more literal definition of "the mark it took to qualify", and it is the method used on the javelin prediction page - but it takes a single worst-case mark, which real championship rules can put a long way from the level of a normal qualifier. One 2009 case surfaced during testing: in the men's 800m at the Berlin World Championships, a chain-reaction fall in a semifinal took down three athletes, and two of them were reinstated to the final on protest despite recording, legitimately, one of the slowest semifinal times of the round. That is a genuine result, not a data error - but a rare rules-driven outcome like it is still enough to distort an entire event's volatility figure when the method used is "the single worst mark among the finalists". Ranking by position within the round is not affected by a single such case, at the cost of being an approximation of the final cutoff rather than an exact reproduction of it.

Qualifying/semifinal mark and event metadata:

WITH prefinal AS (
    SELECT cr.competitionId, cr.eventId, cr.gender, cr.aaId, cr.date, cr.race,
           cr.mark_distance, cr.mark_time_ms,
           ROW_NUMBER() OVER (
               PARTITION BY cr.competitionId, cr.eventId, cr.aaId
               ORDER BY cr.date DESC,
                   CASE cr.race
                       WHEN 'Semifinal - Heat' THEN 1
                       WHEN 'Repechage Round - Heat' THEN 2
                       WHEN 'Quarterfinal - Heat' THEN 3
                       WHEN 'Round 1 - Heat' THEN 4
                       WHEN 'Qualification - Group' THEN 5
                       WHEN 'Combined - Group' THEN 6
                       WHEN 'Preliminary Round - Heat' THEN 7
                       ELSE 8
                   END
           ) AS rn
    FROM athletics_wa_competition_results cr
    WHERE cr.race <> 'Final'
      AND cr.eventId IN (10229630,10229605,10229631,10229501,10229611,10229612,10229615,10229616,10229617,10229618,10229619,10229620,10229621,10229636,10229509,10229510,10229511,10229512,10229522,10229523,10229526,10229527,10229528,10229529,10229530,10229531,10229532,10229533)
      AND (cr.mark_distance IS NOT NULL OR cr.mark_time_ms IS NOT NULL)
),
lastRound AS (
    SELECT * FROM prefinal WHERE rn = 1
),
ranked AS (
    SELECT lr.competitionId, lr.eventId, lr.gender, e.markType, e.event_short,
           lr.mark_distance, lr.mark_time_ms,
           ROW_NUMBER() OVER (
               PARTITION BY lr.competitionId, lr.eventId, lr.gender
               ORDER BY CASE WHEN e.markType = 'Distance' THEN lr.mark_distance END DESC,
                        CASE WHEN e.markType = 'Time'     THEN lr.mark_time_ms   END ASC
           ) AS fieldRank
    FROM lastRound lr
    JOIN athletics_wa_events e ON e.eventId = lr.eventId
)
SELECT c.type AS ChampType, YEAR(c.startDate) AS Year, r.eventId AS EventID,
       r.event_short AS Discipline, r.gender AS Gender, r.markType AS MarkType,
       r.mark_distance AS Distance_m, r.mark_time_ms AS Time_ms
FROM ranked r
JOIN athletics_wa_competitions c ON c.competitionId = r.competitionId
WHERE c.type IN ('E', 'O+W')
  AND ((r.markType = 'Distance' AND r.fieldRank = 12) OR (r.markType = 'Time' AND r.fieldRank = 8))
ORDER BY r.eventId, r.gender, Year;