RE-calculating BOSTON 2019 winners

Worknesh Degefa accepting honors on the Boston Marathon winners' podium April 15, 2019. TV screen shot taken by PKSenagore.

BY NOW MOST INTERESTED FOLLOWERS OF THIS MARATHON RACE are aware which individuals competing in the women’s and men’s elite groups crossed the finish line first. 
 
A results list is available from Boston.com. Worknesh Degefa (Ethiopia) earned the right to wear the laurel wreath for females in her division and Lawrence Cherono (Kenya) edged out his closest male rival.  In the push-rim wheelchair competition, Daniel Romanchuk (USA) took the men’s and Manuela Schar (Switzerland) took the women’s top honors.
 
PodiumRunner.com (formerly competitor.running.com) reports that a re-calculation of the times based on age per the World Masters Association system resulted in scores which would place 61-year old Joan Benoit Samuelson (USA) in the number 1 slot followed by 39-year old Edna Kiplagat (Ethiopia). Number 6 would be Gene Sykes, who is 71 years of age young!

This year Samuelson ran the marathon and commemorated her 1979 open division victory at Boston, the 4oth anniversary of the accomplishment, the article explains.  It also explains how she "won" the 2019 event as determined by a World Master’s Association calculation system, which assigns an “age-graded” score to each runner’s performance. My check of the calculator shows that gender is also a factor. 
 
Using the WMA scoring calculations, the article generated a list.  It appears that women and men over 60 years of age performed very well on the "top 22" podiumrunner.com list, with 5 each in the top spots:
 
Finisher                                   Gender            Age/age group
1. Joan Samuelson Benoit           F                     61
6. Gene Dykes                              M                    71
11. Vitor Queranza                        M                    65-69
13. Roslyn Smith                           F                      70-74
15. Jean Marmoreo                       F                      75-79
16. Paul Crociere                           M                     60-64
17. Keijo Tavassolo                       M                     80-84
20. Gail Wasielewski                    F                      65-69
21. Eliz Barrett                              F                       80-84
22. John Oweleen                        M                      75-79
 
It is my thought that the runners identified within a grouping rather than by years of age, were most likely to be in the pack of the non-elites, which is why their exact ages are not provided.  On the registration form they would have checked an age-range box.  The finish times are identified in the full podiumrunner.com article.
 
My math indicates that Barrett must have averaged roughly 11:30 minutes/mile over the course of the marathon, finishing in just over 5 hours. Wow!  I inserted one of my previous half marathon times into the calculator to try it out. What a surprise to see the score!
 
One message to take from this data may be to train smart to STAY HEALTHY and injury free, manage to avoid developing significant osteoarthritis over the years, and one of these top spots could be yours. 
 
Perhaps it will be fun to take a best race finish time each year going forward to chart progress by WMA score  as an individual runner/walker at one distance (5K, 10K, etc)?  

Any runner who has merely thought about qualifying for Boston realizes that every participant is a winner, by right of earning a bib number. As is everyone who has attempted to qualify...and so on...
 
RUN & MOVE HAPPY!
 
https://www.podiumrunner.com/joan-samuelson-age-graded-boston-marathon_177129
 
https://www.boston.com/sports/boston-marathon/2019/04/15/boston-marathon-2019-winners-list
 
http://www.howardgrubb.co.uk/athletics/wmalookup15.html