Estadio Roberto ClementeEstadio Sixto EscobarParque Julia de Burgos
2003 World Masters Athletics Championships is the fifteenth in a series of World Masters Athletics Outdoor Championships
that took place in Carolina, Puerto Rico, from 1 to 13 July 2003.
[2]
The low participation number
[3]: 11
may be partly due to the fear of flying after the 2001 September 11 attacks and the 2002–2004 SARS outbreak.
[4]: 57
This is the second time that the Championships is hosted in Puerto Rico; the fifth edition of 1983 was held in San Juan.
[5]: 11
This is the first edition of the Championships conducted after the governing body of this series was formally renamed from World Association of Veteran Athletes (WAVA) to World Masters Athletics (WMA) at the previous (2001) edition held in Brisbane, Australia,
[6][1]
This edition of masters athletics Championships had a minimum age limit of 35 years for women and 40 years for men.
[5]: 1
During General Assembly on 10 July the starting age for men was reduced from 40 to 35 for subsequent editions.
[3]: 18
Also, the inaugural 2004 Indoor Championships was approved to be held in Sindelfingen, Germany.
[3]: 18 [1]
This Championships was organized by WMA in coordination with a Local Organising Committee (LOC) led by William Aleman.[1]
A new feature for this series was the use of internet technologies:
[5]: 11 [3]: 10
in addition to the official website, 2 additional websites provided quick updates of competition results: flashresults
[12]
and cyberscoreboard.
[13]
Official daily results are archived at puertorico2003.
[14]
Past Championships results are archived at WMA.
[15]
Additional archives are available from Masters Athletics,
[16]
from British Masters Athletic Federation[17]
in html and from Museum of Masters Track & Field
[18]
in html,
and as National Masters News pdf newsletters.
[5][3]
Several masters world records were set at this Championships. World records for 2003 are from the list of World Records in the National Masters News August newsletter[3]: 11 unless otherwise noted.