Abstract

Background: Athletics is a sport that seeks to surpass the athletic performance of opponents in a set of disciplines. Objective: Develop a qualitative scale for the assessment of athletic performance in the 5000-meter dash in Chilean athletes between 35 and 74 years old. Material and methods: Cross-sectional descriptive study, whose sample considers 449 female and 903 male master athletes who participated in the 5000-meter dash test during the period 2014 to 2022, these data being obtained from the registry of the Federation of Master Athletics of Chile. Athletic performance was determined through the time used to complete the test, while the qualitative scale was constructed with the percentiles < 10, ≥ 10, ≥ 25, ≥ 50, ≥ 75, corresponding to the criteria excellent, very good, good, average and poor. Results: In the 5000-meter race test. The average was 21:04:34 and 25:36:46 for males and females respectively. In general, the standard error of the mean = 00:05:81 for the male gender and 00:11:70 for the female-female gender, reporting significant differences and a large effect size (p < 0, 001; d > 0. 8) in all age categories based on sex. Conclusion: The creation of the qualitative scale for the 5000-meter dash test allows evaluating and classifying the sporting level in athletes between 35 and 74 years.