World Record Progression

Data

This plot uses the wr data frame of the gcubed package. The data was originally obtained from Track and Field News.

library(gcubed)
head(wr)

## # A tibble: 6 x 7
##   Event     WR       Athlete           Location      Date       MF    MF2  
##   <fct>     <chr>    <chr>             <chr>         <date>     <chr> <chr>
## 1 400 Hurd… 52.2     Dalilah Muhammad… Des Moines, … 2019-07-28 W     Women
## 2 Decathlo… 9126     Kevin Mayer (Fra… Talence, Fra… 2018-09-16 M     Men  
## 3 Steeple W 08:44.3  Beatrice Chepkoe… Fontvieille,… 2018-07-20 W     Women
## 4 Hammer W  82.98 |… Anita Włodarczyk… Warsaw, Pola… 2016-08-28 W     Women
## 5 400 M     43.03    Wayde van Nieker… Rio de Janei… 2016-08-14 M     Men  
## 6 10,000 W  29:17.4  Almaz Ayana (Eth… Rio de Janei… 2016-08-12 W     Women

Code for plot

This plot uses geom_segment geometry.

library(ggplot2)
library(dplyr) # used for arrange which sorts data by date

today <- as.Date("2019-08-08")
wr <- arrange(wr, desc(Date)) 
wr$Event <- factor(wr$Event, levels = wr$Event)
wr$MF2 <- ifelse(wr$MF == "M", "Men", "Women")

wr_plt <- ggplot(wr, aes(x = Date, y = Event)) + 
  geom_segment(aes(x = Date, xend = today, y = Event, yend = Event, colour = MF2), size = 2) +
  ggtitle("Longevity of Current Track & Field World Records") + 
  theme_bw() + 
  theme(legend.title = element_blank(),
        axis.title.y = element_blank(),
        plot.title = element_text(size = 16, face = "bold", hjust = 0.5)) + 
  xlab("Date Record Set")

wr_plt