IAAF profile for Iaaf name

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This is a template to generate links to athletes' sports biographies at http://www.iaaf.org, intended for use in the "External links" section of athletes' respective articles. It is derived directly from Template:Imdb name, with virtually the same basic syntax and usage.

Iaaf name template has the following syntax:

{{iaaf name|id=XXX|name=John Doe}}

The only mandatory parameter is id, XXX being the athlete's numerical code used by the IAAF's database. Name parameter is optional, and it defaults to {{PAGENAME}}, i.e. the article title. Since the article title is almost always equal to the athlete's name, it is not necessary to use this parameter except in cases such as e.g. Jonathan Edwards (athlete).

Suppose you'd like to link to an IAAF bio page on Carl Lewis using this template. To do that, it is necessary to obtain the id parameter, which is encoded in the page URL. The procedure is simple:

1) Go to http://www.iaaf.org/athletes/biographies/index.html

2) Find the athlete using the web page navigation (surname and/or country).

3) When you find Carl Lewis, his profile's URL will look something like this:

http://www.iaaf.org/athletes/biographies/letter=l/country=usa/athcode=1622/index.html

Some elements of the URL, such as "letter" or "country", may be absent, but the only thing that is important is the athlete's code, i.e. 1622, in this case.

4) Edit the article and insert the following text (assuming you are adding the link to the External links section):

*{{iaaf name|id=1622|name=Carl Lewis}}

5) Save your changes. The link in the article will look like this:

In this case it was not necessary to provide the name parameter, i.e. template's behavior would be exactly the same without it.

It is always a good idea to double check if the link you've created is correct by clicking on it.

The IAAF database currently only covers athletes active from the 1980s to the present day; you won't find Emil Zatopek or Alberto Juantorena. Still, it is fairly comprehensive; all notable athletes are covered, along with many non-notable ones.