Klecker breaks down The Ten on CC. Group bashes 10K qualifying in general.

It’s nearly 1 1/2 hours long. I don’t have time to do that. In a synopsis, what’s the issue with Lord Coe?

You should have sat this thread out. You do not know the history. 10000m was not one of the original events, 1896 Olympics. 10000m was added to please almost elite Marathoners in 1912. There was no television in 1912. No way would someone make 10000m an Olympic event in television era. Any event that cannot reasonably fit in between television commercials is an awful spectator event. Am. football is popular because the numerous breaks make Am. football great television. Sprinting events are great television. The environment at M.L.B. is far more enjoyable than in person at Am. football games. M.L.B. is not great tv so Am. football is more popular than M.L.B. Television. Television. Television.

Move the 10k to roads IMO. It'd be more interesting to watch, no switching to pole vault every 20 seconds, no lapped runners, probably more moves being made. Plus a good opportunity to show the host city

I think this was their best podcast to date. Great to hear Joe's thoughts from the race and hear what the athletes want to see more of in terms of growing the sport/creating better opportunities. I wonder if Seb or Max listens (not that they'd change anything, but they should be listening to the athlete's wants and thoughts).

I liked the old 2 A and B standard system and I wish they would go back to Semi's for the 10.

I know a lot of people don't like the idea but I remember it and I liked it and the final was always a good race.

More people could run so we don't have to have a complicated weird qualifying system to keep the numbers down.

I want Cross-Country and Indoor Track in the Winter Olympics.

I'd rather see it be the shorter road race. Have 100m -> 5,000m on the track, and then a 10k and marathon road race

It was more do away with the standard. they’ve made it so hard that joe said he can’t do USA indoors and isn’t racing for another 3 months to recover, woody said he skipped millrose, and other guys were skipping the euros to get ready for a tiny 10k in California.

I liked the golden ticket idea. They talked about if they made Valencia a golden ticket and the top 10 were in to the Olympics everybody would show up and then you get to see the tops guys race which is what we want to see.

Yes, I really enjoy hearing the perspective of these top athletes trying to make their way through a career as a pro runners. The athletes don’t always know what’s best for the sport in the long run, but their perspectives should matter. It seemed like the take away points were they want a level playing field to compete in races that matter, and they want a system that emphasizes races, and one far less focused on hitting times and doing time trials.

As for the track 10, historically events are added and dropped in T&F and from the Olympics as a whole. No event needs to continue. Distance geeks love the event, but even medium fans find it an incomprehensible snooze. I think they should change it up and try a road race or an xc race. World cross was certainly a more entertaining race to watch than most track 10s. Ultimately, I’d like to see a vote of the top athletes and see their preference.

They complained a lot about having to do this tiny track meet in California but Klecker could have gone to world xc for a world championship and got a qualifer that way.

Well, sound running is a lot closer to home, and probably Klecker was more confident that he could run the standard than place high enough at world cross. However, if they abandoned the standard qualification but allowed for high placement in top tier xc or road races, then you’d see our best athletes running these races. You want to watch Klecker, Woody, Mantz at sound running or watch them in Bathurst? The latter would have been way more fun. If the system was set up to make that the better route to qualifying, it would be a plus for the fans and for the athletes.

Well, he couldn’t. World Athletics used to award positions to top 15 in World XC but they don’t do that anymore.

Now you’d have to do some tiny cross meets, most of which are in Europe (at least 3 gold level XCs, only one here is Sound XC which they ran) and hope that adds to your ranking (which is confusing and that was kind of their point). Or you could do a tiny meet in Orange County with 200 fans cause it’s the only fast one in the US.

You are way out of line in the manner in which you are addressing an intellectual superior. I know the history. So you think if the 10000m was not one of the original event that this has any bearing on my argument? You seem to flip flop between saying it was not an original event and then caving in to the god of television. If television is your god, then just get rid of the endurance events will be your next conclusion. Know your place.

Yeah, I thought that was a good idea as well. I think top 10 in a single race is too deep for an Olympic or Worlds qualification. The CC guys suggested three races, two on the track, one on the road, and the top 5 in each race get an auto-qualifier. That seems like a pretty good system to me. You could seed the races based on rankings, with 25 in each race. That would be amazing: the top 75 10000 men and women in the world get one opportunity to race for an Olympic qualifier. Top 5 in each race get the prize. That would be three high-stakes 10000 races each year that are all about place, not time. You could even use existing events: have one at Pre, one in Hengelo or a big European DL like Zurich or London, one in Valencia (road). It also makes the rankings system relevant.

I ran as many as 46 races of all types in a year at age 30 (am in my 70s now), and my favorite race on the track was the 10,000 meters, both for racing and watching.

The major problem this year has been the standard being too stringent. Thus I feel the easiest and best solution is to set a more reasonable standard for the men, like the women have done.

Setting a standard that's too stringent is a major mistake and is bad for athletics. It's far better to have a standard that's too easy than one that's too hard.

Another point is that cross country is not track, and people shouldn't have to travel around the globe to try and meet a standard for competing. Just setting a more reasonable standard should be able solve the issue, as it did in the past when this wasn't an issue.

I like having cross country races, road races, races on the track and feel that we should be able to compete in all of these aspects, and to not have 1 or 2 of them replace the others, as each of them are different and have their own interests and attractions.

Yeah right now the situation is not ideal because everyone operates like they need a time or to run in some random XC meets that except for World XC are lacking in prestige.

It would be better in my estimation if World Athletics would go all in on World XC (return to the top 15 has the standard as long as they have one other XC performance on the circuit), as well as some loaded road 10Ks (domestically this is Peachtree and Bolder Boulder, globally Valencia, Adizero road to Records, and a few others that could be propped up). Establish 4-6 as "Gold Level," and in my opinion just get rid of the auto time Q in favor of having athletes race 2 of these along with their national champs.

Wanna bash 10k qualifying standards? Bash the shoes - reason standards are so tough lately. Not that I care.

That dog is epic lol

I too would like to watch the likes of Mantz, Kincaid and Klecker in the WC, but I doubt the host nation would put cameras on the Americans. They’d need to be in the lead pack to really enjoy it. if lead pack, awesome!