We need to rethink how we do this if even our Kenyan army athletes, who get citizenship through a loophole, being willing to serve and run, can't make the time qualifiers, despite our having roughly the 3rd or 4th best distance runners at 1500/5000/10000m of any country in the world. Start by having a marathon or at least a half marathon in D1.
To alleviate a crowded start, just force starting position by seed time. If you got in by qualifying time, you get to go to the front, then you position by who was fastest. If you got in by ranking or universality, you start a few meters behind them.
A similar rule may exist, someone may be able to confirm. I have read guidelines with an attached diagram as to staggered starting positions by priority for the front two rows of starters. During a quick scan of the WA book, nothing jumped out at me. It may have been the start guidelines for WWM that I recall.
The World Athletics Road to Paris qualification period for marathoners ended on May 5th. In order for Leonard Korir’s Olympic team spot to be unlocked, an American (Other than Clayton Young or Conner Mantz) needed to be ranked in the top 80 by the end of Sunday. CJ Albertson (72nd) and Leonard Korir (74th) were within the quota on Sunday. However, World Athletics also awards universality places (spots for countries without any qualified athletes to be able to compete at the Games in the 100m, 800m and marathon). As of this morning, it looks like 11 universality places were awarded, which bumps Albertson and Korir out of the qualified quota. As noted by @jgault13 back in January before Orlando, the WA has previously gone over its hard cap on athletes after the addition of universality athletes. (Cap was 56 in the 100m & they had 83 competitors with 27 being universality athletes). Awaiting official word from USATF or WA on what this means for Korir’s chances of competing in Paris.
We need to rethink how we do this if even our Kenyan army athletes, who get citizenship through a loophole, being willing to serve and run, can't make the time qualifiers, despite our having roughly the 3rd or 4th best distance runners at 1500/5000/10000m of any country in the world. Start by having a marathon or at least a half marathon in D1.
Problem is the HM/M just cannibalizes the XC crowd which is already hanging by a thread in NCAA priority. Despite large amounts of athletes, it's got to be one of the lowest interest sports in the NCAA. Adding HM/H will just make it worse. And low interest means no money to fund the sport
This is really a surprise. Nowhere in the document did it say that Universality would be put in ahead of rankings. On the other hand, it was clearly stated that the ranking quota as of May 5th would be locked in, and some federations had already selected athletes based on that line (Hugo Catrileo of Chile). Nowhere was it stated that Quota spots (which ranking spots fall under) and Universality spots are the same, and the document guaranteed 80 Quota spots. In my mind it’s a travesty, since athletes scheduled their season around gaining as many ranking spots as possible during the spring only for it to not matter at all. If Leonard Korir and his coach had known this, maybe they would have skipped the Lisbon half and had a better shot at the standard in Rotterdam. Unfortunately, there is a precendent for rankings being outweighed by universality so no one really has a case to argue, it just didn’t matter in previous years since only one universality spot was allowed in the marathon and standards exceeded the quota place limit. But if they want people to view rankings as being as important as they view standards, they cannot be pulling stuff like this at the last minute.
The only possibility to read into the Universality taking Quota spots away would be with the fact that the doc says can't exceed the full 80. It's a bit of a leap in my view but who knows?
If they’re going to allow athletes with 2:20 PBs, why are they bothering to restrict the size of the event at all? I would love to see them allow 7 marathon runners per country (even if that means some countries have runners finishing outside 3 hours). With 195 countries in the world, that would be about 1,365 marathon runners…. A tiny marathon by normal mass-marathon standards. You could then score the top 5 of 7 and also award team medals. It’s the ultimate in inclusivity in THE quintessential Olympic event!
I’ve always thought these short-loop Olympic marathons with only a few dozen runners are just odd… it’s not like you have a crowding problem like on a track 10,000m.
No guarantees. While I feel bad for previous Olympian Korir (as a fellow runner and immigrant), the Tokyo 2020 standard was 2:11:30, and super shoes would've dropped that down even way more. Korir was the 408th fastest marathoner during the qualification period plus the 246th on the World Rankings (10th *Korir), and for all intents and purposes was basically a Universality athlete himself. He should've run faster. He had a year and a half.
As for the Universality athletes, it's the Olympics. Run the standard. All 80 women did, and the standards between the 2 genders weren't that much different (256th fastest versus 306th fastest marathoners).
I agree with everyone that has said the bigger issue is we don't have three American men that can run under 2:08:10. That should really not be a high bar nowadays. I'm pretty sure Rojo has ranted before that the US should just be allowed 3 entries (correct me if I'm wrong), to me that seems wrong if we can't even hit that standard. Why should we get 3 free entries over any other country? Realistically, what place do we think Leonard Korir would have placed at the olympics? Not necessarily arguing for the universality athletes here but would he have had any more effect on the race than them?
Heartbreaking for Lenny given his 2020 trials but this just reaffirms to me that the US men need to step it up.
I think it's dumb to limit the marathon field as hard as they do. It's not like all the other track events that have limited space on the racing course and need to share track time with other events. They only do this because they don't want to spend a couple extra thousand per additional athlete and maybe a bit more to expand their starting line.
To alleviate a crowded start, just force starting position by seed time. If you got in by qualifying time, you get to go to the front, then you position by who was fastest. If you got in by ranking or universality, you start a few meters behind them.
Also just noticed they have 81 people qualified on Road to Paris but only 80 spots available per entry rules. So they gladly break the rules for Universality, but can't do it more to let actual competitors in.
You can blame IOC prez for this. He is the one that has set limits on the number of athletes each sport can send to the olympics. It is his cost control measure to have a max size of participants at the olympics. Not sure what it is now, but when he first took over it was around 10,000.
He keeps wanting to add sports to the Olympics but not the number of Olympians. So, the # of athletes in the traditional sports has to be reduced to allow for breakdancing, and others.
Olympics are capped at 10,500 participants per IOC website.
Athletics is capped to 1,810 - 905 each men and women. Compared to 2023 WC's had 2,187 - 1,106 men - 1,081 women on WA's entry list.
We need to rethink how we do this if even our Kenyan army athletes, who get citizenship through a loophole, being willing to serve and run, can't make the time qualifiers, despite our having roughly the 3rd or 4th best distance runners at 1500/5000/10000m of any country in the world. Start by having a marathon or at least a half marathon in D1.
Problem is the HM/M just cannibalizes the XC crowd which is already hanging by a thread in NCAA priority. Despite large amounts of athletes, it's got to be one of the lowest interest sports in the NCAA. Adding HM/H will just make it worse. And low interest means no money to fund the sport
Not really. You can add the half or full to either indoors or out. XC is excellent training for a half anyway.
Since when World Athletics put that "universality qualifiers"?
Besides that, certain athletes have good PB's (Ivanovsky is faster than Korir this year, Han from North Korea ran 2:09:42 this year in China, Khadiri's PB is 2:10 from last year, Freire from Cabo Verde ran 2:11:01 this year, Zamora from Uruguay Ran 2:11:02 and 2:13 this year)
Very interesting. A lot of these guys would be in easily under the former qualifying system. I guess I can't be too upset that some 2:09 to 2:11 guys are in the Olympics. Fair enough.
Korir will go. WA aren't going to screw over the US on a technicality. When it comes down to it, WA needs the US market and the US had three legitimately qualified athletes - it's not like anyone is asking for a favour. Calm down, wait a few weeks, you'll see Korir confirmed.
On another note: US marathoners need to get their act together and just hit the damn standard. It's not prohibitive. Have you seen the track PBs of the guys that the UK is sending? Two of them have never broken 28 for 10k or 13:45 for 5k. We're not talking about an event that is only open to extraordinarily talented individuals.
Can we go back to every country can just send 3 athletes by whatever process they want as long as they've hit some softer standard like sub-2:20/2:45? Don't get this at all. I think it's fun & in the spirit of the Olympics to have countries send 3 athletes & have smaller countries send an athlete or two if they can. I don't mind the people being added but I mind that they're taking away from faster athletes. It's a road race. We don't need faster qualifying times to get smaller fields. It's the Olympics. People are going to show up & try to win the race. Setting a qualifying time doesn't affect how the front of the field will race this summer.
I think it's dumb to limit the marathon field as hard as they do. It's not like all the other track events that have limited space on the racing course and need to share track time with other events. They only do this because they don't want to spend a couple extra thousand per additional athlete and maybe a bit more to expand their starting line.
To alleviate a crowded start, just force starting position by seed time. If you got in by qualifying time, you get to go to the front, then you position by who was fastest. If you got in by ranking or universality, you start a few meters behind them.
Also just noticed they have 81 people qualified on Road to Paris but only 80 spots available per entry rules. So they gladly break the rules for Universality, but can't do it more to let actual competitors in.
You can blame IOC prez for this. He is the one that has set limits on the number of athletes each sport can send to the olympics. It is his cost control measure to have a max size of participants at the olympics. Not sure what it is now, but when he first took over it was around 10,000.
He keeps wanting to add sports to the Olympics but not the number of Olympians. So, the # of athletes in the traditional sports has to be reduced to allow for breakdancing, and others.
Is this why we've been adding "mixed team" versions of all the events lately? Those goofy made-up events where you just give your already-present athletes something else to do? I figured it had jumped the shark last Winter games when NBC showed me the "mixed team aerial trick skiing."
Road to Paris list has 11 Universality athletes put in after the 70 auto qualifiers. That means NO ONE got in on world ranking for the men's marathon. What a joke! Some of these guys are like barely sub 2:20. One doesn't even have a marathon result listed!
Should’ve run 2:08:09 or faster, then there’d be no debate. 11 participation OG marathon ribbons undid any real chance of the world rankings filling the quota.