UK Athletes rip British Olympic selection criteria - some screwed over including steepler Zak Seddon are retiring from the sport

This is practically criminal.

Isn't there some employment law about restriction of trade?

I don't get how/why they take Eilish and not Phil Norman. Granted, I'd take both but her best-case scenario is getting beaten by 600 meters. This guy could make the final and acquit himself decently.

Is this strictly to save the Federation money? Couldn't, at the very least, they tell these athletes that they won't fund them but they can go on their own dime? (this is obviously an issue as well, but at least would allow these athletes to become Olympians)

As I recall, Cram's parents suggested he try to run for Germany if Britain hadn't selected him for either those Olympics.

Most people won't fight for medals. Most of the athletes going will not get a medal and never had a chance of getting one.

What is the point of moving to a ranking/standard system then? Why isn't world athletics FORCING federations to treat the ranking and standard as equal? What happens when we reach a point where 25% of athletes hit the standard and 75% are from rankings, will federations accept rankings then? WA is letting nations blatantly disregard their rules and seemingly don't care. An Olympic invitation should never be turned down(Yes, Olympic invitations are being TURNED DOWN, with no say from the athlete) WA should let athletes in ranking quota bypass their federations and go to the Olympics(assuming their country hasn't already sent three athletes)

They did the same crap back in 2012 (the year they even hosted the Olympics) and tried to leave a third spot in the men's marathon empty despite Lee Merrian being under the Olympic standard and being their top finisher at the London marathon. So the running community came together, made the public aware and the news involved. They put enough pressure on the UKA to add him and guess what? He was their top finisher in the 2012 London Olympic Games. Go figure.

UKA sucks. So much drama and politics.

Part of the problem is that World Athletics has always been the body that brings together national track/athletics federations, not the body that does what's best for individual athletes. It used to be called the International Association of Athletics Federations, after all. WA sets up the system for who it is willing to let run at the championship meets, but it lets the national federations decide who to enter, in line with this aforementioned power structure. I certainly wouldn't mind if WA just sent the invites themselves and the athletes got to decide if they'd go or scratch, but WA is full of bureaucrats and so are the national federations, they're birds of a feather and don't want to mess with each other's gravy trains.

Seb deserves same vitriol as UK Athletics. Google his interview re UKA denying invited athletes admission to world indoors. He pretends he’s for protecting the audience from seeing inferior athletes, which is absurd when you realize the UKA was denying a Scottish/UK audience the chance to root for 17 qualified UK athletes.

And no one in UKA with the guts to say, “Actually, we’ve mismanaged our finances and don’t have money for the most important part of our mission”

At world indoors and for the Olympics, athletes have been saying they’ll pay their fees, travel, accommodations, etc., but the UKA needs to pretend there’s a principle at stake.

Not only will athletes retire, but younger athletes won’t take that fork in the road and choose a life of sacrifice and dedication when years of work can be thwarted by a truly despicable (and broke) federation.

I think the best case for both is a top-8 finish, and they'd need a decent dose of luck. I'd also take both, but if UKA decided to take Norman now, based on his ranking, it would be unfair to other athletes who may have structured their seasons differently if they'd known ahead of time that qualifying by rankings was an option. In principle, athletes should be able to qualify by ranking but for the sake of fairness, that has to be known at the start of the qualification period, you can't change it part way through.

"Protecting the audience from seeing inferior athletes" when he's referring to world class but maybe not quite medal-winning class athletes is massively elitist and frankly utter negligence, of a kind that in a just world would see him booted from power and the door locked behind him forever. It's actually a nauseating statement for a guy in his position to make.

…assuming that Sweden actually bothers officially scratching the steeplechasers

Good point, hopefully they have at least that much integrity. Or else that WA "officially" scratches them on their end and invites the next men on the list regardless.

Pierre de Coubertin would be rolling in his grave.

"The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph, but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well."

I often wonder how the sub-par administration of these NGB's can justify their huge yearly salaries while the actual stars of athletics are the ones who struggle. UKA is a mess both financially and politically and has been for years precisely because of the bigwigs in administration, and the only ones who end up suffering are the athletes. They act financially negligent, then pass on the cuts to the athletes.

Jo Coates was earning nearly £250,000($320,000) a year! How many athletes would that send to centrepiece event of athletics? This isn't rocket science, pretty much all of UKAs losses come from bloated salaries and holding meets at a loss. It's pretty simple, you cut what's costing you the majority of your losses, not the cost of sending a few athletes 300 miles to Paris or an Olympics every four years. I'm not even against running events at a Loss in the longterm, but get your house in order first, they have constantly compounded the issue and continue to do so.

I think that'd be a tremendous stretch for Eilish:

Needs a Miracle to Beat:
-3 Kenyans in sub-29:30 shape
-3 Ethiopians in sub-29:50 shape
-Hassan

Sub-31' tier:
-Cheptoyek (30:03 in Valencia)
-Chelangat (30:24 at Pre)
-Kelati
-Lauren Ryan
-Megan Keith
-Schweizer
-Valby
-Van Es
-Battocletti (might only be running the 5,000)

Then there's a host of athletes (Japanese, XC qualifiers et al), who have shown similar/better form. I think something like top 12 would be a possible result, but would require many DNFs.

The steepler meanwhile is about 10 seconds from being competitive for the medal hunt. McColgan is more like 90 seconds in her current fitness.

how do the GB athletes feel about Jake Wightman getting a medical exemption to skip their trials? (apologies if it's been discussed ad nauseam in another thread already)

i imagine US athletes would have freaked out if we had given Athing Mu a medical exemption to skip the trials, even though realistically she's still the most talented 800 runner we've got and prob the only US woman who could contend for gold. i still prefer our system, as this sort of exemption would end up being abused/political and lead to further distrust of our governing body

The individual athletes involved will obviously have their own self-interested takes but British people don't object to the "first two if they have qualifying times and one discretionary place". It's a better system. We can argue over whether Giles or Wightman is the best third 800m guy but either call is potentially defensible. Leaving Athing Mu out of an Olympic team because she fell in one race is a dreadful system.

What people are annoyed about is the policy of not sending qualified athletes. Even if it's a financial issue they could have "paid qualifying" places and allow people to self-fund if they are a marginal qualifier. Plenty of people would do that to fulfill their Olympic dreams.

The proof is public: