Olli Hoare doesn't make Australia 1500 team

The USA isn't perfect, but at least we don't use this corrupt and shady nonsense to select our teams. It kind of fits out national ethos in a way: it doesn't matter who you are or who your sponsor is, show up on the day and you get your ticket.

Please provide a few of your reasons as to why a trial system wouldn't work in Australia?

The main one is that the Australian champs are in April. Olympics or World Champs are between July and September. If selections were solely made from this meet, the opportunity to select (at least partially) on the basis of the results over an entire northern hemisphere track season would be lost. Sure the selections would be simpler and cleaner from a a trial based system but the quality of the team would inevitably be lower.

Depth: USA has many medal-level athletes per event. Australia might only have 1 or 2 at most. One bad day could wipe out our medal hopes.
Season timing: Our Nationals are months before Worlds or Olympics. Trial form may not reflect peak form at the big meet.
Geography: Our athletes are scattered around the world during the northern summer, racing in Europe and the US. A one-off trial isn’t practical.
Injuries: With smaller depth, we can’t afford to exclude a proven performer who had a bad race due to illness or injury.
Early selection: Locking in top athletes early allows them to plan training and peak for the championship itself, not just for a trial.
Medal protection: Discretion is needed to keep genuine medal chances (like Hull) on the team.

Do you mean, quality in the sense or readiness for the championships or quality in terms of athletes selected?
Not sure I'd agree with any of those points. There's no reason they need to even have the championships in April anyway.
If they chose based on nationals results as a selection trial, literally the only 1500m selection change across men and women would be Hoare in and Jude out.
If they put more emphasis on the national championships and planned at a better date relative to the major champs, they could have better quality fields and athletes could plan their seasons around it.

I'm not saying a selection trial is the perfect solution here but it's more objective. One thing I'm sure of is we've had 3 different selection controversies over the last 3 major championships and all 3 of them involved Nic Bideau's athletes getting selected based on discretion.

Basically I'm saying that we need to get those guy the eff out of Athletics Australia. I honestly cannot believe that he still holds a position of power within the organisation.
Talk about a conflict of interest.

I think these points are true:

Criteria and process is murky and creates confusion and there are clear data points to suggest Ollie deserves a spot

NB has influence (all line ball calls fall MTC’s way)

But I can’t see the huge injustice here.

Anyone who’s paid attention can see Ollie is struggling and current form suggests he probably shouldn’t line up. As called out before unfortunately racing so much and so poorly has hurt his chances. If you take the view pick the team most likely to get the best outcome - they probably have it right.

Regardless of its drawbacks, the theatre and attention it brings to Australian athletics would make it worth it. Maurie Plant has been great and in reality there isn’t much on the line. Imagine a cut-throat selection trials…

Maybe Olli should have stopped racing after running 3:31 at Rome Diamond League? Spencer & Thomas seemed so confident of their selections that they stopped racing at the end of July and didn't not race for the remainder of the qualifying window. AA should add a line in the selection policy to indicate that your manager's name will be part of the criteria or maybe that's what they mean by "Any additional factors deemed relevant by the Selection Committee"

I’d happily call out Nic Bideau bias normally, but Ollie hasn’t raced well this year so this selection makes sense.

The policy just needs to be clear so that all the athletes know what they need to do. Surely part of why OIlie ran himself mad this season is because he didn't know if his 3.31 would stack up, even if it was 2nd fastest.

good call

Hoare has been stinking out the diamond league with a comical number of dead last finishes. way off form and mentally fragile. there are plenty of others who are far better prepared to deliver a strong performance. Hoare would just get knocked out in the first round. good to see some common sense applied

Remind me of the background of your president?

The point is that Olli's 3:31 in Rome, along with the rest of the selection policy which prioritises proven championship performances, should have locked in his selection. It should have been Spencer and Thomas who were frantically racing in the last month to prove their selection but neither of them raced in the final month at all.

Was waiting for a decision like this--the only time Olli did well in global championships were the Comm Games. But in several World Championships and two Olympics he did terribly, combined with his season performances--again with one outlier--I think this is the right decision. What is he expecting? If he cannot perform at a high level both in season and at global championships.. his competition is just too good and deserve to go.

100%.

In hindsight it's odd that those two weren't racing. I wonder if their management assured them they'd be fine.

There is a reason that the US is the only country in the world that does a top 3 at trials system; depth. For the rest of us its different we just don't have the depth across all events to make the cost and effort of putting on a full trials worthwhile. I'm pretty sure Australia have at best 2 or 3 events across road,vtrack and field where there are more qualified athletes than places. It just so happens that this year it's the 1500m so everyone on here cares, even in these rare cases its usually obvious who to pick.

The UK system is the same, there are only a handful of events where there are 4 or more qualified, I think they do a stronger job of limiting this with B standards and priority for medallists, although this leads to its own issue such as not taking full teams when there are qualified athletes.

National funding for sport is very limited and based on winning medals, the risk of your one and only medal hope messing up at trials is too high. If a top US athlete messes up at trials, you have a queue of high quality replacements lined up to take their place, this is just not the case elsewhere.
I'm sure if other countries had the same depth and industry funding in athletics we'd see more top 3 trials, but they don't. You do need good governance in federations to make this work though which is not the case everywhere.

4.11.4.7 basically translates to “We wil pick whoever we want for whatever reason suits us.”

That's a damning list. You can give a pass to Jacobs as the US 5k team is strong, and Klecker is past his prime on the track, but the rest should be in Tokyo. Injuries are killing that group.

Ollie is desperately unlucky. Maybe if he'd had a better record in major champs he'd have been given the nod but as others have said, when the call is marginal like this, everyone know that the Nic Bideau athlete gets selected.