A Little Good News: USATF is appealing to get top 5 at US Olympic Marathon Trials the standard

TL,DR:

USATF doesn't know what they are doing, and puts out ambiguous statements.

Letsrun doesn't know what they are doing, calls ambiguous statement "darkest day in US distance running."

It's kind of crazy to ask for top 5 at the US Olympic Trials to get the standard. What if the US is weak in that event, why should it be judged specially? What if they gave that benefit to say Russia?

I think it's fair to ask for the weight of the Olympic Trials to be judged based on the competition that shows up -- maybe there should be bonus points based on the level of competition. Like if the competition at the Trials is better than the competition at an A-level race, wouldn't it make sense for it to be valued higher?

The other thing that might be fair is to have a rule that says top N at the trials get the standard if there are N qualified athletes. So like if the US has two people who qualify for the Olympics before the trials then they can alternatively send the top two places from the trials. Something like that...

dosnt a gold label race have to be open to everyone?

No the race has to conform to numerous IAAF rules to get the Gold Label status but free open entry is not one of those rules

It’d be ridiculous to auto classify the top 3 at the trials.

Why wouldn’t all other countries hold trials as well then, to get their top 3 auto classified?

Entitled Americans. We should have to play by the same rules as every other country. You have the standard regardless of if it's time or points or you don't go. The trials aren't important to the IAAF. They don't care if we run a trials race or not.

Why should the US have special dispensation?

Every other athlete from other countries needs to jump through these hoops imposed by the IAAF and achieve the ranking points / requirements from their own federation.

It's your own fault for (a) having your trials on a slow course and (b) not using the ranking drop down to pick the top 3 at the trials (who will almost almost certainly be in the top 80).

snow blow wrote:

Poster #718 wrote:

Not good. In a typical year even the #2 or #3 US marathoner is light years behind being competitive on the world level.

Our #5 in a typical year? What are we talking about, some 2:15 guy? Yeah, yeah, let's give that guy the Olympic standard. FFS.

Well up until last week the Olympic standard was 2:19.

Which every runner on the planet should be ashamed of. Not all that different than if the 1500m standard was 4:00

Enough is enough! Especially in the men's marathon if you can't hit the Olympic qualifying time standard (2:11:30) you stay home regardless what place you get in the trials. Start running faster.

sanchobaile wrote:

Ehso wrote:

That sure is a long-winded way to say, “ We were probably wrong and definitely jumped to alarmist, clickbait conclusions. Oops.”

disagree. all this goes to show the power of journalists holding power to account. as LRC points out in that post, they only freaked out in response to AN OFFICIAL USATF statement. USATF is to blame for the freakout, whether it was due or not. Not LRC. Get your act together and be transparent, USATF.

Journalist maybe? Letsrun aren't journalists. Letsrun ran with a one-sources story without verifying it's contents. They were crappy reporters and an embarrassment to the profession.

olyrun wrote:

Enough is enough! Especially in the men's marathon if you can't hit the Olympic qualifying time standard (2:11:30) you stay home regardless what place you get in the trials. Start running faster.

What are you talking about? 2:11:30 would have been top 9 in the last five Olympic marathons, and top 6 or 7 in four out of those five. When Meb won his silver in Athens he ran 2:11:29.

IAAF cannot make the US Olympic Marathon Trials (or any other country’s selection trials) a Gold Label race. Doing so would be unfair to other countries. What if the 3rd place mens finisher in Atlanta runs 2:20? Or 2:25? (Or 3 hours?) In theory we could then have a 2:25 US runner going to the Olympics, and all the other countries’ runners would have to run 2:11:30 or qualify through the world rankings / established international Gold Label races.

USATF writes another clear concise statement wrote:

Wine Turtle did you fail third grade math or are you just dense?

200 + nations with FIVE auto qualified entrants to the OG marathon yields over a THOUSAND in each OG Marathon.

USATF expands their "Grassroots Running " program beyond the borders of the USA.

This is embarrassing. Each country only gets to take 3, even if they have 5 hit the standard. 200x3=600. Did you not pass 3rd grade reading comprehension?

OMG. How dare we criticize Letsrun and Pea-brained Gault when they suck at their job. You got caught looking stupid and you double down

First you claim that no one is allowed to criticize your interpretation and that your interpretation was the only obvious one. When multiple people in the thread were either confused, disagreed and said there was room for interpretation. But nope you and Rojo acted like children (instead of professionals)

The bigger problem NOW, is that you readily admit “it's not even clear whether USATF actually has a selection policy in place at all at this time?” Really? Are you kidding me? Last week you swore up and down a Friday press release from a communications person that the selection criteria WAS set. Again. People pointed this out and you just keep doubling down.

You were so eager to push out an agenda and get out A story. You didn’t care if it was right. You relied on a single source and were too lazy to make a few phone calls. Too lazy to reach outside the USATF offices for clarification or comment.

Now you’ll stick to the whine of “they haven’t gotten back to us yet,” instead of admitting you screwed up.

Dark day- only for so called running journalism.

Has there ever been an issue of the Olympic Marathon being unbelievably overcrowded? Why did they lower the standard by seven and a half minutes? I presume they moved it up from 2:14 a number of years ago to get more Western runners in the race.

Remember the 2000 debacle where only Rod DeHaven made the team due (in part) to the Trials were held on a hilly course.

Instead of making an exception for the U.S. alone, why not allow three runners from the top 10 (or 15 or 20) countries in the Marathon the previous calendar year based on some objective criteria and then fill it in with people that hit the standard. The field size would likely be around the same as in previous years.

The IOC has capped the IAAF at 1900 athletes across all events (down from over 2000 in 2016). That’s the reason for the smaller marathon fields.

No it’s not unfair. Our Olympic Trials is stronger and deeper than the majority of Gold Label events, which is the easiest way to qualify for the Olympics. There are no Gold Label marathons in the US, although 3 WMMs. It’s not an unreasonable request to ask for our Trials to be labeled, esp with the late disclosure of the IAAF procedures. The Trials have been planned with financial, media, and sponsor contractual agreements for over a year.

reality check. wrote:

No it’s not unfair. Our Olympic Trials is stronger and deeper than the majority of Gold Label events, which is the easiest way to qualify for the Olympics. There are no Gold Label marathons in the US, although 3 WMMs. It’s not an unreasonable request to ask for our Trials to be labeled, esp with the late disclosure of the IAAF procedures. The Trials have been planned with financial, media, and sponsor contractual agreements for over a year.

Here are the men’s US Olympic marathon trials results from 2016: 1st 2:11:12, 2nd 2:12:20, 3rd 2:13:00 (and 6th 2:15:16). Sorry but these are not “stronger and deeper than the majority of Gold Label events”.

Not An Expert wrote:

The IOC has capped the IAAF at 1900 athletes across all events (down from over 2000 in 2016). That’s the reason for the smaller marathon fields.

Also worth noting that this isn't just limited to athletics - other sports are being told to reduce their total # of athletes as well.

In equestrian sports, countries have traditionally fielded a team of 4, with one drop score, so that only your best 3 performers counted. That's now been reduced to 3, with no drop score, for the 2020 games.