Amby Burfoot says: do away with the Olympic Marathon Trials

yeah I believe he did it, he's French after all, this is one if their main tenets, along with disabling smoke detectors so they can smoke wherever they want to

Again, Japanese marathon runners consistently destroy US ones nearly all the time if you compare times. They do not destroy US marathon runners in terms of Olympic medals won. That's basically a wash, our guys have a very slight edge in performance and their women have one. But it's a very thin edge either way and that they don't destroy us in terms of medals won might just be a coincidence but it's possible, though far from certain, that we might do a better job of getting people into our teams that are better suited for the Olympics than many of their people who normally destroy ours in other races. If you want to bring population size into this, if you combine Olympic medal performances of India and China, two most populous countries on earth both the US and Japan destroy them. You could toss Indonesia into that mix as well and they all still get destroyed. Yes, Belgium is tiny and has done well in terms of winning medals in men's Olympic marathons. But if you combined Belgium's medal count with the rest of Europe's since 1968 (I'd need to dig up the numbers again to be sure of this) I believe all of western Europe has either one or three more than we have depending on whether you count Cierpinski's as belonging to western Europe or not. I would not, he wasn't a western European he won them. Within reasonable limits, the number of serious marathon runners a country has is going to have a much bigger affect on its international performance than its overall population.

Thank you. For decades I've wondered what that was about and why nearly everyone he did it too seemed okay with it.

Japan destroys us but it seems that at the Olympics and Worlds we have been doing better.

Our system picks the people who can come through when it counts. That means something.

I don't want to hog this thread and I am not struggling in general but I am with what you seem to be saying. Why would you expect the system used for qualifying to a trials race to be the same as the one for selecting the team? How would what you're suggesting even work?

What I am getting at is that so many in this thread have been adamant that one has to prove it on that day, that qualifying solely by time (for the Olympics) would be against the American way of proving it on that day, but we did not use this as the vehicle to gain entrance into the Trials, we use a system of time qualification, which so many seem to scoff at in general, so if we take their position at face value, they would have to believe that a race should be held to determine who advances into the Olympic Trials. Would it be practical? Maybe not, but let us be intellectually honest about it, and if qualifying by fastest times is so abhorrent to these people, well recognize that this is how one qualifies for the Trials, in a manner that these people find unpalatable.

Here's an issue with this thread:

It fails to start with a clearly identified problem. The implied problem is that we are sending the wrong people and that other people could do better. But we don't know that to be true at all.

Whether the "other people" would be picked by a committee (most of us hate that) or through a 2+1 method (two trials qualifiers and one more from a points system)(some seem to like that), there is no way to know that those people would be any better.

Ask yourselves this: Are the performances of these third-place finishers from the trials so bad that we think a new system would be better? Or is there no problem identified here that even needs fixing?

What we know about third-place trials finishers since 1984, in the Olympic Games:

You have the finisher, (Place among USA finishers), then place overall.

1984 John Tuttle (3rd) DNF
1988 Pete Pfitzinger (1st) 14th
1992 Bob Kampainen (3rd) 17th
1996 Keith Brantley (1st) 28th
2000 Mark Coogan (Didn't Qualify for Olympics)
2004 Dan Browne (3rd) 65th
2008 Brian Sell (3rd) 22nd
2012 Abdi Abdirahman DNF (1 of 2 DNFs)
2016 Jaren Ward (2nd) 6th
2020 Abdi Abdirahman (3rd) 40th

So, third-place male finishers were the third American in the
Olympics (or didn't qualify) 60% of the time. They only cracked the overall top
ten once, and were top eleventh to twentieth overall two times (three total
top-twenty finishes in ten chances).

Women
1984 Julie Isphording (2nd) 36th
1988 Cathy O'Brien (3rd) 40th
1992 Francie Larrieu Smith (2nd) 12th
1996 Anne Marie Lauck (1st) 10th
2000 Anne Marie Lauck Did Not Qualify
2004 Jen Rines (2nd) 34th
2008 Blake Rusell (1st) 27th (Other two USA women Did Not Finish)
2012 Kara Goucher (2nd) 11th
2016 Shalane Flanagan (1st) 6th
2020 Molly Seidel (1st) 3rd

So, the third-place female finisher was the third American or Did
Not Qualify only 20% of the time. They finished in the top ten overall three
times and eleventh to twentieth twice more (a total of five top-twenty
finishes)

Are these results so bad that 1) the system should change and 2) that an athlete picked as the +1 (after the top two from the trials) would give the USA a better shot at a medal or even a top ten finish?

On the men's side I think a points qualifier might perform better in some years but that is far from guaranteed. On the women's side I think that the third-place finishers do really well and the current system is supported.

I'm not sure why you think we need a trials to get into the trials. Thats already done by having a broad time standard that culls it down to a group of candidates. From those candidates they race to self-select for the team. Simple.

You're the one who's struggling. Trials to get into the trials? Or do you think we need trials to get into the trials to get into the trials?

Walk me through it.

So qualifying by time is good enough for the Trials but not good enough for the Olympics. Qualifying by place is “perfect” for the Olympics. The argument seems to be that this is “perfect” because this is the way we have done it. That is what is being said.

Oy vey. Keep chasing your tail.

So anyone wanting to run the Trial gets once chance to get a qualifying time? The idea behind the Trials is to assemble anyone who at any point in the qualifying window shows any evidence of possibly being good enough to qualify for the Olympics. From there you're looking for the cream of the crop. But you cannot do that without a fairly decent sized crop. In 1968 there were nationwide marathons that were kind of qualifiers for the Trials. Something like the first six (maybe?) finishers at each one were given travel money to get to and stay in Alamosa. If you limited the field to only those 24 or whatever "qualifiers " you'd have left out Ron Daws.

I am simply playing devil’s advocate here. I am in no way clamoring for change of this format. But to instigate a discussion about it seems almost anathema to your very being. Or maybe it was the way it was done by Amby. But changes have been made at times. The marathon trials used to be in April or at any rate closer to the Olympics. So a change was made and probably for the better.

No what I am saying is that if one were to be consistent, one would have a qualifying race for the Trials. Maybe the top 50 (whatever number) or so would get in. I am not clamoring for any of this. I am simply trying to make people intellectually honest or consistent, when they are ostensibly blind to the fact that they are not.

You’re Jewish?

I appreciate your thought process

So you are agreeing that looking at medals is stupid as you end up making up stupid rules to get the results you want.

realistically the US and Japan both have about the medals you would expect given their marathon talent pool. Having a dozen 2:08 guys doesn’t help when you can send 3 and need a 2:06 to win. Our top end talent over that time period(shorter, Moore, Rodger’s, Al Sal, Meb, Hall, rupp, and ritz ) lines up well against Japan. US depth is horrible but it just doesn’t matter. Having 1 sub 27:00 rupp gives you a medal chance. Having 100 2:10 guys doesn’t.

and this is even more stupid discussion when you realize that Japan doesn’t select their team (well at least recently). They run a trials race and then have an option to replace a 3rd in case of extraordinary performance. Personally I can live with bumping off our 3rd placer if someone ran a 2:05… Again if Kiptum was a US citizen and cramped up in the trials, is the US team better off without him? For the US it is pretty much a non issue as we never have a dude with a top 10 type time. There is basically nobody who is a clear choice for the team..

Just an old man, Commie take from Amby. Let the bureaucrats pick everything for us, forget the little man or woman having their shot at a team because someone else has a bigger name or better influence with a committee. Our selection process for the entire Olympic team is the best in the world, its the AMERICAN way and I'm proud of that.

Amazing how many of these 70-something boomers think this way, their young selves would be ashamed of what they've become. If Amby doesn't actually feel this way and just wrote that article for views as a hot-take, shame on him for another reason.

Of course this would be your take. I can picture you pounding your chest as you say this, “this is the best way to do it because gosh darn that is the way we do it, it’s the American way, and I will tolerate no dissent.” You, not Amby, is the one who appears to be the old man who cannot evolve.

3.5% Ashkenazi according to my DNA.