Amby Burfoot says: do away with the Olympic Marathon Trials

Me reading pg 1: "Hmm, some interesting ideas."
Me reading pg 3: "Oh, I bet this goes off the rails."
...skip to pg 18...
"and we're talking about if Malmo is Jewish"

Good night, folks!

No, I'm not agreeing that counting medals is stupid when you're talking about how well or poorly a country's runners perform at an Olympics. What makes you think I'm admitting that?

Amby Burfoot says do away with the Olympic Marathon Trials. I fully agree but I think we should take his argument one step further and do away with the Olympic Marathon. No need to actually run the race, since a selection committee can more fairly decide who gets gold, silver, and bronze.

To make this argument so that even the simpletons can understand.

”So you’re telling me the best way to find 3 people to best represent the US in the Olympic Marathon is to have a race among the top 200 or so Americans in which they actually race a marathon?”

”Yup.”

”OK, hard or argue with that. But what if one of the best ones is injured or sick that day?”

”Well those are the breaks. Life is unfair sometimes for some people.”

”But could we open the 3rd slot for someone if they are obviously a superior marathoner to the 3rd place finisher?”

“You sound un-American boy! We might have to deport you boy! Plus how is it to be determined (and by who) who is “obviously a superior” marathoner to the 3rd place guy?”

”OK I give up. I am too lazy to think. We will do it as you say.”

End of thread

I think there is some merit to the idea of having a flexible spot where you could add someone who looks a real medal threat if s/he is sick or hurt and can't run the trials. But the only times I can think of when we actually had a medal threat in the distance races was in '72 and '76 when Marty Liquori was hurt for both trials. So it's not a situation that seems to demand a lot of thought. Can you think of a US distance runner who would have been considered a favorite to win a medal who was left off the team because s/he was hurt and didn't run the trials?

On the other hand, if you waive someone into the team because s/he is too injured to qualify through the trials do you remove someone who made the team but since got hurt badly enough that they have no real chance of doing well? In Montreal Rodgers' foot hurt so much that he tried to run in places where the coaches wouldn't see how badly he was limping and replace him.

49% Scandinavian. Who founded Dublin? ...the Vikings

Why else do you do you keep coming up with excuses why the US gets outperformed? Kenya selects a team. They are more talented. Japan select 1/3rd the team? They are more talent. Belgium selects a team? They are more talented. Heck the one other country that did a real marathon trials in 2021(Ethiopia) horribly under performed with 3 dnfs. Compare that to when they named the team in 2016 and got a silver. Clear proof selection is better? Of course not. It could simply be sample size.

Yeah that is right. Somebody should do a thread on this DNA testing subject or maybe there already is one.

I am a distance runner from Canada, one of those countries that
Mr. Burfoot thinks gets it right. I did my graduate work at Berkeley in the
mid-70s, where I got to know Brian Maxwell, a Canadian on the Cal track team.
Brian’s experience trying to qualify for Canada’s marathon team for the 1976
Olympics is the foundation of my longstanding distaste for selection systems - we’re
talking 49 years and counting! (Brian was 3rd in Boston in 1977, had
a marathon best of 2:14:43, and founded PowerBar with his future wife.)

Brian couldn’t ever get a straight answer from the Canadian
Track and Field Association (CTFA) about what races “mattered” for selection to
the marathon team. So he spent months running marathons here there and
everywhere in an attempt to qualify. Brian was an outsider; neither he nor his
coach was part of the small in-crowd in Canadian distance running. As one
prominent Canadian coach said to me around that time, “Brian’s not a real
Canadian.”

Brian didn’t make the marathon team in 1976; he ran poorly
in the race that turned out to matter. But Brian’s problem in 1976 wasn’t a
poor performance; it was the wear and tear and the craziness of trying to
extract the criteria for selection from the powers that be.

The CTFA, later Athletics Canada, had a seniors moment in
1984 and held a marathon that was ALMOST a trials race. A 23-year-old named
Silvia Ruegger, who had been a very good university runner but had never run a
marathon, entered the race. And won the race. And broke the Canadian record. In
Los Angeles, she finished eighth – still the highest finish ever by a Canadian
woman in the Olympic marathon. In early 1985, she broke the Canadian record
again, and that record stood for another twenty-eight years.

Here's my point. AC would NEVER have put Ruegger on the
team. Ruegger put Ruegger on the team. And that’s the way it should be.

We are almost 50 years removed from the opaque criteria that
my friend Brian ran into. The shoes bear no resemblance to the shoes of the
70s, the tracks are made of completely different materials, and athletes’ times
are faster. But in Canada the selection criteria are as opaque and subjective as
ever. For example, Tristan Woodfine appealed the decision to leave him off the
Olympic marathon team for Tokyo, arguing that Athletics Canada was biased in
favor of Cam Levins. From Canadian Running, June 21, 2021:

“Levins struggled to repeat the success of his 2018 Canadian
record-breaking performance of 2:09:25. He was in both the London Marathon
where Woodfine ran the time he was counting on to cement his position on Team
Canada, and the Marathon Project, where Preisner ran 2:10:17 in his debut.
Levins DNF’d in London and finished well behind Preisner in Arizona, in
2:12:15. But ultimately his 2:10:14 performance in Austria was considered
sufficient to overrule Woodfine’s objections.”

Canada’s selection system also does an excellent job of
minimizing interest in the sport. There’s almost never even a semi-selection
race in Canada, so our athletes race almost everywhere but at home. Canadian
Running headlined yesterday that Ben Preisner, seeking to run the standard
for selection to this year’s marathon team, just ran the second-fastest
marathon ever run by a Canadian man. In Japan. Good for interest in the sport,
eh?

So yes, I would trade Canada’s bureaucratic (the appeals! the
appeals!), no-surprises, and interest-killing selection system for the US’s open,
surprise-laden, and thrilling trials-based system. The US approach opens the
door to fresh, new faces in a way that is unknown in my country. Our system is
pretty much a living breathing example of what a British 800 runner told me in
the late 70s: “The hardest thing in British athletics is getting on the
national team. The second hardest thing is getting off the national team.”

I'm not making excuses for the US getting outperformed because in comparisons with any countries other than East African ones and yes, possibly Belgium which has quite a history and tradition of good distance running, I don't believe that we do. Because Belgium has such a small population they don't usually have a lot of depth which means they usually don't need to do much selecting.

DNA testing is complicated. It all depends on how many generations are reflected in the tests. CRI Genetics goes way back. For me it follows Sir Francis Drake in Central America. Diaspora from Africa all the way to Japan, and Paternal/Maternal lines all the way back to Africa 130,000 years.

1) Can we limit everything to the modern pro world with out of competition drug testing and a biological passport?

2) Even though I'm the one constantly writing in the WTW about their amazing depth, I've never bought into the the theory that the Japanese are better than America at the marathon and they certainly aren't destroying us. I think the US is actually better. Japan is very good at producing tons of 207-8 guys and 221-223 type women who do next to nothing on the global scene and get destroyed when they get there.

The top Japanese man in 2023 was the 61st fastest man in the world. They had 1 woman in the top 40. Yes, scores of their men are faster than our men but if you put them in a championship setting, I'll take our chances. The US's top finisher has beaten the top Japanese finisher in 4 of the last 5 Olympic men's marathons and 3 of the last 5 Olympics women's marathons including all of the last 3.

2020 Olympics- Top Japanese man was 6th, Top US man was 8th. Edge Japan.
2016 Olympics - Top Japanese man was 16th. US took 3rd and 6th. Edge USA.
2012 Olympics - Top Japanese man was 6th. Top American man was 4th. Edge USA.
2008 Olympics - Top Japanese man was 13th. Americans went 9-10. Edge USA.
2004 Olympics - Top Japanese man was 5th. Top American man was 2nd. Edge USA.

2020 Olympics- Top Japanese woman was 8th. Top US woman was 3rd. Edge USA.
2016 Olympics - Top Japanese woman was 14th. Americans went 6-7-9. Edge USA.
2012 Olympics - Top Japanese woman was 16th. Americans went 10-11. Edge USA.
2008 Olympics - Top Japanese woman was 13th. Top American was 17th. Edge Japan.
2004 Olympics - A Japanese woman won gold. An American won bronze. Edge Japan.

you're saying you're African?

3.5% Jewish means you're not Jewish

We all are. I'm 0.1 % Luhla Kenyan

you're not black, you're a white straight cisgender male

Of course. With 3x the talent, you would expect the US to normally have 2 people on before the Japanese 1st finisher. Medals are about top end talent and Japan doesn’t many people people at the level of hall, Rupp, ritz, and meb who can run sub 13:00/27:00/60 like you expect from an Olympic medal winner.