BREAKING: Leonard Korir not going to Paris! 11 Universality athletes get in ahead of him!

Not sure how accurate my rant was about them breaking the rules after looking at the women's side.

worldathletics.org

Road To | World Athletics

Open link

On the Women's side, they have 97 athletes listed as qualified with 88 by entry standard. So they may just hard cap the entries at 80 despite showing 81 qualified for the men.

But then it's weird why they even bothered listing the 81st Universality athlete if they're just going to ignore them later once they finalize the field. And how do you determine who is the lowest ranked Universality guy to chop off?

So still lots of questions on if they are going to go above 80 or not.

On the women's side, Road to Paris shows a potential 97 participant race: 88 qualified by entry standard and 9 universality places.

Sure seems to me that WA should have the men's universality places be in addition to a field of 80 athletes accepted through the normal qualifying time and ranking procedures.

My understanding is The Standard willn be 2:06:30 starting in 2025, Only 37 would hae made it with the 2:06:30 Standard as Countries can only have 3 Athletes Maximum, meaning Yes Kenya and Ethiopia have Many who can get that standard, but like every other Country they can only have 3

Wish you had emailed us if you had known how many spots they were going to take.

We had always kept open the possibility of the universality spots taking away his spot but I didn't expect it to happen.

From the document:

"Following the end of the qualification period, World Athletics shall confirm the number of athletes having achieved the entry standard plus the approved unqualified athletes and shall subsequently determine the athletes qualified by virtue of their World Athletics World Rankings position"

"There will be no reallocation of unused Universality places"

"6 May 2024 - World Athletics to (only for Marathon):

-confirm list of approved Unqualified athletes

-confirm the list of athletes qualified by entry standard

-publish the World Athletics World Rankings and qualified athletes

8 May 2024 - Deadline to decline a quota place for the Marathon

9-11 May 2024 - World Athletics to reallocate unused quota places in the Marathon

12 May 2024 - World Athletics to publish the last edition of the Road to Paris for Marathon with the final list of all athletes eligible for final entry"

So it looks like ranking spots will be allocated by next week, but since the limit of 80 is exceeded (81), it looks like that won't happen unless athletes qualified by entry standard decline their position (i.e. doping ban or injury). The US would need four to drop, since Albertson is 84th (Korir would be allowed to take the spot since he has run under 2:11:30). So far one drop (M. Kimutai, BRN) can be guaranteed. Any more seem unlikely at this point. We will know by the 12th.

No, the added Mixed events are an attempt to keep the sports fresh and new for younger viewers. Otherwise, the sport risk being dropped like wrestling was a few years back and had to fight it's way back in to the olympic schedule. (Guess Wrestling needs to add co-ed tag team category too make it fresh and innovating.) ;-)

Otherwise, IOC prez might want to bring in X-games, since they captivate the younger generation more.

I feel like making universality places not count towards the field size (ie not take up world ranking spots) is the most obvious thing to do. You're literally replacing people who earned their way there with what's essentially a consolation prize for having a whole country that sucks.

All of this talk about the US men should run under the 2:08:10 or they can't complain is really getting ridiculous. Think about it, the window was open for about a year and a half. At the elite/pro level, marathoners can really only race an all out marathon twice a year. If you were hoping to compete in the olympics for the US marathon team, you had to race the trials in February which ended up being a hot day. That takes out 1 of the possible 3 attempts you had. Then it comes down to the Spring last year and the Fall. If you raced our only domestic world major last Spring (Boston), you were greeted with a downpour and a headwind (even the world record holder was over a minute off of the stadard that day). That leaves the fall, well if you chose NYC good luck running fast there (only top 3 ran the standard last year with 4th place (Abdi Nageeye, 2:04:45 PR) being over 2 minuites off). So basically, if you stay domestic and you are a pro (whom typically race the world major marathons), it was Chicago or bust and that does happen to be where our 2 did run the standard. The point is, it is not track, these guys do not have nearly the number of attempts and the time is extremely dependent on the course and weather.

It wouldn't be an olympic cycle without someone, or a bunch of someone's, getting screwed over, would it?

All this goes back to the absurd limitation placed on the number of competiiors for the marathon. There is no way the universality athletes should be placed ahead of anyone on the road to paris list. The best marathoners in the world have been strategically working to get the qualifying times and be on that list for a year... and they get knocked off by 14 runners who, frankly, don't deserve to be in the field. Add them after the fact if you wish, totally fine, but not to push others out of the field. I don't recall, in any of the parsing of IOC's "rules" for the marathon, that this was mentioned as a possiblity at all.

There is no way that the Paris course can't handle 90+ athletes if it can handle 80. Screw you IOC, yet again, screw you. You really can't ever do the right thing, can you?

This is bullsh!t, seriously.

I think alot of ppl give korir and Paul chelimo the benefit of the doubt simply because they are stereotypical Kenyans. I haven't seen any recent results that signify they are world class Olympic threats. Gault and the Johnson Brothers had a big fallout earlier this year over this topic.

Also, I know you are close friends with this individual. I came across their pof page during a reverse image search. I think you might find it interesting......

He wasn’t going to medal.
I’m not particularly torn up. At least he had his Olympic experience in 2016.

If you do this don't decrease the number of maximum participants.

OK, second thoughts to add here:

The Brits have three men under the standard and we don't. Phil Sesemann went to Valencia and ran the ultrafast course to get under the standard. No serious Americans were in the field. I think its time to look at what is keeping the US men from going to Valencia, Rotterdam or Berlin and running where it is set up for the fastest possible times.

The economic factors contributing to this need to be addressed: US marathons paying extra to have the top Americans race on home soil is the biggest one. You would start to think that it would make longer term sense for sponsors to incentivize Americans to go somewhere else and run FAST. It will help their overall standings in the world, put them into play on a larger scale and those standings could help command higher appearance money elsewhere.

But you have to go and do it first. You need to go somewhere else besides Chicago with its crappy roads and variable weather and run under 2:08:10. It would take stepping outside fo the comfort zone for the Americans to go and do this, as well as some offset by the sponsors to perhaps make up for the loss of appearance money in NYC and Chicago or Boston to get the athletes there, but it would have rendered this whole situation a simpler. I was always critical of Alan Culpepper as a runner who never wanted to get out of his comfort zone. Ever.

Do I want to see CJ "I just go out and try to hang on" Albertson go to Valencia and just put his head down with a bunch of other sub 2:09 guys and see what happens? I sure as hell do and wish that Brooks would fund that for him. Might do some interesting things to his PR for sure.

The business of marathons, the big buck and the international circuit, has just run headlong into the business of the arbitrary Olympic rules like a brick wall. And it has, as usual, turned into the worst of all possible solutions for everone. Especially for Korir, who has long been a really good guy and became even more likeable after the Oly trials.

Damn, this sucks.

How many 'stereotypical Kenyans' have two Olympic medals, most recently in 2021?

9-11 May 2024 - World Athletics to reallocate unused quota places in the Marathon

This is interesting to me. Will the WA put more participants in to the marathon as the other events don't meet their quota? So, WA can meet the 1,810 that Track and Field is allotted? For example, at the WC it appears 38 was the # for Field events but PV only had 35 on the entry list. Would that give 3 more marathoners if PV and other events can't max out their quota.

A ray of sunshine, which gets cloudier the more I think about it. ( The main problem with this wishful thinking is the Quota # for Field events in the olympics are at 32, so doubt those events will not get full fields.)

It's all a joke that World Athletics wanted to propagate a field made up of 50% who have the standard and 50% who made it through ranking. Ranking was supposed to encourage more racing. But athletes avoid competition so they can put all their efforts in a time trial, as they see that ranking doesn't guarantee anything even if you are ranked top 80 in a field of 80. All those people at Sound Running instead of World Indoors was right!

I suspect the field will be bigger and Korir will get to go, but what stress.

Even in Kenya Paul Chelimo is PAUL CHELIMO.

This is it. Phil Sesemann is a good example because he's not a top tier athlete, I would bet he only has a small deal (I'm.pretty sure that until recently, it was kit only). So he's probably funding some of the trips to Valencia and Seville himself. He's not on UKA funding either, neither is Mahamed Mahamed (Puma athlete). I get that it's cheaper for a Brit to go to Valencia than an American, but we're probably talking a difference of ~$1500. For the next cycle, with the OQT going to 2:06.30, there's going to be no choice but to head to Valencia, Berlin, Seville. I guess it depends on what matters most: getting paid or going to the Olympics.

Agreed, it should have been 80 spots for qualified athletes, and these slow unqualified universality people shouldn't take up the 80. This is ridiculous. And it didn't say this anywhere in the qualification documentation that there would/could be random slow people entered who are not on anyone's radar.