Let's figure it out here. Road to Paris 10,000m Points after Trials Race

World Athletics really effed up their points system by weighing time so heavily vs place. With the current system interesting tactical races (like today) are worth less than Bryan Clay and The TEN? This shows theres no reason to race for place, aka the essence of running, most athletes are better off jumping in a time trial and going for the standard directly or even if you get 10th get sucked along for a fast time.

"They" can't take Izzo out of the rankings. She earned her points and is ahead of Valby. If Izzo is in on rankings and Valby isn't, there isn't any leapfrogging spots in the same country. Valby needs people to drop out of the run to Paris. Izzo could graciously be one of those drops, but no one can force her.

So, USATF can't elect to take the first three in the trial and not take - for example - Izzo so that Valby gets in?

There are not heats in the 10,000 so the Olympics is constrained as to how many they can let in. There are several African countries that can field enough runners that the field will have too many runners without a fairly fast standard. The event being staged in Eugene right now is not just the Olympic Trials, it's also the USA Championship. Would you really want to stage the USA Championship with 4 runners. What if 3 met the standard? How would NBC feel about 3 runners doing a friendly run 25 times around the track?

It seems people are making this overly complicated. As I understood from reading the rules, for the 10000m there are 3 ways of qualifying for the Olympics: 1) time standard, 2) top 8 cross-country ranking, 3) rankings quota. There are not guaranteed team spots for the cross-country individuals, they are only deemed "qualified", similar to time qualifiers.

For the US, you first look at the top 3 in the Trials to see if each individual is qualified by one of those 3 methods. Kelati is qualified by time, Valby probably qualified through rankings quota, and Schweitzer probably qualified through rankings quota. Only if one or more of the top 3 are not qualified through one of the 3 methods do you go any further. For example, if Schweitzer did not qualify through ranking quota, then you would go down the list for the next qualified individual. However, I have not yet sorted out whether Izzo would be next, or whether the US would simply follow the order of the results of qualified individuals in the Trials final, i.e., go to the next person on the rankings quota.

If I am wrong on this, please point out the rule I misunderstood.

Of course, the next individual on the rankings quota list must be sufficiently high on the rankings compared to individuals from other countries to fit within the 27 limit for the 10000m.

Valby sounds 100% confident in her letsrun interview that she is going to Paris in the 10k. Hopefully she and her coach know something that we don't.

Would think she’s going based on her performances- gut feel

I don't know if it has been mentioned before, but I'm quite sure that Sarah Lahti from Sweden (qualified via xc ranking) won't go since she has been injured all year. I'm also quite confident that Alessis Zarbo (also in via xc ranking) won't be allowed to compete because France has very hard qualification standards across all disciplines

Look at post #8 on the following thread for some other names that might drop:

That's a very good comment in the other thread. The only thing I would question is his belief that Veerle Bakker of the Netherlands won't run the 10,000 in Paris. I follow Dutch athletics closely. I can almost guarantee that Bakker will run, if eligible and the Dutch federation agrees to take her.

He bases his estimate on the fact that Bakker did not run the 10,000 last year in Budapest. There was a reason for that. Her favorite season is cross country and her favorite track event is the steeplechase. She wins the Dutch steeplechase championship almost every year, including less than 24 hours ago. Bakker skipped the Budapest 10,000 last year only because she preferred to run the steeplechase at World University Games in China. That meet ended only days before Budapest.

Make no mistake, Bakker is not a contender at 10,000 on the track. She ran it for the first time in mid May of this year. Then again at European Championships a few weeks later. Neither result was particularly good. She has Paris opportunity only due to the quirk of cross country and assumed parallel competency.

Bakker has never competed in the Olympics and is not good enough to qualify in the steeplechase. She is good friends with Amina Maatoug. I can't see any chance she would skip an Olympic opportunity. Her most recent Instagram post hints as much.

She fared poorly at European 10,000 but wrote on Instagram: "I wasn’t super prepared for this distance, but glad I got a chance to race in such a field with an amazing crowd and this pretty stadium😍

The experience for sure helps to get more experienced and we’ll take the learnings for any race coming🧡

Izzo should be in. Here are the rules

Qualification standards and registration information for the 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials – Men’s and Women’s Track and Field, June 21 – 30, 2024 (the “Selection Event”) can be found here.
§ The top three (3) place finishers in each event at the Selection Event will select themselves via head-to-head competition for a position on the 2024 Olympic Games Team for the 2024 Olympic Games, provided they have met the 2024 Olympic Games qualifying standard during the prescribed period or qualified via their World Athletics Ranking Position.
§ The fourth (4th) place finisher in the Selection Event will select himself or herself via head-to head competition for an alternate position on the 2024 Olympic Games Team, provided they have met the 2024 Olympic Games qualifying standard during the prescribed period or qualified via their World Athletics Ranking Position.
§ In each event, if an athlete declines to participate on the Team, USATF will offer that position to the next highest placing individual meeting all criteria, continuing in this order until the three (3) positions plus the alternate position for each event are filled.
§ If, after the close of the Selection Event, there is a position or are positions in an event(s) on the 2024 Olympic Games Team that have not been filled, USATF will enter an athlete(s) or designate an athlete as an alternate, based upon their rank order of place finish at the Selection Event, and by virtue of their inclusion on the last edition of the Road to Paris list (WA list of all athletes qualified by Entry Standard and World Rankings) to be published July 7, 2024.

1) none of the 3 women decline by June 30th. Kelati is selected

2) 2 positions have not been filled because 2 athletes have not met the 2024 Olympic Games qualifying standard during the prescribed period or qualified via their World Athletics Ranking Position at the close of selection event

3) at that point,USATF will enter an athlete(s) or designate an athlete as an alternate, based upon their rank order of place finish at the Selection Event, and by virtue of their inclusion on the last edition of the Road to Paris list (WA list of all athletes qualified by Entry Standard and World Rankings) to be published July 7, 2024.

Valby will not be on that list on July 7th list, but Izzo will.

Rules also say that they will provide the list to the Olympics on July 8th

Rules are completely silent about the scratch thing. Purely a figment of our imagination at this point. If there is such a thing at the 2924 Olympics, then I guess the US could choose to send a third runner.

Now the problem they would have would be to select Henes (more points) or Valby (placed higher). No specific rules, so they would open themselves up to a lawsuit

I think under the current world athletics qualification rules, the protocol for USATF should be that in distance events that do not have at least 3 people with the standard, they have the final paced to olympic standard pace to maximize the chances the top 3 from the trials are able to go to the Olympics.

I just updated the women's 10,000 recap that Jonathan wrote when he talked about the Olympic qualification. Here is how it now reads:

There are only 27 spots in the Olympic 10,000 field so the auto standard is very fast -- 30:40, a time only six Americans have ever run. So Valby and Schweizer will have to rely on qualifying via world ranking. The good news for both of them is that that is likely to happen.

World ranking is determined by an average of your two best performances during the qualification window. After tonight, Valby will have 1213 world ranking points. She has 1221 from running 30:50 at the Bryan Clay Invite in April and will get 1205 for running 31:41.56 tonight (1155 for the performance plus 50 bonus points for finishing 2nd in a Category B competition).

Schweizer will have 1209 world ranking points. She has 1218 from running 31:04 at The TEN in March and will get 1200 for running 31:41.56 tonight (1155 for the performance plus 45 bonus points for finishing 3rd in a Category B competition).

If you look at the Road to Paris list, and remove the injured American Alicia Monson from the list, that would put them at #29 & #30 on the list - and 27 go to Paris.

Updated Road To Paris Standings
#27 - Elly Henes - USA
#28 - Klara Luken - Slovena
#29 - Valby - USA
#30 - Schweizer - USA

That doesn't sound good at first glance but two of the people ahead of them would be Americans they beat in the Trials in Katize Izzo (qualified via xc) and Elly Henes (world rank #27). If you removed them from the list as USATF wants to honor the order of finish at the Trials, Valby and Schweizer would move up to #27 and #28. Thus if there was one scratch, USATF could send the top 3 from the Trials.

And it seems likely that there will be at least one scratch from people ranked in the top 27 as the following must be considered:

• Eritrea's Rahel Daniel hasn't competed since February of 2023
• Sweden's Sarah Lahti hasn't competed since March. She had hamstring surgery, won't even start running until next month and her

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  makes it sound like she's definitely not running the Olympics.
• Uganda's Annet Chalangat may not be entered as she has never broken 34:00 on the track (although she was 16th at World xc).
• France's Alessia Zarbo, the former Oregon Duck, might not be entered as she has track pbs of 4:19.99, 9:15.98 and 15:50.47 and 32:28.57.
• It's not clear that Britain will use all three of its spots as Eilish McCoglan (who has the standard) is coming back from injury and dropped out of Europeans, Jessica Warner-Judd (who has the standard) has been suffering seizures in races and Samantha Harrison (who could replace them) hasn't raced all year.

The Road to Paris is not finalized -- the qualifying window ends on Sunday and we still need results from other national championships to roll in -- but Valby and Schweizer may have done enough to secure their spots.

I don't think you are right about Izzo.

Izzo is in on XC ranking. Her not being selected opens up another spot for an XC runner, not another running via rankings.

Izzo is ranked 14th in XC, but there are 7 Kenyans ranked ahead of her in XC and Kenya already has three with the standard. So if an XC runner doesn't take the slot, it goes down the XC list, not the track list.

No

Scratches occur after July 7th obviously, since countries only provide their list on July 8th.

Where do you read otherwise?

The July 7th list is what is being used by the US to fill the remaining spots.

Izzo in. Valby not on the list, so she would be out.

Then (later after scratches), it’s Henes or Valby, if filling the field is a thing at the 2024 Olympics. It is at WC. But Olympics have had a push to have less athletes, so i am not sure. US rules are silent about taking athletes after scratch period (maybe it’s silent because it’s not a thing).

Both the Valby and Schweizer teams are fairly certain they’re in, and I’m assuming they’ve dug into it more, and have more resources than the average anonymous Let’s Run commenter. Karissa said they figured anything below 31:50 would likely be enough.

The rules seem pretty clear. I posted them earlier.

There are no scratch “meeting” today

Izzo is in

I don’t see any scenario where Schweizer would be in