Will the ATC go bankrupt? How many trials qualifiers are there now? 72 women break 2:45, 37 guys break 2:19 at CIM?

2024 will bring change wrote:

USATF has to abide by the IAAF's minimum qualification standards for its Olympic Trials qualifications.

They don't have to do anything. They could have 2:08:30 for the men and 2:24:00 for the women as qualifying times. They could just hand pick three runners.

Incorrect - the standard has to follow the IAAF standard and cannot be harder.

This article written just before the 2016 OT Marathon explains it:

https://www.letsrun.com/news/2015/12/usatf-acts-swiftly-relaxes-standards-2016-olympic-trials-219-men-245-women-match-olympic-standards/

They should just hold the trials at a big city marathon like Chicago, New York, or Houston. These are already big name events and adding an Olympic trials element to the race certainly would increase viewership. Raise the standards to 2:15 and 2:35 and just have the OTQ people start before everyone else. Then have the other non-American elites start five minutes or later so there are multiple races to watch in one marathon.

Dur wrote:

2024 will bring change wrote:

USATF has to abide by the IAAF's minimum qualification standards for its Olympic Trials qualifications.

They don't have to do anything. They could have 2:08:30 for the men and 2:24:00 for the women as qualifying times. They could just hand pick three runners.

No, they can't:

I'm sure this has been posted elsewhere, but looking at it as a percent of the women's WR. 2:45 is 23% slower than 2:14:04.

What's 23% slower than 2:01:39?

2:29:43. Lol.

Excluding Kosgei's performance, 2:45 as a percentage of 2:17:01 is 20%. Apply that to 2:01 and you get 2:26:30. Still, lol.

But imo the better way to look would be number parity. In that case the women's time should be 2:42. This would mean 183 women under the full marathon B standard (n.b. that's prior to this weekend - I haven't looked at the numbers post-CIM). There were 386 women's and 182 men's full marathon entries when I looked at it last.

Which is to say dropping the women's standard by only 3:00 would eliminate 203 entries.

I'd be curious to see how parity would be reached in other years, or even how it changed after this weekend.

Sgt. Joe Friday wrote:

What does it matter if the standards are too easy? I don't want to watch an Olympic trials Marathon with 12 people in it. No thanks.

After 5 miles, there will be about 12 people in it. ..

times will change in 2024 wrote:

Incorrect - the standard has to follow the IAAF standard and cannot be harder.

This article written just before the 2016 OT Marathon explains it:

https://www.letsrun.com/news/2015/12/usatf-acts-swiftly-relaxes-standards-2016-olympic-trials-219-men-245-women-match-olympic-standards/

Interesting. I always assumed it was a USATF rule not a law that required the standards to be no harder than Olympic Standards. I guess they could exclude CIM as it is not eligible for IAAF qualifying purposes.

Sesamoiditis wrote:

Interesting. I always assumed it was a USATF rule not a law that required the standards to be no harder than Olympic Standards. I guess they could exclude CIM as it is not eligible for IAAF qualifying purposes.

If we want to get really far into technicalities, it is a ruling in an arbitration case interpreting that law (and is a bit ambiguous). But I think they could exclude CIM. The entire reason they chose the standard they did was to not exclude Boston as a qualifier.

1984shoehyoeguy wrote:

In 1984 before the shoes and all of the silly recovery tools, 10 guys ran under 2:16 at CIM.

The winner was 2:11 in 1984 and 10th place was 2:16. So I’m still calling BS on the shoes and all of the zippy tricks and products.

So would the 2:11 in 1984 run a world record? And if these shoes are so great why are guys in 2019 so slow. They should be running 2:07.

https://www.athlinks.com/event/3241/results/Event/98187/Course/136926/Results

Ken Martin was a 13:30 guy. Your numbers are about as useless as me trying to claim that CIM is slower than NYC because Martin managed sub 2:10 and run his PB on that course. We see guys running 2:19 in the "BS" prototype shoes that aren't capable of sub 15 on the track. And then there's Negasa going from 2:09 to 2:03. Americans back then just stuck to training hard with 0 reason to believe that they would be making significant money. There are more American men with the ability to run a trials qualifying time, they just are sitting behind the desk after college and barely running for maybe the first 5 years before getting the itch...or they never come back to training well at all.

CIM drops 340 feet.

Boston drops 447 feet.

CIM has more up and down than Boston.

Boston '19 produced six finishing times by Americans faster than the winning CIM '19 time.

True facts.

Yet, Boston times are taken without a quibble, while people obsess about CIM.

Combination of East Coast bias and Hate California bias.

I would propose that the trials qualifying standard be set so that it would insure a field size that would be similar to the size of the olympic field.

Which is what? 100-150 runners?

No, 2:19 is in fact awful. It's 9 minutes outside of the low bar to be barely relevant at a WMM race.

Relating OTQ standards to WRs is silly, should be related to ARs since it's been a generation or more since a US runner approached the WR on an eligible course.

The 1975 Boston Marathon had 49 OT qualifiers. Las Vegas is another great marathon to qualify.

So how come the JAAF could require much faster standards for their MGC race qualification?

David S wrote:

Congratulations to everyone who qualified!

Didn't there use to be a marathon in Texas like Austin or something where a ton of people used to go to try to qualify? How do the numbers and percentage of qualifiers at CIM compare?

I believe you're referring to the 3M Marathon in Austin.

955 men have run 2:09:53 or faster all time.

Only 955 women have run 2:30 or faster (per IAAF)

That's a 15.5% difference

The difference between the two marathon world records is about 10.2%

In 2019 413 men broke 2:12

413 women have broken 2:34:13.

2:30:37 is the IAAF performance number that corresponds with the men's 2:11:59 (1127), a time that only 262 women have bettered in 2019.

As of today, 118 U.S. men have hit the Trials Standard, compared to 9 that have the Olympic Standard (~13:1)

As of today, 281 U.S. women have hit the Trials Standard, compared to 14 that have hit the Olympic Standard (~20:1)

Not really making a point I should say, just throwing some stats out there.

Cis Chris wrote:

David S wrote:

Congratulations to everyone who qualified!

Didn't there use to be a marathon in Texas like Austin or something where a ton of people used to go to try to qualify? How do the numbers and percentage of qualifiers at CIM compare?

I believe you're referring to the 3M Marathon in Austin.

Shoot, was it the Motoralla marathon and the 3M half?

Old age sucks.

Doesn't change your point but to nitpick anyway, a few runners under each of those times weren't from the US