Is it true the 2024 OT standards will be 2:12 M and 2:32 W..?

BS wrote:

Oh, and please never complain about how the US has no depth in distance races as its attitudes like yours that drive off that depth. I will never understand people who deride the pursuit of excellence (and the minimal rewards available) as stupid and a bunch of posers. It just seems silly that nearly everyone should settle for mediocrity or worse yet just give up.

This ?

The standards should be: 2:15 for the Men, and 2:30 for the Woman. These times are both +10 minutes over the winning times in most Major marathons. Anything slower than these times, the athlete has no chance in the Olympics to be in the mix.

no matter where the Oly marathon trials qualifying time standards are set, there will be a group of irritated, angry, upset and/or forlorn runners that are fast enough to be close to qualifying (but do not actually qualify).

For example, if the standard was 2:30:00 or under for men, there would be runners with times of 2:30:01 and slower that would be upset.

Lets not forget that the primary goal of the Oly marathon trials are to select the runner(s) with the best chance(s) of being competitive, and perhaps winning or medaling,in the Olympic marathon(s).

Pot meet kettle wrote:

Far Worse than Ezra wrote:

No wonder the author chooses to remain anonymous.

The difference is that I am not agitating publicly for a given position. Seems weird that such a heartfelt and coherent idea has no byline. It's not like it would offend anyone and it's nicely written.

real kek hours wrote:

There's no extra cost to USATF for having a large field, unless the course gets too crowded because they let thousands of people in.

Really? So for every added participant, whose entry time has to be verified and USATF standing validated and so on, there is ZERO extra cost to the staging body. But at some hazy point, maybe in the range of thousands of participants, this logic breaks down.

I am fairly well schooled in Economics and never heard of this kind of function.

I think the people worried about the prestige of the race are the ones defending the current standards with all the vigor they can summon, no? I don't see any distance race on Earth as especially prestige-laden; unfortunately no one really cares about us. Most jogger type 5K runners pay more attention to Usain Bolt than the distance events when the Olympics roll around. If the sport had a real base, USATF would not be allowed to be what is has been for a long time.

I stress that this thread is clearly (?) a troll thread meant to select for "come on, let's all play" types as well as people at the other end, those who play the extremist from 1925 just to bamboozle your asses; and that almost no one cares that these fields are too large to be considered truly "whatever" in quality. But it's undeniably false that tightening the standards would cruelly clip the wings of woulda-been 2:08/2:21 marathoners who gave up when the qualifying standards became faster than their uptempo everyday 20 milers.

broken arrow wrote:

The standards should be: 2:15 for the Men, and 2:30 for the Woman. These times are both +10 minutes over the winning times in most Major marathons. Anything slower than these times, the athlete has no chance in the Olympics to be in the mix.

2:15:00 and 2:30:00 are within 10 minutes of the winner in the majority of marathon majors in the last decade. This is purely a statistical fact. One major has never had a winner under 2:05, and another has only had it once (with a giant tailwind).

this and this wrote:

irritated, angry, upset and/or forlorn runners.

Really can't decide if this many adjectives are needed to cover "bitchy," but I think "dejected" should make the cut if you're just throwing closely related descriptive words around.

~*berrrrrp*~

You are forgetting that cities bid to hold the US Olympic Marathon trials, the same as track events. Olympic Marathon trials are not the event that major marathons are, but they are still events that attract sponsors. With only a couple dozen runners that would not make for much of an event. There would be a lot fewer bidders -- maybe none.

The standards should be made to limit the field to 100 participants for each gender. This I can get behind, however there are many athletes that became very good marathoners and ran poor times in their first and sometimes even second marathons. Sometimes you don't get it right on the day. I know she's not even going for the marathon anymore but Gwen Jorgensen is an obvious recent example. She would not make it in if the standard was 2:30 yet we know for a fact she has the talent to be on that starting line. This entire argument is not worth discussing for too long as the size of the field has no impact on the race and to take offense as a 2:12 guy for being associated with 2:18 "slowpokes" you'd have to be a real d*ckhead.

I am fairly well schooled in Economics and never heard of this kind of function.

[/quote]

In economic terms it's about the free publicity for the sport.

If 200 men and 200 women qualify from all over the US (about 2:19-:20 for the men and 2:42 cut-off for the women), that generates a lot of local hero human interest stories. Track and running is starved for publicity, we are seeing more coverage of curling, bass fishing and other nonsense. Those are also good times and if they gain some experience and stick with it for four more years, maybe they take another 5-10 minutes off their times and become a factor.

Also there have been some breakthrough days from well back in the pack. Jenny Spangler won outright in 1996, Tera Moody in 2000 (5th), Trent Briney in 2008 4th).

Britney’s accomplishment is even more impressive given his strict diet of soda and donuts....

Pick It Up wrote:

If the standards for this Olympic Trial were 2:12/2:32, only 18 men and 30 women would have qualified. I think a better standard should aim to have about 100 men and women qualify, so based on this year's trial's qualifiers, I think a good standard for 2024 would be 2:17 for men and 2:39 for women. 99 men and 109 women would have qualified with these standards. This does not include a 1/2 marathon standard.

I think this is the best way to do it now that they aren't tied to Olympic Standard. 100 people is a nice round number and vaguely simulates the field size of the actual Olympic race. The half standard should still exist, but should be tough so that the only people getting in with it are the Rupps of the world.

I like that the standard is not completely out of reach for talented working people, but the women's field this year is just too much. If you put the women's standard back to 2:43 (what it was for almost all of the 2016 cycle), the field would be cut in approximately half. That's a reasonable start. You might need to nudge it down another minute or two to account for all the cheater shoes as well. That part would hold true for the men also.

I think I'd vote for 2:18/2:42.

I also think that B standard qualifiers should pay their own way. Put more money in a prize purse that extends through 20 places or something, so the 2nd-tier pros get a little money.

My example was a bit ridiculous - yes if USATF let a thousand guys in then there would be additional entry processing and race-day food and amenity costs. There's no need for that to happen. What I should've said is letting in a hundred extra guys (like the approx # of guys between 2:17-2:19) only carries a small implicit cost for the staffers who have to verify their entries over the course of the three year qualification period.

But again, what are your PRs?

The guy suggesting field size targets of around 100 probably has the right idea. We all know that given the high field sizes, the standards for both races will likely come down. Any mark besides the olympic standard for entry would be entirely arbitrary. The only real choices for the usatf long distance committees are a) appease the masses by just dropping standards a little (maybe targetting a high field size or keep the standards the same ("tradition")) b) target a number in the 50-200 range or c) use the olympic standard.

Pretty sure the OTQ in the 10k is already 28:00...

In horrible weather, an unsponsored amateur woman got second at the Boston Marathon. There certainly *are* cases of very unlikely people making it. Particularly in the marathon and particularly when the weather/conditions are really bad, which is a part of the sport.

Tell me exactly how a reduced field would make watching the trials more interesting? The video will follow only the leaders anyway and won't even show the people not in the lead group. It's way more exciting to see a group of a few hundred great runners than a dozen pros who have run sub 2:12. And anyway, even among the pros, half end up having a bad day and not performing much better than your amateur sub elite 2:18 guy. tons of amateurs beat professionals every single olympic trials and major marathons. Sure it's unusual for them to ever get top 3 but that seems very much beside the point.

Those training groups are also the life support of this sport. Having some sub elite athletes from a smaller city make the trials is a great local news story, they get interviewed, etc. An olympic trials qualifier in my city recently paced a high school 5k and the kids all thought it was the coolest thing that they were getting paced by someone running in the olympic trials to compete for a spot in Tokyo. Does he have a chance of making the team? Definitely not. But making the standard harder so only a dozen secretive pros who train in flagstaff and oregon the only people worth having at the olympic trials hurts grassroots support for running.

You essentially proved the point of why have the Trials when our depth is already very good. The people at the top will be good whether there is a Trials or not. The back of the packers don’t change what’s happening at the top.

There's something to that. There are very few kids training for distance races relative to the population in the US. Not only are there people that have become elite in other sports but there are also sedentary people who may have the genetics and they will never know it. Gerry Lindgren was the slowest kid on his first XC team and nearly gave it up. Stuck to it and very quickly he was the fastest on the team. When distance running became socially acceptable for women to do there were some women that started running in their mid 20s and went on to become low 2:30 runners and make it to the Olympics. Sinead Diver ran 2:24 in NYC. We just don't know how many potential Olympic caliber distance runners this country has because the sport is not popular. Anything that brings running to the public is a plus in my book.

2:12 for the men would be silly. That would give us 18 men in the 2020 trials. 18 men would be a silly race.

I get the idea of limiting the field a little more, but you still have to have the field be big enough so it doesn't just look silly at the start line. 2:15 or 2:16 I could see being a more reasonable standard. 2:16 would give you 74 men this year. That's a reasonable field at least.