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

I just wanted to point out that it is not a loophole and there have been statutes that fast track the naturalizion of foreign-born military members since the Civil War. (My understanding is that a lot of Irish Civil War vets got their citizenship that way and a lot died trying.)

My high school XC team got screwed out of state with a similar rule. That said, there is a solution for US runners you mentioned. Go somewhere else and run fast!

exactly. Good on Phil, so was clearly ecstatic when he crossed the line with a huge PR and the implications from it. But I don't believe Phil is some crazy generational talent and that the Americans have nothing like him. I don't want to demean Phil at all, I'm incredibly happy for him, but I also think that Albertson or Panning could have possibly grabbed taht train and ridden it for as long as possible. But we'll never know, will we?

The $ to go is... miniscule. If this is your career, how many of us has invested $1500 in our home office? Or additional training? Or a new degree? Not even a question about it, totally worth it. But. I get it, if NYC offers you $20K to run NYC and Valencia won't offer you anything but a bib, its hard to pass up that $20K. Maybe impossible to pass up economically.

If the oly standard is going to go to 2:06 on the next cycle (and there is no f'ing reason for it to go that low IOC, not a single one), then sponsors are going to need to radically rethink their contracts for their sponsored runners or get used to them showing up in kit and doing press at the WMM without even the question of the olympics.

Just like World XC, the top end Kenya and Ethiopian talent is deforming the curve of the marathon so far that the rest of the world isn't exactly giving up but... yawning and moving to other sports. And when that happens, the sponsors will give up and move on. The IOC needs to think about this path, because that's what they're on.

In 2016 there (only 8 years ago) the standards were 2:19:00 and 2:45:00.

155 men and 157 competed. It had probably the widest representation of countries than any event or sport. And it was a great race and no issues with the course and numbers.

The issue is paying for the extra athletes in the Village, etc., not the race logistics.

Yes! There is no reason that the marathon field can't be 180 guys (and 180 women). There is the "we have a 10,500 athlete limit!" line of thinking but honestly I doubt these extra 100 people really matter in the long run.

Give every country three spots to anyone under the standard. Then let the federations decide who they want to send in the 'thon. The "standard" can be something like 2:20 for men and 2:40 for women. End of story.

Somehow that was never an issue through 2016 but now the Olympics suddenly can't afford lodging?

It's a deliberate issue by the IOC to cap the number of participates to a somewhat arbitrary number. Athletics had to reduce the number of athletes and the marathon was the obvious low hanging fruit.

quit your pouting. 39 people made the announced quasi "A" standard 2:06:50. our guy didn't. 31 more made the ultimate quasi "B" standard 2:08:09. our guy again didn't. it was announced up front that universality countries could pick 100m 800m or marathon. you can cry that they didn't announce how many, but the universalities had the right to choose and we knew the risk. it looks like 11 picked marathon. that's already 1 over the stated limit of 80. plus a refugee = 82.

in other words, before we even get into who was ranked where, even 9 universality meant our dude failed.

plus he wasn't the first ranked person. he slots between 85-86 of those up for the race. that suggests as few as 5 universalities would have sent him home, had they adhered to "80." even with "82" he goes out at 7. inasmuch as 4 or more athletes didn't make it who were ranked ahead of him. you're acting like he was the only one shut out. he was well down a list that missed.

our guy was nearly 2 minutes off the effective "B" number. he had a slower quali time than a 3rd american who didn't qualify.

your real beef is that universality even exists, as everyone knew up front there was a field cap and that it was a race universalities could pick.

since people seem unclear on universality, the idea is every running country gets to send at least one runner in something. this is the global olympics and not the pro diamond league final. if you have ever competed international "anything," half the joy is all the different countries.

i also think the pouting neglects that, to me as a sprinter, we're talking 8 heats worth of guys in "on time" and you're crying that IOC/WA pick a heat and change more worth of athletes from unusual countries, instead of giving us 3. cry me a river. i think they picked a ton of people on merit and then let 11 countries pick 1 person to run "something," and that's what they picked.

if i wanted to be punchy, your dude was sufficiently meh that we are really talking about precisely how slow the back end of the field will be. since we were already talking the nominally 10 slowest, you're really freaking out they included someone a few minutes slower so north korea gets someone? as opposed to an american who himself theoretically would be minutes off the pace anyway?

First, I'm fine with the universality rule. Let the small countries send a couple of people. But don't include them in the rankings. That makes no sense. Everyone else in the rankings is there based on actual results. That's what rankings are.

Second, limiting the field size in the marathon is dumb. Every country could send 3 athletes regardless of hitting any standard and still not cause any practical difficulties in running a marathon. But if they are limiting the field size, they should accept everyone who qualifies based on ranking and then add on the universality athletes. At least for this first time, when the handling of universality athletes had not been previously announced. In 4 years, at least everyone will understand the rules in advance.

Never thought Leonard Korir should have celebrated at Trials with the BYU guys since he wasn't a lock.

Personally, I would have declined the photo op, etc at Trials due to a Murphy's Law kinda mentality.

What about u?

Okay, so it's definitely not looking good for Korir (but there's still a slight chance):

runnersworld.com

Leonard Korir, Third at Olympic Trials, Might Be Shut Out of Olympic Marathon

If no runners get in on rankings, the U.S. will send a two-man team.

Open link

Any US runner that ran New York or Boston since the qualifying window opened can't complain imo. There are people that could've run the standard in Valencia or Berlin or London, but ran NY or Boston for the appearance money. WA just needs to get rid of the standard though. Make it all based on world rankings, maybe with 2:02 or something guaranteeing a spot to make sure the best guy isn't left out.

Don't be rude.

The issue here isn't the existence of the universality spots. It's that the general assumption was that those spots would be ADDED to the field, rather than REPLACE people in the field. Athletes have spent the past 2+ years optimizing their qualifying chances with respect to a certain set of rules. At the last minute, they've discovered that the way to qualify isn't to be in the top 80 by world ranking after all; it's to be in the top (80-x), where x is an arbitrary and unpredictable number that will only be announced after the qualifying window closes. How is that fair to athletes?

If your counterargument is "none of those guys were going to win a medal anyway," then the same thing applies to at least 90 percent of the athletes at the Games. It's the same logic that sometimes leads countries like Britain and Canada to not send qualified athletes to championships if they're unlikely to medal. And it's the same logic ("If I can't win, I don't want to play") that we scold eight-year-olds for if they exhibit it in the playground.

I think we can agree that we don't want the Olympic marathon to consist of only nine East African runners. Conversely, we don't want it to be an all-comers race with 50,000 people. We want it to be somewhere in the middle, and there are many different "reasonable" places to set the bar. The argument here isn't about where to set the bar; it's about not moving the goalposts after the fact.

Who? Top 5 at Boston or NYC would have counted for the standard. CJ almost got it with his 7th place and I don't think he would have run the standard had he run elsewhere.

personally i like more teams and more athletes. the way you could work within size limits would be a week of pre-competition, "C" level athletes and universalities compete in paris at the official facilities in prelims that qualify to paris proper.......you can have 100m run a qualifying prelim before the heats even start.......or have an extra round......but you couldn't do that for the super-endurance events like marathon unless the "pre" weed out event was months ahead.

that would always be a matter of do we let everyone enter 3, do we put in limits, what are they. universality is saying, ok, you don't get 3 every event, but we'll give you 1 in something.

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so your assumption was when WA said 80 they really meant 90+. you then moan because 80 ends up meaning 82, that they semi-did what they said up front. you're being disingenuous that your issue isn't with universality because you only seem to want it allowed as frosting on the cake above the limit.

you're offering a straw man with "weren't going to medal." i pretty clearly said words to the effect of "we're talking the 10 slowest guys in the field." that our guy was minutes behind his qualified peers. that at that point i am not crying if they let in an even slow guy from mongolia instead of our slow guy. i don't know what you're talking about, "medal." i doubt our guy gets top half.

point is there are usually dozens with the olympic standard at something. were here. even most of them won't medal. the point is not limiting it to 3 people, or 10 best, it's at what point do oxes get gored to keep this truly global. GB is even harsher than we are. you aren't at the "A" standard you don't go. they could get "B" and might be refused. and "A" is more generous than "medal." our guy here blew "A," blew "B," and would have needed help to get in an 80 man field picked the way you wish. as i showed my math on, he was going to be competing for the last few spots. he is behind several bolded alternates. at least 4. and some of the others "greyed out" might have been in his situation as well.

the one thing i agree on is the criteria should be spelled out better. at least in the public facing stuff i have seen, it's like "50% standard, 50% rank," even though they mention universality and we had to know they would fit in someplace. but if i don't have the standard and am well down the rank list i'd be running another qualifying race, not standing pat making assumptions on how many WA allows and whether universalities are in or over the quota.

Kenyan doesn't represent USA. I can guarantee at least half the letsrun crowd is happy about this. They don't want to set a template for every Kenyan to start using this ARMY loophole to represent US.