Letter to Doug Logan from Kyle King

BOHICA wrote:

In the event for which he was filing an appeal, Goucher had failed to prove that he was indeed any better than "the 28:49 or whatever guy he ran as a rust-buster at Stanford."

-- His prior history AND The 10,000 final itself clearly said otherwise, which is why the irony is thick.

If you can imagine someone who's already been to the Olympics and is a mere shell of his former self, complete with a bumbling DNF in the 5000m, appealing then how is it so hard to imagine someone who's still reaching for ultimate lifetime dreams filing an appeal?

-- He showed he wasn't a mere shell of his former self. That was the foundation for his appeal, and he backed it up.

This isn't about qualifier #33, anyway, and never was until you concocted that straw man.

Actually, you were the one who wanted to open up two heats for all of the runners "ahead" of Goucher in the interest of fairness. So I ran with that and picked #33 and 28:48 based on the hypothetical.

We just aren't going to agree, and that's fine. It would have been interesting to have you and I as the two-man appeals committee. Maybe we could have raced a 10,000 to break the tie, though I can no longer run anymore.

Outside of the qualifying window is impertinent. What he ends up running at the OT should have zero bearing, he had the entire qualifying window to prove his fitness in the event and the appeals process shouldn't be about estimating that you're truly fitter than your qualifying time for that event. You're looking elsewhere to come up with whatever irony you see.

Which performance(s) are you referring to? I remember him drilling the likes of Kennedy and dusting full fields in doubling at XC nationals in his prime, not quitting a race because he couldn't manage the pace he needed on his own for just the A qualifying standard for the Games.

Actually, you read what you wanted to see. I stated that if the administrators wanted to open up the field of the 10,000 to more than 24 then and go down to #34 on the qualifier list then, per their own rules, they should have run semis and pulled in all qualifiers ahead of #34 as well. A conditional statement based wholly on USATF rules, not a statement of my preference. It's fair because it transparently follows the black and white rules, not because it satisfies my own preferences. You should be able to parse the difference.

No matter who was on the committee, it'd be best if they all were impartial and not likely to be swayed by things that occurred years in the past, well outside the qualifying window for the meet in question, nor swayed by a coach's estimate of his athlete's fitness.

Too lazy for

Is there an event at the Olympic Team Track & Field Trials that accepts xc or road marks? It's completely exclusive of criteria weighed for any other athlete who is trying to qualify for the OT. Even beyond that, I'd say it deserves zero consideration compared with his 2007 track season (3:37, 3:56, 13:31), which was much closer to the OT than XC Nationals was.

Not merely months, literally years. Refresh your memory here:

Nope, it's following the rules as they are written that would dictate that end. USATF officials operated outside of the rulebook as I understand it to add a 25th runner to the field of a straight final from that far down on the performance list.

Maybe you just don't understand the rules that exist. There is no single rule for field sizes, only a structure of rules to dictate the event's structure (rounds, final) for certain field sizes. An administrator is quoted as stating that 24 was decided to be the limit for 5000m, an event that featured both semis and a final, yet how the 10,000m final field was set is completely inconsistent with that, not at all transparent, and contorted and contrived. If they were so rigid on the 5000m field size when there was clearly room for adding further to the field then why were they so willing (granting the appeal before the meet even started) to make an exception, and only one exception, with the 10,000m? It's as if two wholly separate sets of officials made the decisions for the men's 5000m and the men's 10,000m.

No worries, I've probably been more unclear and incomplete here than you have. I'll take this chance to restate my final line in my last post:

It's as if two wholly separate sets of officials using two separate sets of rules from two different rulebooks made the decisions for the men's 5000m and the men's 10,000m.

BOHICA wrote:

No worries, I've probably been more unclear and incomplete here than you have. I'll take this chance to restate my final line in my last post:

It's as if two wholly separate sets of officials using two separate sets of rules from two different rulebooks made the decisions for the men's 5000m and the men's 10,000m.

I actually don't disagree with you on this. They should have been more consistent and/or forthcoming.

By the way, I was referring to the fact that Goucher had set PRs (in the 5k and 10k) mere months before the cross-country nationals I had cited, which were themselves within the arbitrary qualifying window that, somewhat curiously, opened in January 2007 as opposed to, say, May 2007 or May 2006, for that matter. What USATF did was certainly controversial. But based on the evidence, I'd still have granted Goucher's appeal. That cross-country result is not a qualifier for track, admittedly, but it was a pretty compelling performance against his peers within the time frame that USATF decided would be acceptable, and it's not like he was training at elevation at that point.

thank you kyle for your letter. the usatf has on many occasions acted in an unethical manner.

Probably should have left out the spell check part but I agree that it's best to do this in an open forum. I've done HR work too and while we answered most inquiries, the responses were carefully crafted non-answers.

Anyhow, I think it's important to follow the selection process. Why should we let the qualified guys run when they're just gonna get lapped by the the Africans? I think we should let in a 5th Kenyan in the spirit of the rules. Same deal with letting Goucher in, in my opinion.

Just an FYI, do people realize that you can look on the USATF website and there is a link to the rules and regs it supposedly follows.

And in those rules it clearly states that in the 10,000m that if you have more then 24 runners the you must run the final in two sections. Obviously this rule was clearly disregarded in order to add Adam Goucher to the field at #25. So not only should they have added everyone between #24 and Goucher on the entry list based on entry times, they went against their own rule in the event in order to do so.

And in the 5000m they took 16 to the final, why would you not have at least 16 in each semi. In the Olympics and WC's they have avg. 17-18 per semi for the past decade if you look at the results.

And in the 1500m why bother even having a first round if it's not consistent with the semi and final? Why 10 instead of 12 runners. Again that's not in line with either the Olympics or WC's.

I could go on and on...the athletes have no representation to the committees. They proposed two major changes in the qualifying system and neither were even presented.

1) A clear and transparent system promotes the development of the sport and ultimately will put the best athletes on the Olympic teams.

2) Adam is a runner. He's paid to run. Run the times or get out.

3) Adam did not make the team therefore the petition in no way helped the best USA athletes make it to the Olympics, instead it cast a shadow on the process and possibly deterred future talents from pursuing their dreams.