HUGE INJUSTICE at USA's

Here is an email I received from Jill Geer, Director of Communications of USATF:

I haven’t been able to reach John Chaplin via email, but I have spoken to officials in the declarations process, who tell me the following related to the 800:

25 athletes met the A standard in the 800; an additional 2 B qualifiers were added in the last week or so bring the field to 27. As you and I discussed earlier, the decision to add B qualifiers is entirely at the discretion of the track & field chair – in this case, John Chaplin.

I spoke to two different officials about the field size issue in general. One stated that in every email correspondence he had with athletes, he stated that there were no minimum or “desired” field sizes for the USA Championships. Publicly stated, optimal field sizes only exist for the Olympic Trials. The other person I spoke with seemed familiar with the “field of 30” email you referred to. He stated that the email said it was unlikely that more than 30 athletes would be in the field. (Which is different from saying there would be at least 30).

Please let me know if you have any more questions specific to the 800 or if you have any follow-up questions.

Simple- Why 32 in the women's field and only 29 men in the 800? Setting the field size at 32, 4 heets of 8 makes sense. What they have done does not! Even if 30 was the number - use it for both the men and women's fields.

Ahhh it just wouldn't be a USATF Championship without a bunch of runners getting screwed by John Chaplin!!

I agree with the PP who said the conditions at USAs should mimic Worlds as closely as reasonably possible.

Wejo, that's good work, but what really needs to happen is a deeper investigation into the philosophical underpinnings and standard operating procedures for the powers that be at USATF.

John Chaplin acts as a unilateral dictator in decisions relating to athlete welfare. The long history of arbitrary actions, right or wrong, provides a sad tradition and legacy for our sport.

You can't turn around trackside without bumping into someone with a story of injustice at his hand. If processes, policies and decisions were all made with transparency and in a timely manner there would be less controversy. The problem with no public process or stated baseline is an air of mystery and a lack of recourse when things are done at the last minute or when standards are applied differently for certain individuals.

The OP stated there was an email guaranteeing "at least 30 entrants." If this is true, can someone post the exact email. There is a big deal between "no more than 30" and "at least 30."

Jesus, what a bunch of bullshit. Fill the f***ing lanes. Chaplin is apparently the biggest asshole ever, why the f*** does this guy still have a job? Can't we get someone into his position who actually cares about the athletes?

To me, it was screwed up by whoever set it up. Wouldn't it make the most sense to just have ONE standard and every runner who makes it under that standard qualifies? Doesn't that just make more sense than leaving it up to John Assman's discretion?

Jill Geer may be the only person at USATF that gives a damn.

While having no dealings with her myself, folks I've spoken to think she consistantly goes 'above and beyond' in anything she is involved in.

Actually, there were 26 guys who hit the A standard of 1:47.50 and declared. The next and last guy in was Roller from Virginia at 1:47.63. Then the next eight times are 71, 75, 80, 81, 82, 83, 86, 87.

I can't come up with a justification for adding one guy and stopping there other than the .08 gap was felt to be large enough to be a breaking point. And that justification is weak.

27 guys in a four heat event is unjustifiable. The heat with six guys is a huge advantage, just because it's one less body for the traffic, even if it the slowest guy.

As for the email, if I got one that said not more than 30, I would conclude/guess that 30 would get in and get my butt to Eugene. I understand it legally, they never guaranteed 30, blah, blah, blah, but come on, it's human nature to think that way.

As others have said, one guy having complete, unquestioned authority and who never has to explain himself, is just wrong.

I just get sick thinking of all the work these three put in (not to mention taking time off from their jobs and buying plane ticktes) then imagining a few old men sitting in a room determining their fates like this and leaving lanes empty... No excuse for this by the USATF

I sent this email to Chaplin:

I will not be renewing my USATF membership again, for life, if all lanes of all 4 heats of the Men's 800m preliminary are not filled. I will also work to get you fired.  

Sent 2 mails, one response was I don't have time to deal with this right now and I will get back to you when things slow down. The other response was along the lines of, it’s unfortunate that those athletes flew all the way to Eugene, but the USATF is following the rules and the athletes should have been aware that their spot was guaranteed.

Btw, I see a lot of piling on of criticism of the USATF; I assure that is it not an organization of incompetent and mean spirited people. Most of the USATF staff consist of people with decades of contributions the sport as athletes, coaches and administrators. With that said, USATF gets it wrong sometimes when the rules and the main objectives are at odds with the interest of individual athletes and fans.

Sigh. Here's the end of an interview I did with Geer earlier this year about Joseph Chirlee relevant to this.

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Jill Geer: At the same time, our rules are our rules, and we do have to follow them. We can’t arbitrarily decide we can apply this rule but not that rule.

Me: Oh, come on. Fans of the sport don’t have to think back too much farther than the 2008 trials to find instances where that wasn’t the case.

JG: Finding a way to better codify and streamline our decision-making processes is something that is a very high priority for our organization and our board of directors. So in the past, where you may have had one individual making a decision on the spot that could affect a competitive opportunity, that is a system and a structure that is changing within the organization as we speak. Our board’s competition committee is getting much more involved in these policy decisions that affect how we run meets and things that affect how and who competes at our meets. One person making a decision on the fly at a meet is not how we should be making these kinds of decisions.

Being close to one of the three athletes affected by this ruling, I thought I would pop in and give the information I know while I'm waiting here for the 800m men to start.

The email that was received by one of the individuals said something to the effect of "with 30 athletes already listed as qualified, they will not add any more unless there are some scratches or athletes who do not declare. "

I know another athlete was told by a USATF individual to "book your ticket now" because they are going to take 30 as a minimum. While I know there is no rule stating what they should/will take, it is disheartening to be told different things by so many people.

I think all of us have come to terms with the fact that we wouldn't be allowed to run, but we were just looking for an explanation. I personally emailed Chaplin twice yesterday just trying to understand the logic behing a 27 man field and never got any sort of response. All of the coaches and athletes involved have basically gotten a big "F you" from USATF who has basically said that they don't have to justify any of their decisions. Hope that clears things up a little bit

If these people cannot clearly and concisely communicate how many runners will be in each race they should not be in charge of such a large and important organization.

How hard is it to determine exactly how many runners you want a week before the race? Seems like a real simple process to me. It's almost as if the rules are made to be ambiguous just to empower 1 or 2 people. There is no reason not to have a written rule saying that 'when possible, all lanes will be filled'.

wineturtle wrote:

Jill Geer may be the only person at USATF that gives a damn.

Most of the paid staff who work full-time out of the national office in Indy are hard-working and great people. John Chaplin does not fall in that category.

No Torrence = 26 ...I feel for these guys

I wanna be CEO wrote:

The rules have been written to empower 1 person.

Fixed it for you.

Seems obvious that, in addition to being published in advance to prevent wasted travel costs, the number of athletes should have been set to result in equal numbers for each of the four heats. Which means the number should have been either 28 or 32 (not 27 or 30). Why should certain athletes get an advantage of competing in a heat with fewer athletes on the track?

And, what do you know, Greer gets to compete in a heat of 6 when Torrance scratches. I'm sure that was a surprise.