2024 Olympic Marathon Trials Standards Are Out: 63:00/2:18:00 for Men, 72:00/2:37:00 for Women

Thank you!

Then again here’s a wild card…World Athletics hasn’t yet announced the standards for 2024. WA also bailed USATF/USOPC out by designating the 2020 Trials as a Gold Label race, thus the top 10 finishers even if they don’t have the time standard are counted as having the standard.

If World Athletics decides that instead of allowing federations to have a one-day trials race in the marathon, that you take the top 3 times from your country off the world list provided that all are under the time standard, then why bother having a trials race? It might get tricky if top 10 finishes at World Marathon Majors races are involved in team selection.

Would WA force USATF’s hand on this? I don’t know, but Sarah Lorge Butler at Runner’s World thinks it could happen. There will be a lot of pushback, but it’s a possibility.

https://www.runnersworld.com/races-places/a38425962/usatf-announces-tougher-olympic-marathon-trials-standards-for-2024/?fbclid=IwAR13imcjFEpkg5gpyOa-fN5cFbuoxwMwZ_Sa-b07_Turz18--h3468RnbAE

kirkland brand wrote:

Thank you!

If World Athletics decides that instead of allowing federations to have a one-day trials race in the marathon, that you take the top 3 times from your country off the world list provided that all are under the time standard, then why bother having a trials race? It might get tricky if top 10 finishes at World Marathon Majors races are involved in team selection.

The problem with that approach is that you end up with athletes over-racing trying to stay in the top 3.

Hypothetical - person A races Chicago 2023 and gets a time that seems reasonably certain to stay in the top 3 for their country. Then there's a surprise, and Person B runs faster at NYC, kicking person A to #4. So then person A scrambles to get a fast spring marathon in, and runs London fast enough to get back into #3.

But now person A, having made the Olympic team, has to turn right around and train for the Olympics without a break. And most likely will not perform as well at the Olympics as they would have if their last marathon was in February/March.

If you're going to take the top 3 approach, you need to set a cut off date well in advance of the Olympics, to ensure that your athletes are also fresh for the games.

Not true.

There are more US women than men competing in the open age category (30% vs 27%) in the marathon and more women competing overall in all road racing events (61%). This is Running USA's stats from 2019 before the pandemic.

https://www.wpr.org/sites/default/files/running_usa_trends_report_2019-r4.pdf

There were more US women under the 2020 Olympic standards than men, 18 vs 11.

There are currently 6 US women in the top 100 World Athletic rankings vs only 1 US man (Galen Rupp).

Despite more US women who are competitive at the World level, the women's population continues to have a larger time spread than men and more skewed to the right. Statistically, you shouldn't compare populations linearly (as you did by time/percentage) unless they both follow a normal distribution. Therefore to compare the populations you use rank order, such that 8th best woman = 8th best man. 130th best woman = 130th best man.

The bottom line is US women are much more competitive at the world level than US men. It makes more sense to set a comparatively tougher standard for women given the larger competitive depth of women vs men.

Yeah more women run. More men train harder.

Elite men are a more homogenous population. Elite women have more diverse biology, such as percent body fat, testosterone, anthropometrics, and biomechanics,