re cyprus.....once you pointed that out, i was like, oh, that dude. 60H finalist at indoors this year. i remember him from 110H semis and finals at olympics and worlds in recent years. he sits in the 3rd rank spot behind the time qualifiers and 40 make it, no possible universalities. that is not in the spirit of universality, that you are literally going to be the only rep. yeah, i agree with that critique.
if i wanted to be cynical, he is top 20 level, was just shy of the 110s "A" number last season. the marathon closed up before the track events do. he has interestingly -- for someone who was busy indoors -- refrained from running qualifying meets so far this spring. so he has no spring time to beat the number. they then use the universality on someone else. he then either makes his time now or is set to rank very high that route, based on his abundant resume. "oooops, we got 2...." might be an excuse to be lightly raced.
i know people can literally back out and our guy moves up. but do they retroactively yank universalities if the field is "set" and the participant willing, but it turns out they qualified someone?
i assume someone at WA approved this because marathon takes so much prep, so in theory we need the field sorted early, but you can see where with the much later end dates for track, this could be abused. precisely this sort of one-man team scenario. world class athlete with rank but not a standard time. deniability because not automatically in. and technically rank could move around and times could come later. "we weren't sure." really.