I disagree with your conclusion: "If Great Britain did not use this system Sebastian Coe would not currently be the only double Olympic Champ in the 1500m run."
If GB required runners to participate in their trials, then Coe would've participated. He probably would've run brilliantly and made the Olympic team. On the other hand, if he had been beaten by 3 other British runners in their trials, should he really be on the Olympic team?
Her fall was a coaching problem. Holding her out and not being race ready then she tries to cut in without a feel for spacing. Shame on them putting all the eggs in one race keying for Olympics and failing. She wasn't ready and had not shown the speed and endurance to be ready. Time for a coaching change.
Kinda hard to tell what her fitness level was. She made it thru heat 1, and the fall was way early in the semi - too early to judge her fitness in that race.
At some point since last September a professional athlete has had lots of opportunities to show fitness in indoor and outdoor. she chose to do no races the entire year! If all goes well and she shows up to the trials and wins it’s fine - but using that strategy and you get hurt or fall - you have chosen to show no fitness this year.
At some point since last September a professional athlete has had lots of opportunities to show fitness in indoor and outdoor. she chose to do no races the entire year! If all goes well and she shows up to the trials and wins it’s fine - but using that strategy and you get hurt or fall - you have chosen to show no fitness this year.
The only way to measure success in a race is to cross the finish line; end of story. Do or do not; there's no maybe if the right people think you are special enough. No thanks. And the last thing we should be doing is giving people a pass because they are injured; if they are strong enough now, why take the risk and put them in the Olympics. I see this all the time in high-school cross-country. Some kid gets stiffed in the state finals because coach wants to take the risk of putting in his injured star who has been cross-training the last two months trying to get health. If you can't qualify in the race, your day is done.
my understanding is that Mu's hamstring was torn, but is no longer so it doesn't feel right so many people saying they wouldn't want her in the Olympics because she has a torn hamstring
to be sure, of course we have to follow the rules, but there are rare instances like this that USATF isn't accounting for in their rules, which is the extreme outlier
Extreme outliers like Mu and Sydney are capable of what seems like magic to the rest of us. Case in point, Mu ran 2:01 in the first heat, then 1:58 in the semis. This after no training for over a month due to injury. I believe the article said she did two 300s to make sure she could run pain free?
Folks, if true, that means her baseline fitness with no training in the 800 is a 2:01! The 1:58 she ran in the semis a few days later was not a maximal effort either, surely she could have at least been in the 1:57s if she went all out.
So at minimum 1:58 fitness after a few days of training including one race. The first heat of the Olympic 800 is in about 5 weeks. There is no reason to think she couldn't be in 1:54-1:55 shape by then. That's only a few seconds faster than what she already showed after a couple days of running.
I'm not here to argue rules or petition to change anything. It is what is is. But if the future existence of the USA depended on us winning the women's 800 gold, I guarantee you we'd be sending her to Paris.
I love how sports media pays attention to T&F once every 4 years & then prints nonsense like this. I feel bad for Mu, but it should stop there. She was responsible for the fall. Plenty of other athletes have fallen at the Trials. No, it doesn't mean we need an overhaul of the system. Governing bodies have not shown that they can be trusted to do the right thing. I like the power balance here for the athletes. Finish top-3 & nobody can stop you from going. Federations constantly mess things up when they're left to make the decisions. Mu came in under-raced & injured. Why should she be guaranteed a spot on the team? Because of past performance? That's in, you know, the past. She didn't look like herself in the 1st 2 rounds. Now it's obvious why that was. Idk how her team can feel good about making this argument when she isn't healthy. We're going to put someone on the team who has a torn hamstring? No thank you.
I've got to wonder what system the "fix the system" crowd are proposing, and how the new system would be any fairer / better. The notion that they should be able to "defend" their olympic trial (ie that we should select based on a performance 4 years ago) is laughable. And if it were based on some kind of ranking system, there would still be oddball results that someone would complain about. In Mu's case, she's done very little racing in the last two years (which is perhaps why she made such a basic mistake -- she can run fast but her racing smarts are clearly rusty) . A Diamond League win, but didn't win the 2023 world championships, so she isn't the defending world champ at this point. It's a disappointing result for sure because she's clearly fast enough to be capable of running well in the olympics (I don't really buy the "torn hamstring" talk -- if it were true I'd have doubts about that) but she's hardly a victim here.
I love how sports media pays attention to T&F once every 4 years & then prints nonsense like this. I feel bad for Mu, but it should stop there. She was responsible for the fall. Plenty of other athletes have fallen at the Trials. No, it doesn't mean we need an overhaul of the system. Governing bodies have not shown that they can be trusted to do the right thing. I like the power balance here for the athletes. Finish top-3 & nobody can stop you from going. Federations constantly mess things up when they're left to make the decisions. Mu came in under-raced & injured. Why should she be guaranteed a spot on the team? Because of past performance? That's in, you know, the past. She didn't look like herself in the 1st 2 rounds. Now it's obvious why that was. Idk how her team can feel good about making this argument when she isn't healthy. We're going to put someone on the team who has a torn hamstring? No thank you.
Yes, she would have been a lot better off to just own it. Nobody will ever criticize you for that.
The only way to measure success in a race is to cross the finish line; end of story. Do or do not; there's no maybe if the right people think you are special enough. No thanks. And the last thing we should be doing is giving people a pass because they are injured; if they are strong enough now, why take the risk and put them in the Olympics. I see this all the time in high-school cross-country. Some kid gets stiffed in the state finals because coach wants to take the risk of putting in his injured star who has been cross-training the last two months trying to get health. If you can't qualify in the race, your day is done.
amen. to make a soccer comparison the US the other day had a red card and was struggling to hold onto a tie but feels forced to sub out a defensive mid playing well who had been hurt and was on a "pitch count" how long he could play. it gets worse once he leaves. they then at the end subbed on another guy who had been hurt recently whose sole contribution was committing a foul.
and before this coach it used to be common sense for the US not to call hurt people or to send them home.
under our system the only entitlement complex you are entitled to, is if you win the trials, then get hurt, you can show up in paris and grab your hammy out of those blocks.
it is insane arrogant stuff to be like so hurt you can't race all year but we have to save your spot because you when not hurt are good and might or might not be something in august.
related point, setting aside i believe in doing this on merit..........
another thread we were discussing whether valby would make diamond league fields. i was like, valby's like midpack on her current times. she won't win but she might get points. i was also like, infeld's running 30 seconds slower and she gets in pro meets. response, she once made a world champs podium. that was 2-3 years ago when she was good.
so, if we go your way, ok, how long do these "passes" work and for what events? 4 years is an eternity in sports and track. infeld is 30-60s slower since the worlds where she did well.
and shouldn't any of these "passes" be world-granted and not at our expense?