Amby Burfoot says: do away with the Olympic Marathon Trials

If you look at just the 21st century with our current system in place...

On the men's side, the US has won a silver (Meb) and a bronze (Rupp). On the women's side, they've won two bronzes (Seidel and Kastor). So the U.S. has won 4 of 36 available marathon medals in the 21st century: 11%.

Also in the twenty-first century, the U.S. has exactly one of the top-200 fastest men's marathoners-- Khalid Khannouchi at 2:05:38. That #153 on the list of fastest marathoners since 2000s (legal courses/times etc.).

On the women's side, the U.S. has Sisson at #36 in the 21st century, followed by D'Amato at #50 and Kastor at #62. They have nine of the top-200 fastest women's marathoners in the 21st century-- so 4.5%, which is half the rate at which they've been medaling.

If anything, you have to acknowledge that the U.S. teams have overperformed in the Olympic marathon relative to talent level. I really don't understand the problem needs to be solved here.

He seems to be missing the point the goal to to produce an entertainment product, and the trials are highly entertaining.

They have 1/3rd the US population while having half the medals. And I notice you are ignoring the woman with 2 golds, silver and bronze to our 1 gold and 2 bronzes.

Now is the system why the Japanese outperform the US? Probably not. In general they have better marathoners if you look at times. Some of that might be US runners doing slower courses (more true historically than today). But a lot is just them being better with more focus on the event. But they also have very few guys that are medal contenders. Running a 2:07 vs 2:09 doesn’t help much when racing 2:04 guys. I don’t track Ethiopia and Kenya (pretty much the only countries with 3+ medal contenders) procedures close enough to know how often they change it, but I think running their trials in like April in 2021 didn’t work out very well. And in 2016, the pick everyone complained about medaled. Granted the guys left off might have won. And yes it is criminal we didn’t get prime Belles versus Kipchoge…

I left out women because I counted totals from 1968.

Population size is moot when each country can only send 3 runners per event.

As I recall the same thing that happened to Patrick happened to Bill Clark. The stories I've seen have a committee deciding to stick it to those guys. I know Bowerman was on that committee but did he have a bigger role in what happened to Patrick than the others on the committee? I also seem to remember a story Jere van Dyke has told about having it stuck to him by Bowerman at those Trials. Maybe I'll look for it later.

I do think it wouldn't be a bad time to see if we still like our Trials' system given the changes made recently in terms of recent changes to how a country gets to enter athletes to the Games. But any idea that includes any variation of the idea of selectors should die before birth.

The Olympic events are to be competed for.

They aren't awarded for a great year, or great effort, though those factors are usually part of it.

It's not a matter of fairness. There's rarely justice.

Entry is not guaranteed. You have to compete for the opportunity to compete against the best in the world on a given day.

Don't cry if you don't make it. You're part of a huge group.

Train hard, train smart,. Enjoy the journey, that's the true prize.

Good luck

I love Amby but my God I can't believe what I'm reading is real and not satire. Since I was travelling and in Orlando, I only had time to read it right now and I unfotunately haven't had time to read through the responses but I want to respond to it before we record our podcast in 15 minutes.

Andy disproves his whole argument in the first paragraph:

If something is "your favorite" distance event, it can't be the "stupidest, most misguided event I can imagine." Money in sport comes from FANS. If this is the greatest distance event in track - then by definition it's a KEEPER.

Putting "the best" teams into the title game is lame and I say that as a Ravens fan.

BECAUSE SHE BEAT THEM ALL in a Trials race. So she clearly was the amongst top 10 female marathoners in the US on the day of the Trials in 2000.

Lol. USATF is in charge. Now we can sleep well at night.

Game. Set. Match. Thank God that's not our team.

Fiona O'Keeffe wouldn't have been selected this year nor would have Seidel in 2020. Our two best medal hopes would have been left at home.

who?

There are plenty of ways to select athletes objectively that don't involve a single top-three-and-that's-it race.

You could, for example, take the top two from the trials and the third spot goes to whoever has the best results over the last year (18 months?) in major marathons. If that's the third place finisher, great. If not, also great.

There have absolutely been times when we didn't send the best possible team because of unforeseen injuries. A scheme that lets us avoid that is good, no?

Amby is probably just trying to generate some clicks. But chill malmo, you don't have to swear at the guy.

There could be an argument for selecting one athlete based on previous performance, but set the bar very high. e.g., medalist at previous year's WCs or winner of a recent WMM, and/or top 10 world ranking. But even then you run the risk of having sending someone who is not at their best.

The current process isn't perfect, but it's probably the the most fair, and it's a great race in its own right.

Agree with these responses. I didn't understand bashing Christine Clark. She won that race by 2:00+. Clearly she was better than the top-10 marathoners, on paper, heading into that race. Pretty impossible for all of the top seeds to all have bad days. She beat women who had perfectly good/average races. If you look at Christine Clark's marathon progression, she raced her hometown marathon yearly. 2000 was a different time. You didn't have everyone flocking to Chicago or CIM to run a fast time. The Trials was the place for everyone to come together to race. It's pretty obvious Clark could've run some good majors based on that result & finishing in a decent spot at the Olympics. I think it's different in 2024. We've seen most of the top seeds run at big races & a team like Sisson/D'Amato/Saina makes some sense. But it takes away half marathon qualifiers. We've seen Rupp/Seidel/O'Keeffe all make the team in recent years. A lot of US runners spend a long time on the track. I like a challenging half standard & then letting people decide if they want to debut at the Trials. There's no way you can't say O'Keeffe is a top US marathoner after breaking away from Emily Sisson. What more do you need to be convinced.

I think abolishing the Trials would be a mistake for US distance running. It gives good collegiate runners something to aim for & many stick with the sport chasing their OTQ dream. Those are the people that are known in their local running communities.

Pleased to see a pretty uniform rejection of anything like a selection-by-committee system in this thread, with the most perceptive rejections being the ones that remind us that the US does not have an Olympic medals problem in need of solving. It's the world's dominant athletics nation, and can thus afford to sacrifice some bureaucratic fine-tuning of it's team selection processes (that would quite likely end up being be no more effective in any case, and almost inevitably less fair) in return for the riveting drama of the top-three trials system-- which may be the most relatable thing to the general public in our increasingly unrelatable sport.

The general public almost certainly doesn't keep track of how many track medals the US wins at the OGs (it knows it's probably a lot), but it can sure relate to the "top three-ness" of the whole enterprise, from trials to Games.

Amby, with all due respect your take is incredibly misguided. Honestly, shockingly so. The trials are essential. They keep people in the sport post collegiately. They bring fan interest due to being an incredibly exciting and high stakes event, they attract sponsor interest and money to the sport due to the prestige of the Olympic Trials.

Eliminating them would not only be a loss of one of the most exciting marathon events for US fans; it would gut sponsor money, it would gut talent interest in road racing. The loss of the trials would be a massive blow to the sport in the US, so people are understandably dismayed to see you advocating for such a blow.

On top of that, there is very little indication the trials do not select the best Olympic team and much more suggesting that a committee chosen team would get it wrong.

Amby Burfoot ran a 2:22 marathon once at Boston in the 1960s. Has made a living off that one race for 50 years. Not a bad gig if you can get it.

Runnersworld guys are more mainstream. To be a letsrun guy, you have to be libertarian type of jack8ss, despise Dr Fauci, covid vaccine, public health measures and Bud Light and non binary persons

There are many exceptions, of course, but reading this forum and what is tolerated, this is what I see

Runners are supposed to be health minded, but at Letsrun, it’s about tearing people down putting mental health of others in the toilet and claiming public health is a scam