Should the US Olympic Marathon Trials field size be reduced? Or Increased in size to the top 1000 athletes?

I travelled over from Germany to Atlanta for this years race. I had 4 former training partners racing and around ~100+ friends also in town to support.

Our club Heartbreakers took almost 60 supporters alone for our 2 athletes!

I doubt hardly any of us would've gone to Atlanta if our friends didn't qualify. They were all 2:17.30+ and 2:41+ runners.

I would say the atmosphere and overall experience is the best i've felt in any marathon or athletics since the 2012 Olympics.

2019 I was present at Tokyo, Seoul, Boston, Berlin, NYC and Shanghai. Plus the London Diamond League in the Olympic Stadium.

None of those World Majors, Diamond League or IAAF Gold events had anything near the vibe and buzz that Atlanta had.

If you reduce the fields to top 100 then you'll also lose that buzz and alot of the interest.

USATF need to realise they have something special here. What Atlanta Track Club managed to create was just what the sport needed and needs to be built upon for 2024.

As a club coach I have had as many as 5 women in an OT marathon. Also had one of only 5 women to PR in Atlanta this year, placing 35th. I've been the marathon development chair for USATF for a 7 year period and on the site selection committee for 3 trials. I have attended 6 trials as either an admin or a coach. Having said that, Atlanta did an amazing job. There has never been a trials with that kind of spectator interest. To replicate Atlanta would be impossible. The logistics and the cost was just too much and I'm afraid it could not be pulled off again. As David Katz pointed out, the refreshments alone would be a miracle. I believe the only protests in Atlanta were over drink placement. The solution? Criterium course. Course approximating the Olympic course. Qualifying standards of 2:41-2:42/1:13 for women and current standards for the men. Performances must be on a record eligible course, gun time, no exceptions, no appeals!! That should give you two races with about 500 total competitors. Manageable for most serious LOC's to offer amenities equal to Atlanta.

Worst case scenario, the political BS that countries go through that have a selection process.

This 100%. The opportunity here is huge. The US olympic marathon trials is already a big event. But if done properly it could be the second most valuable marathon event in the world besides the Olympics. I don't personally care that much about the top runners for a variety of reasons. But I'm all in supporting former teammates, people from my college, people from my city, etc.

There's tons of upside and no real problems in doing this.

The top 50 qualifiers get all their expenses paid for to attend the trials. Airfare, Hotel, rental car, meal money at whatever the committee designates is the amount per day. Maybe the next 10-20 get their airfare paid for but they are on their own for everything else. That is more than fair as really only about 20 have a legitimate chance at making the top three spots.

Your seed in the race should be based on your marathon qualifying time and where you get to start on the starting line. If qualifying through the half marathon option there are tables to figure out an equivalent time but there should be a little bit of a penalty since it's not the full marathon.

Let the top 10 qualifying times in each race pick the drinks. You have 10 options. Everyone else just has what they are having. Is everyone really doing things that differently anyway? I almost guarantee you whatever Rupp is drinking is what everyone should be drinking. Does F1 show up with 50 different types of fuel? Or you just tell everyone they are drinking Gatorade. Or you just let everyone bring their own support team and pick up their own drinks along from their friends in designated areas. It's not that difficult when you want to embrace it.

From what I heard, it's gonna take a while to decide the standards. I heard there may be a new system in place. This new system is based on Pts at Diamond League, NCAAS, certain road races. The purpose of this new system is to ensure guys like Galen get in to Olympics even if he ran a bad race at Trials.

sunflower wrote:

Let the top 10 qualifying times in each race pick the drinks. You have 10 options. Everyone else just has what they are having. Is everyone really doing things that differently anyway? I almost guarantee you whatever Rupp is drinking is what everyone should be drinking. Does F1 show up with 50 different types of fuel? Or you just tell everyone they are drinking Gatorade. Or you just let everyone bring their own support team and pick up their own drinks along from their friends in designated areas. It's not that difficult when you want to embrace it.[/quote]

You've never been in a trials race or been a contender for an Olympic team have you?

xperirunner wrote:

From what I heard, it's gonna take a while to decide the standards. I heard there may be a new system in place. This new system is based on Pts at Diamond League, NCAAS, certain road races. The purpose of this new system is to ensure guys like Galen get in to Olympics even if he ran a bad race at Trials.

Won't happen

Ray wrote:

sunflower wrote:

Let the top 10 qualifying times in each race pick the drinks. You have 10 options. Everyone else just has what they are having. Is everyone really doing things that differently anyway? I almost guarantee you whatever Rupp is drinking is what everyone should be drinking. Does F1 show up with 50 different types of fuel? Or you just tell everyone they are drinking Gatorade. Or you just let everyone bring their own support team and pick up their own drinks along from their friends in designated areas. It's not that difficult when you want to embrace it.

You've never been in a trials race or been a contender for an Olympic team have you?[/quote]

When all else fails personal attacks are always a good fallback plan. I'm sorry you're offended. This isn't about me. I'm just offering some discussion. Just because someone hasn't done something doesn't mean they can't have an opinion. Example A would be almost anything related to politics. Is Obama the only one allowed to have an opinion about Trump?

I hope not because that would be unfair if Olympic team is decided on points system than the current method of having a race. What I do know is this idea is coming from World Athletics. Because of this, things are delayed.

Hold the trials in Valencia. Problem solved haha.

For what its worth should only be top 2. With US athletics picking the remaining member. No way is that the strongest woman team especially going to next year's Olympics.

sunflower wrote:

Ray wrote:

sunflower wrote:

Let the top 10 qualifying times in each race pick the drinks. You have 10 options. Everyone else just has what they are having. Is everyone really doing things that differently anyway? I almost guarantee you whatever Rupp is drinking is what everyone should be drinking. Does F1 show up with 50 different types of fuel? Or you just tell everyone they are drinking Gatorade. Or you just let everyone bring their own support team and pick up their own drinks along from their friends in designated areas. It's not that difficult when you want to embrace it.

You've never been in a trials race or been a contender for an Olympic team have you?

When all else fails personal attacks are always a good fallback plan. I'm sorry you're offended. This isn't about me. I'm just offering some discussion. Just because someone hasn't done something doesn't mean they can't have an opinion. Example A would be almost anything related to politics. Is Obama the only one allowed to have an opinion about Trump?[/quote]

Not a personal attack at all. I just don't believe that anyone should tell any athlete, "this is what you have to drink." Fuel selection is personal and ANY athlete with any kind of shot at a podium finish should be able to have whatever they want on that table, as long as it is legal. Many athletes have their own formulas, carefully designed after months or even years of preparation. I was just pointing out that perhaps you are not aware of that. As David Katz has pointed out in numerous posts and yesterday at the annual meeting, you don't want to be a referee at the OT when the 4th place finisher didn't have the same fluid opportunities as 1-3.

Anyone have an idea of how fast the 500th men's time in the US would be?

bump

adfafds wrote:

Anyone have an idea of how fast the 500th men's time in the US would be?

2:20 high

Is there timing for when we’d reasonably expect standards to be released?

I like the idea of a large field with just the top athletes getting paid. I see no reason why someone running 2:18 or 2:44 should be covered to get there. Unless these runners have run just a single marathon and went out much faster but blew up badly, resulting in that time, they probably have no realistic chance chance of making the team. Covering a bunch of people who won't make the team is a huge expense, and anyone going to trials should be able to get a sponsor to cover their trip, so it's not like people are going to miss out due to cost regardless. But, I think it's fun to watch a race where people who aren't going to make the team are still competing. I think good standards for 2024 would be 2:20 and 2:40. That would result in more even field sizes. With shoes improving to the point that 2:20 is probably the new 2:21:30, and with more and more people focusing on marathons, I think that could still result in 500ish qualified athletes for both genders by 2024.

If you're going to have 500 (or whatever number) of runners per sex, just wipe out the time standards and use a descending order list that you have to run by (6-8 weeks before the Trials, or whatever the committee decides is the deadline), so they can sort out bogus times, potential lawsuits, times run wearing illegal shoes, etc.

That said, what city/running organization is willing to bid to host the Trials, knowing that it probably will be a money loser, despite whatever national publicity and money entrants and their friends/families will bring in the form of hotel night stays, rental car fees, local spending, etc., given that USATF/USOPC will tie the LOC's hands on what sponsorship they can pursue (i.e., Nike is a sponsor of both USATF & USOPC, so the local organizing committee can't pursue Brooks or ON, or any other competitor, etc).

Right now, the business model of hosting and staging an Olympic Trials marathon is broken. You want to lose $1 million or more? Ask the New York Marathon folks after they hosted the Olympic Trials in 2007. I don't even want to know how much the Atlanta TC lost on the Trials.

Personally, I'd rather go 100-150 based on descending order (no time standard), with anyone meeting the World Athletics Olympic Games standard getting an auto Q into the trials. If you want to have standards for athletes to try and qualify from either the 10k on the track or the 1/2 marathon, I'd base it on the top 25-30 times from 2022.

It's gotta be manageable for all parties involved.