Olympic Marathon Trials rumor

In my mind, an Olympic trials race only makes sense for events where you can conceivably ride one peak through the trials into the Olympics. 1500m runners are still on the same training cycle from the trials to the OG, so you can reasonably assume that the top 3 at the trials are still the team that deserves to be at the OG (though I actually think the track trials should be closer in time to the OG).

For the marathon, the trials are so far removed from the OG that a lot can happen in between. Who is to say that the three athletes who were selected at the trials are still our top three on their next training cycle after shutting it down after the trials, doing another buildup, and trying to peak again for the games? The goal is to send the team that will be the best on the day of the Olympic marathon, not to send the team that was best months and months before the Olympic marathon.

You could still have a marathon national championship race that weights heavily in the Olympic team selection process without having a trials race.

Therein lies the rub: how do you best select proof of fitness for a summer marathon? Have the OT exactly a year prior in a similar climate zone? Have the OT 6-8 weeks out and hope those on the team can recover and then do a nanocycle build? Have the OT at Boston on Sunday on a loop course so that it's only a few months prior to the Olympics?

BOHICA wrote:

Actually, ATL failed to anticipate how supershoes would have the effect of swelling fields. Combine supershoes with aided course races like CIM and you wound up with a lot of pretenders who didn't really belong there. That plus WA giving the OT gold label status didn't help their cause any. If they could have got USATF to at the very least eliminate aided courses like CIM they would've shed a bunch of OT tourists and been well within original budget. And per the alleged rumor, that looks like it could be the case going forward.

I actually don't think eliminating CIM will have a big effect on the field size. The uphills net out with the downhills to be very similar to a flat marathon. In absence of being able to qualify at CIM someone else will step up to create a marathon that is perfectly flat (like Marathon Project).

forcerunner wrote:

Atlanta dug their own financial grave by stepping up and paying for flight/hotel for every qualifier. No one said they had to, but they did anyway. For other B qualifiers (like myself) I know almost every single person would've been more than content paying their own way.

This is at least partially true—their initial bid (which wasn’t accounting for a super shoes-fueled large field) said they like do this, so they had some degree of obligation. They could have reneged, but after the near athlete-rebellion at least partially about unequal treatment between A and B qualifiers in LA (although it was admittedly about more than that).

Just (educated) guessing, but the ATC likely spent over $1000/athlete on the Trials between travel, hotel, hospitality, and participant services (on top of administrative and fixed costs for the bid and race), and only around half of that was travel and hotel. Providing just that good athlete experience for B qualifiers (which, again, I think was the minimum after unequal A and B qualifier experience in LA—and still could have posed problems, as once athletes start arriving on different timelines and staying in different hotels providing them an equal experience becomes more challenging) in addition to travel and experience for A qualifiers would still cost a (perhaps unsustainably) pretty penny.

The way for a large Trials (which I think is good for the sport) to become sustainable is for USATF and/or the USOPC to be willing to financially support the event, rather than just try to extract profit from them.

Yep. Problem is the CEO of USATF views the organization as a money making scheme and does not see it as having an obligation to grow the sport. This is evidenced by his 4 million dollar salary, you could put on a big road race for that amount.

call it like it is... wrote:

Yep. Problem is the CEO of USATF views the organization as a money making scheme and does not see it as having an obligation to grow the sport. This is evidenced by his 4 million dollar salary, you could put on a big road race for that amount.

Max was a failure as a NASCAR Team Head presiding over the collapse of the Dale Earnhardt franchise. What has he done to grow Track in the US over the last ten years?

That's debatable. TMP was a one-off that only made sense in artificial scarcity, it's not sustaining.

BOHICA wrote:

Alexi Santana wrote:

I actually don't think eliminating CIM will have a big effect on the field size. The uphills net out with the downhills to be very similar to a flat marathon. In absence of being able to qualify at CIM someone else will step up to create a marathon that is perfectly flat (like Marathon Project).

That's debatable. TMP was a one-off that only made sense in artificial scarcity, it's not sustaining.

Trials of Miles runs a half marathon every year that is perfectly flat and set up to run fast. They could easily double the amount of loops, set out a bunch of drinks and nutrition, and get pacers for an OTQ time. Honestly I'll be surprised if they don't.

Dave if you read this and decide to do it let me know and I'll give you at least 15 miles of OTQ pace rabbiting.