Beamish is World Indoor 1500m Champ but still doesn’t qualify for the Olympic 1500

Yes, but there’s a context here (what he has done in other events, f.ex). He obviously isn’t a 3.36 runner, but a top elite athlete.

Its a crowded distance and chances are small to medal.

The 1500m is more and more resembling to the 800m.

As most people on this message board know, Olympic/outdoor world championship 1500m races go too fast these days for someone like Beamish. Thankfully, he can do the steeplechase.

The title of this thread is exactly what is wrong with World Athletics asinine qualifying system.

Will he run the 10,000 in Paris? He is qualified for this at least. 10,000 qualifying time is really hard.

You're right, but the asinine part is that we're currently in an uncomfortable middle stage of their plan, so it's just frustrating and not working as intended. the thought that cranking up the difficulty on qualifying times would drive athletes to participating more for points/rankings has completely failed, and in fact driven them in the complete opposite direction (loading up for fewer tailor made moon shots at the time).

They need to fast track their end game plan of removing qualifying times altogether. they refuse to come out and say they will do that, but that's the end game.

The catch is they'll still need some version of "fastest in" to ensure the top X number of times run in the world are allowed in, because if they sprain their ankle 10 minutes after running that time and can't go race 6 more events for points, you still need them in.

Then the discussion about auto-qualifiers for prestigious wins needs to happen. want people to give a sh it about world indoors? top 3 auto qualify.

The hard part is the mess of loopholes everyone has discovered with event points and abusing it. can I win a bunch of garbage XC events against nobodies and be the 15th ranked runner in a track distancr as a result? tricky, because one single runner has no control over whether other ranked runners will attend events.

The ranking system is flawed for distance events because it gives you MASSIVE bonus points for place in big events but your placing score is less important than your time.

Also there is no consideration for who you are beating in the races. It's simply place and time.

I'd like it be much more complex. You get points for time, your bonus poitns for place in big events is separate. If you have 5 other faster races, you use those five times. Then your 5 best bonus points. And it somehow should factor in who you are beating.

Why cannot Beamish run fast enough to qualify? Is he not good enough? Or can he?

Why don't they simply implement the ELO system like every other rational ranking does?

Cycling, chess. etc.

How many chess games and cycling races/stages do these ranked players compete in per year/within a limited horizon of current fitness? ELO doesn't work very well when many top athletes show up for 2 months out of the year for a couple races. In order for your ELO ratings to provide a proper expectation of performance, you need many more samples than what the professional track athlete races, and it isn't clear how one would assess competitions at a variety of distances. TBH averaging WA performance scores for ratings across the athlete's competed events is a solid heuristic. H2H bonuses would get complex without providing much predictive benefit. I already think that the WR bonus doesn't make a ton of sense. If the time is a world record then it will already have a really high result score.

For people that really think that there should be H2H based bonuses, please tell me, should it scale to the margin of victory? What if the victor lets up on the gas at the end to celebrate? Should we be penalizing that? Why would we add another variable to track this if the performance result is already capturing this information (ex: runner A finishes 10 seconds ahead of runner B, runner A score 1240, runner B score 1200). If you think there is a way to improve the existing formula, please provide a clear modification to the existing technique.

The truth regarding Beamish and summer Olympics: He will likely qualify for Olympics in at least one event, probably 3000mSC. Don't be surprised if he doesn't make steeplechase final. Outdoors is different from indoors. Peaking for an indoor international medal, unless an athlete is a rare talent, often leads to sub-elite Olympic performance.

He just got 5th at world champs in steeple just a few months after trying the event for the first time...

That’s not the point of the discussion. The point is the absurdity of the current Olympic selection process and how it’s based solely on time. I have no doubt that if he gets in a fast paced race he could run a low 3:30 at the moment.

Did you find a flaw in my argument? You believe T&F history helps your argument. Beamish is 149th fastest all-time 3000mSC runner.

Well I do have doubts about whether he could, and if it as easy as you say for him, what is the problem?

I posted about this a while back. Indoors shouldn’t count for qualifying. Americans won’t like it - but there are too many ridiculous bonus points on offer for things like Milrose even when the event isn’t that deep. Also the whole BU situation. Honestly outside of America no one really gives a sh!t about indoors anyways.

You should have to run the discipline you plan on competing in. Want to run the 1500 at the Olympics? Hit the standard on a 400m outdoor track.

Also - how about the fact that you can qualify for the 10k in a mixed gender road race while wearing super shoes? Or as another poster mentioned - via a bunch of cross races that no one cares about?

I like Beamish I am happy that he got the gold.

But if he can´t get the qualifying time he will stand no chance in the 1500m in Paris.

Like many here, you think times are everything. They aren't. It's where you come against the competition. Times only really matter for records. Too much weight is given to them for qualification - as this thread is arguing.