Why was that super slow guy in the indoor 3000m?

There's another thread about it... go read it

As far as I know, if a country does not have any athlete that qualifies for any event they're allowed to enter ONE athlete in the World Championships.

However, I don't think this should apply to finals. It's fine for heats, but for finals, no.

The rule used to explicitly say these universality athletes couldn't compete in final-only events. That must have changed recently though. It seems like there needs to be some sensible rule, it's no big deal to have some dudes trailing way behind in a marathon but putting a guy like that in an indoor distance race is just absurd.

the idea is to get teams other than the usual suspects trying to compete.

if you watch the olympics there will be guys running 12 or 13s in 100m prelim rounds. like before the heats proper start. this does not break my heart. i used to like it before the qualifying numbers came in. it would make these days for an infinite size olympic village and i think that's the real reason we have the numbers. just like numbers in one of my other sports never seem to grow.

my response is if you only want to watch "the best" then watch the circuit meets. this is the "world championship." if it would be 10-20 countries on strict merit, that's not the world championship, that's the circuit championship.

this wanders back into folks acting like some laggards ruin the guy running 2:04 at the NY marathon. other than literally getting in the way in a manner we have rules to punish even when the best runners race, i don't see how having a race with fast and some slow folks ruins it for the fast. it's kind of baby fascist.

i think the "not in finals races" is one solution, but then for that range of events it's not universal. another is some sort of B standard for universality, a bare minimum, but if it's too close to world qualifying then you're almost enforcing that. to me it says something we're complaining about one runner.