Tokyo 2025 World Champs qualifying standards - it's getting harder!

At least the men's 10k Q didn't change.

Was afraid the success of The TEN, along with all these fast road races, would cause WA to revise the standard downward to/close to 26:50.

So, the eight guys who got their Paris Q Saturday night also put an early Easter egg in their basket by picking up their Tokyo Q as well.

However, sucks for Kelati, Keith and Ryan. Gotta do it over again next year.

Where did you see that? What is 5k?

If world athletics wants to make rankings more important, XC needs to be more accessible for US runners and there need to be more qualifying 10k races. As it is the tough 10k standard just results in runners like grant fisher skipping indoors. The standards are having the opposite effect of what they want, which is more racing.

More incentives for doping.

I agree that there needs to be more 10k opportunities, though if you factor in road races, there's already more than you think.

On the question if XC: it's up to governing bodies to provide opportunities. The US (or North America more generally) could have a second or third gold label XC meet, but someone has to put it on, whether that's USATF or another organisation. In Europe, the Belgian, Spanish, and Italian federations are good at committing to XC. Others have to be learn from them and be better.

But also, athletes have to take care of themselves. In 2023, there were 6 gold label XC events between 22 October and 26 November, 5 in Spain, 1 in the UK. A US athlete can rent an Airbnb for two weeks in Spain, knock out a few races then go home. Or just do two races plus the US Cross Champs. The XC places are really a massively under-used route to qualification

They wanted to only use the ranking system back in 2019 but people complained. So ya they seem to just be tightening up the standards every year until eventually the only thing left is the qualification by world ranking. And I think that's fine. But a big part of the ranking is the actual time, but you will have to have more than one good race. And someone who can run a fast race more than once should get in ahead of someone who ran one outlier race and is normally not as fast.

I think that's fair enough. The rankings should be meaningful. I'd be in favour of no auto-Qs for any event, selection purely on rankings

Even if the standards for marathon are raised to 2:03:00 for men and 2:17:30 for women, Kenya still has a vast pool to select from. We can even lend some to the USA just as we've done with chelimo, Lagat, saina, Shadrach etc🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂😂

There’re just so many events! It feels like they should just really emphasize the label system and points. I’m all for rankings but there should be a reasonable idea of if I finish top 10 at a major/platinum label I’ll make it in, top 5 at a gold label and so on, top 3 the next tier down and so on. Right now, it’s a little bit too much guesswork.

They want to push the ranking. But if you have to risk to go all in for a marathon and fail you go home with a time which does not save you a spot in the national team and you might lose the funding from your sponsors. You do not have many shots at the marathon.

There isn't a perfect solution. If they relax the standard, then there will be 50 people in the 10k final in the Olympics, and that's not ideal either.

That women's 10,000 standard is crazy.

Do you realize that only women born in 8 different countries have EVER broken 30:20?

ETJ, NED, CHN, KEN, GBR, USA, ERI, NOR.

Only 39 women in history have ever broken 30:20. It would be the equivalent of the men's 100 being 9.88 (39 men in history have run that).

78 men in history have broken 27:00.

This is hysterical. I’m glad the standards are this tough. All of these me me me Americans who act like their S doesn’t smell now won’t qualify for WC or Olympics. Good riddance.

Who born in NED has run 30:20?

Bizarre how WA forgot to give Sound Running a heads up before The Ten.

Sifan Hassan and Lornah Kiplagat both run/ran for the Netherlands and have run 29:06 and 30:12.

Always good to raise the bar, To keep setting goals higher, This leads to Improvement, Just like Americans currently are a whole lot Smarter and in better Physical shape than Americans were 50, 100, 200 years ago etc. A kid who graduates High School in 2024 if that person had his 2024 Intelligence he would be a genius 50 years ago, and whoever is reading this is almost Certainly a lot smarter than Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison etc. Who would be unlikely to be able to Graduate a High School by 2024 standards, they were all VERY SMART FOR THEIR TIME, but it is just Evolution that they would not be smart by our standards, They could not Read or do Math at a level to pass a minimum proficiency test by 2024 standards, but they did not have to hit 2024 standards and they were smart for their time, Same as us we look at these Standards 2:06.30 for the Marathon, 2:23.30 for Women and 27:00 for the 10000 or 30:20 for 10000 For Women as Very Hard, but In 200 Years from now most of TheHigh schoolers will run faster than those times for their weekly long run, and will run faster than the 10000 times on their recovery runs, just Evolution everything improves, Always been that way, always will be that way.

But is that partly because they haven't need to? I was sceptical about making standards harder, but I think what we are seeing is that athletes run to meet the standard and most don't try to go further. Until this year, there were only four American men that had ever run sun-27, then four did it in a single race. When UK Athletics said they would only take athletes that met the standards, all the athletes complained about how difficult the standards were. Now, this year, GB has four men who have the 5k standard and two men with the marathon standard. Even those that aren't hitting the standard are running massive PBs in their attempt to reach it. My guess is we'll see the same next year

Diane van Es was only 9 seconds off of that last year on the roads. She's turning 25 tomorrow.

That's true. The WA calendar is still very difficult to negotiate. I was trying to find all the meets with a 10000m event but it was way too difficult. But it's not an impossible task to create a functional rankings system, tennis and golf have it