BREAKING: Leonard Korir not going to Paris! 11 Universality athletes get in ahead of him!

Okay, fine. The idea is the "best of the best" competing in the Olympics. However, it seems lame that the criteria is effectively forcing guys to go run at a few very specific courses [in Europe] where conditions are generally ideal to hit the fastest times possible. It takes the fun out of racing the marathon and dealing with the idiosyncrasies of specific courses. Kipchoge is generally masterful on flat fast courses, so it was fun to watch him navigate Boston, for example.

Conversely, why the outcry over a 2:09 runner not getting in then? There's 70 runners who did hit the auto qualifying time, the bar was clearly not set too high for this technology-assisted era.

High Hopes, I'm sure in real life I would know who you are, and maybe actually know you. You are a great source of wisdom and courtesy on this forum.

Exactly. And there’s actually ~243 athletes who hit the standard, 70 when you limit to 3 per country. A joke that the U.S. only has 2 of the fastest 243 marathon men in the world, this is the outcome you get when you suck and nobody should feel bad about it.

I choose to take this as a sincere comment and not sarcasm (because it makes me feel better)! So thank you!

Granted, there's a possibility of jet lag but they'd have to deal with that in the Olympics as well. Fly out for a week and you can get over it. I also understand that $3k is a lot of money but if you're aiming for the Olympics, at some point, you have to actually bet on yourself, right? It's not unusual for pro athletes to put a lot of their own money into their development. They could go win a couple of low-key HMs to make some prize money to cover it, that's what East Africans have to do.

Ah yes the ever changing boogeyman to distract you from the fact that oligarchic corporations are ruining your life

Newsflash, the politicians that treat regulating corporations like the most extreme infringement on civic liberties imaginable aren't going to stop companies from being racist to make their old white shareholders happy about how totally not racist they are.

sorry but to me it's utterly contradictory to be like "the best of the best" and yet "they should take 80+."

if they let 70-odd guys compete in winter downhill or slalom on merit, come on, at a point we'd be picking guys who barely ever score a point in the circuit.

re the "more like 2:10" argument, that's confusing time with ease and ability. not every fast runner will profit from a slower race in a hotter part of the year, but few slower ones will be able to handle what happens. they may start slow then steadily turn the screw. they may go on bursts then slow down. the overall time is slower, like a match race style heat or final at 10k, but a strong few will control the accelerator and try to break the weaker runners. it won't be just run at a canter and then leave everyone in for the win. the implication of but it'll be 2:10 is getting in with 2:09 is fine, when to me your marginal ability to run that time makes you precarious to even keep up. if i have to almost PR to keep up with a race that you have turned into a speed up slow down game, no, that actually doesn't favor me.

I’ll gladly take that bet if he gets in. He will be closer than that for sure.

I do feel for Korir but I don't think this is the the travesty it's being made out to be — the 74th-ranked man not getting an Olympic spot.

80 athletes is already by far the largest event in athletics. Only the top 27 get to run the 10,000m. I feel worse for the 28th-best 10,000m runner than the 74th-best marathoner. It's not just about whether we have the space on the road, the Olympics are capped to preserve a standard of performance.

But most of all, Korir is only even 74th when counting only 3 men per nation. I feel so much more for Timothy Kiplagat who has run 2:02:55 and won't be an Olympian. Or Vincent Ngetich or Tadese Takele or Evans Chebet...

My point is, we're already taking spots at the Olympics that other men might feel they deserve more. Capping nations at 3 athletes is a contrived decision and it means the Olympic field is not necessarily the best 80 in the world, in the interest of having more nations represented. So extending this concept to allow one athlete from each of these universality nations is not that far-fetched. I'd argue that accepting one athlete from Uruguay or Malta over the 3rd athlete from the US is akin to, or perhaps even more justified, than accepting the 3rd athlete from the US over the 4th athlete from Kenya or Ethiopia.

Maybe this is just the wake-up call the US needs to step up in the marathon and quash any doubt about our 3 qualifiers in 2028.

actually i looked it up and 57 skiers scored at least a single point in the downhill circuit of several races. you get a point by finishing top 30 in any race. so if the olympics allowed in every guy with a cup point, and ignored the 3 per country limit, they could only gather 57 people.

and downhill is actually an event where some outlier or noob once in a while does pull off a miracle.

some point it needs to cut off. this is not so small a cutoff it's very unfair at all.

the folks complaining of the sheer number of universalities this time, are missing that the new rules channeled it in this direction. they limited it to 3 events. they put a bunch of asterices on the 800. so it will be a deluge in the 100m and marathon. that's how they channeled the flow. they beyond-nudged them to 2 events. and that may impact how many merit choices they allow those 2 events.

fwiw in 100m the standard is 10-flat. the 70th 100m runner would be saeed al-khaldi at 10.15. i don't recognize many of the names around him, and the first US guys missing the cut would be blaskowski (d3 guy) and josephus lyles. if they somehow got through trials but lacked the standard, ok, let the micronesian runner in. to me it's the functional equivalent. you have 70 guys 10.15 or better, that's plenty of "best of the best."

actually, way it looks per the rules, 100m will be 56 people give or take.

Didn't CJ go to Valencia and literally sh<i></i>it his pants? And then Fauble said "hold my beer," went to Berlin, and puked?

Meb was 4th in 2012 with a 2:09 PR. Rupp medaled in 2016 with a 2:11 PR. Pretty much every Olympics you find guys in the top 5 or top 10 with 2:08:11 or slower PRs. Well except this one.

The fast races exist in Europe, but the $$$ races are in the USA and the trials aren't set up to help guys hit the standard.

That's what I mean by misaligned incentives— if you're a 2:10 guy, would you pass up on those NYC/Boston appearance fees to run in Valencia and unlock a qualifying spot? Especially when you know you still have to place at the trials to make the Olympics? Of course not.

That said, even with those bad incentives it's crazy that the USA didn't have 3 guys who could hit the OQT at Chicago or abroad. That's a separate issue in and of itself, though one that USATF has some power to influence as well

True but those PRs were all run without supershoes. Meb's PR then was about 6 minutes behind the world record, which would correspond to a 2:06 now.

There's also Tokyo in the spring and Toronto in the fall, to name a few non-European alternatives besides Chicago.

Whats the point of having the trials ? If was Galen USA would have taken. Just racism. Period

Yeah Tokyo's a good one, though again USATF would have to take some leadership in convincing sponsors that it's in their best interest to let guys chase the standard there instead of running Boston.

Don't know much about the Toronto marathon but looks like that would be a good fit too. Location makes it a lot more feasible for guys with smaller sponsorship deals too, which is a bonus.