The big takeaway from the LA Grand Prix 5k: we need to abolish qualifying standards

Yeah, I agree to an extent. Weather conditions and a whole lot of other considerations are disregarded. Tactical races? Forget about it.

The problem with pure rankings is that the lower tier athletes may not have access to all these high level meets.

You want to get rid of the only meet for Americans where everything is on the line? That type of competition is the best thing about sports. Maybe runners will be burnt out for the Olympics after running so many races to qualify for the team.

Every country should have an Olympic Trials and choose their team from that. It doesn’t matter the number that make the Olympics. In the 1500m have the fastest 40 times of Olympic qualifiers auto into the quarterfinals. Depending on the number of athletes competing the lower tier should have to race to be one of the 8 advancing to quarter finals.

^This is an interesting idea, akin to the March Madness bball tourney where the lowest tier has to play an extra game or two to make it to the dance. They could maybe run the preliminary 1500, 5/10 races the first day, (or pre-day) early morning, into the night.

Over the past few years, I have read many interesting suggestions on the number and method of selecting athletes for the Olympic Games. But something that everyone needs to understand is that the International Olympic Committee mandates an athlete cap (quota) for every sport and the International Federations (in this case World Athletics) must come up with a qualification system that does not exceed the cap. The incorporation of a ranking system helps to meet the requirements of the IOC.

Not at all. In fact, having qualification by ranking would bring more people into play at the trials. Currently, only the athletes with the qualifying time have anything on the line. It would actually add more jeopardy to he trials.

Except it does matter the number that make the olympics. The olympics has a total quota of athletes for all sports, then they designate how many in each sport. They can't have variable numbers of athletes because they have to have accommodations for them in the athlete village. That's why they cut certain sports sometimes from the olympics to add new ones, because they can't have both because it's too many athletes.

But that's easily resolved by revising the place score points, which are currently a bit of a mess anyway - the 8th place finisher in the women's 10000m in Budapest ran 31:35 and got 145 place points for a total score of 1306. That would be equal to a performance of 28:58! So yeah, that needs would need to be addressed, but it's not an insurmountable problem. And having more meets where the result actually matters would benefit everyone.

The standards should probably be beefed up to 12:55/3:31.5. I don't think that LA Grand Prix race is worth being upset about. It was a really good race, and not a mindless time trial. Ditto those Chinese DL meets where some Kenyans got their marks. Ultimately, meets specifically designed for 1500/5K qualifying (Teare's Wake Forest, some of Wightman's Aussie races, BU races mostly, Bowerman time trials) are what you want to get rid of if athletes are doing them instead of doing interesting races like Millrose, World Indoors, Commonwealth Tour Gold/Diamond League. I'd leave out The Ten or Night of 10Ks or most of the road races. These become interesting spectacles, and there is not a great ecosystem of 10Ks out there. The ranking points in Gold/Silver/Bronze meets should be pretty strong so that it is better to finish 3rd in 3:35 in the LA Grand Prix 1500 (an enjoyable, solid race) like Centro did than to run 3:33 in some impromptu Time Trial somewhere.
I wouldn't get rid of time standards completely just from an access perspective and also for athletes than run multiple events.

Yeah, I wasn't criticising the LA race as such, but using it as an example of why times are just pointless since everyone except last place ran pretty deep under the standard. When a standard is so attainable that 11 people in a 12 person race hit it, then it's meaningless. I think even if you set the mark at 12:55, you'd just get more athletes stretching to reach it. I honestly don't see what having a standard really adds to the competition, which is ultimately what racing should be about.

I agree about changing the points for the label races. At the same time, there probably needs to be a reduction in the points awarded to DL and World Champs races, purely because of the accessibility issue.

Agree with you. I think if they set it at 12:55, at the very least it would scare off a lot of runners from BU/lower tier (like that Swedish race with Almgren, Kimeli etc). races. At worst we'd get 1 heat only in those scenarios. Guys would be *really* going for it. I do want to have the option for the top-tier guys to dabble in events. So that's why I'd keep in something.

When standards were slower, most did not stretch to achieve them. There were plenty of years in the early part of the century and last part of the last one in which just one or two Americans, if any, achieved the qualifying standards in the distances. So, they don't just automatically achieve whatever the standard is. We're just in a golden era right now, with many more paced races, with pacing lights and super shoes. But the good thing about having these stronger standards is that we are seeing more fast racing ahead of national trials than usual in the distances.

This, for example, is the U.S. 1500m list from 2003, according to the World Athletics list. Qualifying at the time was low 3:36, I believe, so we would have had two qualifiers max for the 1500m World Champs. However, Jason Lunn won the trials in 3:44 over Berryhill and Robison and only Lunn (4th fastest that year) competed at World's, qualifying for the semis with a 3:47.6 and then placing ninth in 3:41.

1
3:35.15
David KRUMMENACKER
24 MAY 1975
USA
3
Gateshead (GBR)
13 JUL 2003
1173
2
3:35.75
Grant ROBISON
27 SEP 1978
USA
7
Heusden-Zolder (BEL)
02 AUG 2003
1164
3
3:36.68
Bryan BERRYHILL
15 DEC 1977
USA
8
Zagreb (CRO)
07 JUL 2003
1151
4
3:36.99
Jason LUNN
19 SEP 1974
USA
9
Zagreb (CRO)
07 JUL 2003
1147
5
3:39.74
Charlie GRUBER
06 AUG 1978
USA
6
Portland, OR (USA)
17 MAY 2003
1110
6
3:39.94
Jess STRUTZEL
04 JAN 1978
USA
4
Carson, CA (USA)
01 JUN 2003
1107

Doesn't your proposal include eliminating the trials?:

“In light of that, why make athletes perform time trials that few people are interested in? Instead, make qualifying for the Olympics and World's based completely on rankings. In a world where times don't matter, get people racing for the win or places. Make racing matter.”

Well, in the old system with no standard and no ranking, every athlete was in play at trials. USA basically strong enough that any athlete who is top 3 at trials is suitable for Olympics. No Eddy the Eagle is making it.

Olympic trials aren't the same as time trials. Time trials are when everyone is running with a pacemaker and wave light technology, specifically to chase a fast time with the intent to click off laps at a consistent pace so people can run an ideal pace for that time. The Olympic trials is where people are racing without a pacemaker purely to try to beat each other to get a spot on the Olympic team. You know, like an actual race.

100% agree. WA has taken the most simple, easily understandable sport, and fusked it up so that even coaches and athletes don't understand.

And then, all the too Label meets are directed by WA agents!!! Every DL, WA A meet has a conflict of interest.

So corrupt. That's what Seb Coe has done... he has taken a sport with corruption, and made it completely corrupt.

The only time-based qualifiers for global outdoor championships should be:

-the athletes with the top-3 times/marks globally in the current season (one athlete per country, with the season beginning with the indoor season, so approximately December 1 of the preceding calendar year) (3 total "global top-3" wildcard spots per event)

-the athletes with the top time not from a country that has already claimed a time-based qualifier not in the top-3 globally from each of three sets of paired areas (Pair 1: the Americas; Pair 2: Africa and Europe; Pair 3: Oceania and Asia) (3 total "paired area #1" wildcard spots)

-the defending champ in the event from the most-recent global championship (1 total "defending champ" wildcard spot)

-and the winner (or top not-yet-qualified finisher) of a new Diamond League Final-style pre-Worlds meet (1 total "regular season finale meet" wildcard spot)

These spots should all be World Athletics wildcards, and athletes from one country should be able to claim as many as three of the eight of them (one of the global top-3 times or the top paired area time, the defending champ, and the top not-yet-qualified finisher at the new pre-Worlds meet) in addition to World Rankings-based qualifiers. The athlete would select themselves for these spots, not their nation--World Athletics would pay for them, and the number of these wildcard spots earned by athletes from one nation wouldn't affect the number of spots available to that nation via World Rankings (capped at three in every event). All performance list-based qualifying should stop in advance of the new pre-Worlds meet, so it's clear who is already in and for whom that meet is a last chance qualifier.

All places in global championships outside of those eight wildcards should be based on World Rankings* and assigned to nations (up to three per nation). Those nations should be required to either select the athlete(s) who earned the World Rankings-based spots, have a first-past-the-post Trials event for all World Rankings-based spots, or give up the spot to the next nation. These national federation selections would be required to be made in advance of the new pre-Worlds meet, so it's clear who is already in and for whom that meet is a last chance qualifier.

*I'm also open to a certain number of spots in each event (up to three) first going to the top-3 globally ranked athletes in each set of paired areas, and the remainder being done by World Ranking, to assure broad representation from across the globe in what is supposed to be a global championship. But I could be convinced otherwise.

And yes, there is doubtlessly room for improvement in how the World Rankings are calculated, but with this array of wildcards an emergent athlete with a single breakthrough performance would be able to earn their way in through the global top-3 or paired area #1 seasonal wildcard, and also, if they earned their way into the pre-championship meet (the process for qualifying for which should be determined solely by annual global descending order list) via that wildcard as well.

Also, I don't think you can say WA under Coe is more corrupt than it was under his predecessors...

en.wikipedia.org

Lamine Diack

Lamine Diack (7 June 1933 – 3 December 2021) was a Senegalese businessman, sports administrator, and athlete. He was president of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) from 1999 to 2015. He was the sub...

Link:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamine_Diack

en.wikipedia.org

Primo Nebiolo

Primo Nebiolo (14 July 1923 – 7 November 1999) was an Italian sports official, best known as former president of the worldwide athletics federation IAAF and the FISU. Primo Nebiolo was the ideator of the IAAF Continental Cup....

Link:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primo_Nebiolo

The Diamond League meetings in Eugene, Oslo, Monaco, London, Lausanne and Zurich do not have agents assemble their athlete fields.