Parker Wolfe sour grapes?

He’s allowed to be disappointed in the outcome even if the outcome is defined. The time standard is objective but the world ranking is subjective. He beat Graham, Teare, Hocker at the trials as well as beating Nico at NCAAs. Completely likely he could have gotten a high enough world ranking.

Can we please stop all of this? How do you know Parker didn’t congratulate Graham. They are friends. He has a right to be disappointed and not Grahams fault. I think in the interview Blanks did a great job of expressing sympathy towards the situation and saying that all he can do is the go to Paris to represent the USA and hurt for us all.

I keep hearing people saying the world ranking is subjective. I don't think you guys know what subjective means. Nobody's judging athlete's performances. It's a completely transparent ranking system, with a table for points based on your time plus additional performance points for placing in highly competitive meets. The performance points system is also completely transparent and based on specific criteria for meet competitiveness. And if you want to bypass all of the uncertainty of whether someone else will run faster and bump you off the list, you can simply run a really fast time. Nine other Americans chose this route.

Because people today are under the misguided belief that if it didn't happen on social media, it didn't happen.

It is most definitely not subjective but it is stupid. If a country has 3+ auto qualifiers in an event then that country should send top three at their Olympic trials. It promotes the sport within that country and it promotes racing.

Can someone just delete this website once and for all? It is so bad for the sport. What a stupid thread.

Some countries don't hold trials. Some countries do a combination of trials and subjective picks.

The WA ranking system is anything but subjective. Go to the site and read exactly how rankings are calculated. Nothing subjective about it. All athletes are ranked based on the same rules and formula. And it takes more than one race to move up high enough in the rankings.

It was a effed up system. Period.

There's definitely some subjectivity in the system as pertains to the bonus points awarded for the "quality" of the meet, but that's a small part of the overall score in the end. I think other posters have competently documented the various opportunities Wolfe/his coach passed up during indoor and outdoor season where he could have been in a fast 5k that could have got him the standard, but instead he raced elsewhere in a slower heat or in a relay or some such. Blanks simplified his life by chasing and obtaining the standard a long time ago. It's easy to say Wolfe shoulda coulda woulda done this or that in retrospect, but some of the meet/race choices he and his coach made look downright negligent from our perspective in mid-July. Particularly thinking of the day he ran on his team's DMR instead of a 5,000 race that ended up being pretty fast.

Great point. If he and his coach were completely focused on the std or higher ranking their choice of meets and races should have been more tactical. Its all about the decisions you make and have to live with. Lots of examples this season on decisions made by runners that cost them dearly.

Everyone qualifies under the same rules. It is the coaches job to know and understand the qualification rules. Instead of directing anger towards the qualification system in this case, it should be directed at the negligence of the coaches. that’s their job.

Coach did his job. Wolfe isn't fast enough. Bottom line.

Wolfe is obviously capable of running ~13:00 +/- 2 seconds. He just never got in a fast race this year. Coach actually didn’t do his job in the sense that he didn’t have the opportunity to get a fast enough time for the the standard.

He should show up to the women's 10,000 in Paris and identify as Valby.

Anyone else notice Graham purposely didn’t help push the pace at the trials in order to maximize his chances of going? (By ensuring that nobody else hits the standard)

That’s some next level tactics right there. You gotta watch out for those Harvard brainiacs.

did you really think this was funny? like, at all?

Yes. I'm not woke.