TIME TO CHANGE THE TRIALS FORMAT TO A HYBRID SYSTEM

This is hilarious if you remember how much controversy the BCS system generated. Auburn fans are still furious over not getting a chance to play for the national title after going undefeated in 2004.

There's no such thing as a purely objective formula. Who gets to choose the criteria and what the specific criteria are make a big difference, and there's plenty of room for politics there.

The current system is the simplest and best, and I hope USATF is never dumb enough to change it.

Yeah, the current system is inflexible. Especially with most of the field disciplines, 110m hurdles and decathlon it makes much more sense to have the third spot determined by season's best results. How many results you want to include depends on the discipline.

It's not optimal to use the same type of qualifying system for 400m and decathlon.

No. You treat the US championship like a championship. I downvoted Amby Burfoot for suggest doing away with the trials and I will downvote you. Some people will be left home, but that's life. The fastest on paper aren't always our best medal threats anyways.

Absolutely not.

It’s bad enough that we have to deal with a bunch of people trying to sneak into worlds via the Diamond League.

Win and in, lose and out. Keep it simple.

No.

Swimming and athletics (largely) are the two most clear cut selection processes and most transparent.

Plenty of sports use other selection processes for instance cycling has used results from world championships the previous year or winning a stage of a major tour or being the national time trial champion or world cup points. It can be done very objectively and without a formula that just muddies the water even more.

That said, I think this process is the most transparent and straightforward.

It would never work in USA as 1. You have so much depth of talent in most events that choosing a wild card 3rd athlete would be very difficult and 2. In such a litigious society it would be impossible to create a a widely accepted objective criteria that would not lead to an avalanche of lawsuits from those who feel they have been wrongly not selected.

The Dan O’Brien case was clearly the most egregious as he was clearly the best in the world at his event at the time.

It’s tough to miss out on a Global Championship just because of a minor injury at the time of the Trials but that how it goes.

Ok, even if you had this system for this year, would you send Hoey or Hoppel as the 3rd athlete in the 800? Hocker or Nuguse in the 1500? Decent case that most of those who didn't make it would be staying home anyway.

The outlier meets don't make money. Only the Oly Brand is money for us all. Time to wake up and smell the roses.

Absolutely not. Under no circumstances should the third athlete be “judged” in to a spot. That is what third world countries do. If the athlete can’t perform on a given qualifying day (US championships) it is just as likely they won’t perform at the world championships.

It's always hard to see old favorites miss out but yet pass the torch. In a world of no guarantees, who says Dan O wouldn't no height in OG 92? Who did he become with some adversity vs getting a handout? Unfortunately, it is easier for Americans to take handouts all the time...entitlements. Call it old fashioned but the American way was hacking your home out of the woods and turning the dirt with your bare hands if you had to. No work, no eat!

I'd love to see Kovacs compete in Tokyo. He knows he had a bad day and it's not the end of the world. He won in Lausanne today, in the rain against good competition. He's still viable.

What if WA just went down the list and filled lanes by performance? Im not sure everyone would be on board with that either.

We have the best system. The athletes know where the line in the sand is. Ive seen many new arrivals pull medals out of OG by beating historically accomplished athletes at the selection meet. Let the athletes fight it out with the pressure. It's great training in itself.

I was a Coe fan and the Brits went 2 auto and 1 committee selection in 84 and he won his second gold in the 1500. It worked out. The guy that finished 3rd had to try again 4 years later if he was still around.

I really like the top 3 go no matter what system, but it’s got me thinking if there could ever possibly be an exception

What if it wasn’t for a Hoey or a Cunningham type athlete, but a truly transcendent talent

Let’s assume Mondo competed for America and on the morning of the olympic trials he gets terribly sick and can’t make 5.70 or something. This is a guy who no doubt wins gold basically no matter what, and there would be no method of putting him on the team. Even if someone dropped out for him the spot would go to the fourth placer

Could there ever be an athlete that’s bigger than the federation in America? Obviously Mondo is on team Sweden no matter what, Jakob is on team Norway no matter what. Could anyone ever see this happening with the US?

Or fix track. Worlds and Olympics are dumb concepts when 3-5 countries dominate all the events. Why are the pinnacle events of this sport limiting 3 from a country when they could realistically qualify 5-10 athletes?

Sports like football and baseball and basketball the official league matters more than any international tournament because international events don’t comprise of the best athletes.

I completely agree with this. I've always believed the OP's version is the best way to do it.

I mention power ratings frequently. The current system will always produce a team with lower average and median power ratings than the OP method.

Plus it would still leave intrigue and discussion after trials, as the third place spot is up for grabs. For example, let's say the third spot in women's 800 is open. Wiley is the leading contender but she threw in a stinker today. It lends to countless possibilities and more attention to the sport.

Figure skating has done this. Michelle Kwan got the wild card berth one time. She was granted a medical waiver from trials and then had to demonstrate her conditioning to a blue ribbon panel. It was like a private viewing of a free program, or something like that. I forget all the details other than it was a huge topic on all the related forums. She was named to the team then later withdrew due to injury.

It's not about you.

The only exception I could imagine supporting would be something I'd call The Proven Championship Performer clause, which would be triggered whenever an athlete medals in three consecutive outdoor global championships in the same individual event, with at least one of those medals being gold. I think a valid justification could be made for such athletes to be granted a spot for the following outdoor championship team. In any instances where we might have more than one athlete in the same event who meets those criteria, then the spot would go to whoever was the most recent gold medalist.

This clause came to mind when thinking about Keely's hamstring injury comeback this year compared to Mu's hamstring injury comeback last year. This year, Keely had the luxury of taking her time coming back from injury because she knew her spot on her country's world championship team was secured. She knew she could skip her country's national championship meet and wait to resume racing until she was absolutely ready. Now look at how well she's doing.

In contrast, Mu had to rush back from her injury last year for the Olympic Trials, which she clearly wasn't ready for. Imagine if she didn't have to do that, and instead of worrying about the Trials, she had an extra 6 weeks to prepare to race at the Olympics. I believe there's a good chance she would have medaled in Paris, just like she did in each of the three previous global championships. Yes, I know she ran like crap a few weeks after the Trials, but I believe that was because she was so devastated from what happened at the Trials; she would have been motivated to get in top shape for the Olympics if she had that spot secured. She ran 1:58 in her Trials semi, so it's not a stretch to think she could have been in medal-contending form in another 6 weeks.

That said, I support our current system as is.