Fair or foul: World Athletics gets rid of unlimited relay substitutions. Rule change is clearly directed at Team USA

Should LA 2028 respond with a large tariff on foreign athletes?

It's not complicated at all. Two substitutions is plenty.

I know our relay runners are going to cry about it but it's giving a little something to those countries that don't have the same level of depth and providing them with a slight chance.

Population of the USA 340 million

Population of Norway 5.6 million

So allowing switch was a bit unfair.

I’m ok with it

Fewer participation medals for those who ran in earlier rounds too.

IF there were relays like 4x1600m at the Olympics, and there were heats, some countries would want these new rules, and some wouldn’t, and at one point the US would have wanted these restrictions, and now maybe not so much.

don’t care

I agree with Gault about the rule change mainly impacting the U.S.

Your question makes me think of team sports like basketball. It's 5 on 5 at a time, but teams are allowed to make unlimited substitutions whenever the clock is stopped, and teams like the Oklahoma City Thunder that have more depth generally have an advantage.

If you're only interested in who has the absolute best top 4 runners, then favoring no substitutions would make sense. If the purpose of the relay is to identify which country has the best overall collection of talent, then allowing unlimited substitutions is reasonable. I think allowing two substitutions is a nice middle ground.

The U.S. men's and women's teams won most of the 4x4 gold medals when only two subs were allowed, and (with all due respect to the Botswana men) I expect they'll continue to win most of the golds in that event moving forward.

Plus: with only two subs allowed, there should be less confusion about who's running in the final.

This is likely Trump's plan until he finds out the athletes are black, then he'll TACO once again.

If you really want to cook with gas you allow only 2 changes from the relay team that qualifies. This would make Team USA have a real team like other countries as opposed to just throwing around squads based on performances at Nationals. Not seeing I endorse that, but I see its merits as an equalizer/better continuity.

Bingo. It's amazing that a state like North Carolina has eight classifications for sports in high school and yet in the Olympics, there are no considerations for population size. We can't dare have a school with 1,000 students compete against one with 1,500 students - it would be too unfair! But a nation with a population 60x the size of another competes on the same level all the time. Don't get me wrong - I am not arguing for classifications in the Olympics, but making a change to the rules like this does allow for a little more equality between countries.

What does population of the country have to do with anything? China and India have over 1 billion each.

Perhaps a percentage of population ratio comparison may be more comparable coz it's certainly not all 340million Americans that compete in athletics.

Well, Nationals will have to change now. It will be interesting to see how this affects athletes' performances and how many now decide to stop with athletics given they now have less chances of making any teams to compete at global competitions.

So when will they fix the idiotic false start rule? It continues to amaze me the things WA focuses on.

I find nothing wrong with it. I always found it insulting in high school and college to have the B team qualify for state/national finals, then replace all 4 of those kids with the A team for the finals of the event. The B team earned it. The B team is the team that qualified. Nobody on the A team earned it by participating. Unless there is an injury, illness, emergency, etc - Those that qualify into the final should be required to run the final. I'm stoke for Quincey, but he didn't earn a gold medal. He ran the prelims then sat on the sidelines during the medaling event because he wasn't good enough to get them there.

I think it's fair and I doubt it will actually harm the US medal count.

It also reduces the number of diluted medals given to runners who only ran in the prelims. Calling yourself an Olympic gold medalist because you ran in a prelim has always seemed like a stretch to me.

Welcome to payback, USA! Thanks to your idiotic loudmouth leadership, look for rules to take away your advantages and calls to consistently go against you in international sports.

A pedantic point, but substitutions in the NBA are limited by roster size, so not truly unlimited. But I see your point re subs compared to baseball or soccer.

As malmo said, 2 is plenty. And, for the 4x100, it might actually be to the US team’s advantage insofar as fewer runners means more practice reps with the same pairing for exchanges. Because clearly lack of speed has not been holding the US back, but rather poor exchanges.

I think it will be good for the 4x1 but bad for the 4x4. some guys might have to choose between individual and relay. and the us athletes seem a little more self centered than others when it comes to this