So there is the official IAAF B limit for the marathon which is 2:18 for men and 2:43 for women.
Our national T&F federation set (or is about to set) the limit to 2:16:30 and 2:38:30 resp. which just caused that people started to complain about the evil federation which doesn't support marathon runners, promote endurance running etc. The situation is that there are two runners on the men's side and maybe the same number on the women's side that are capable of running marathon in under the B limit but not under the national limit. They are crying that they have at most two attempts to run that time whereas other athletes have plenty of attempts during all next summer season so clearly in advantage with them.
The reason behind the federation decision is probably to nominate only those athletes that are going to be at least a bit competitive which would not be the case of 2:18 or 2:43 runners (when looking at IAAF scoring tables one can see that 2:18 for marathon is like 1:50 for 800m or 3:46 for 1500m so "second-class" times).
Where does your sympathy go? To runners who want to live their Olympic dream with bad times or to the federation?
(just to clarify, it's not that we don't have any other runners to nominate, we have several sprinters and middle distance runners which will likely meet the "harder" limits and compete for medals in their events, so it is not the case we don't have any athletes and are just glad that we can send someone just to participate and promote the country).