Standard during the qualifying period, which started January 1st and ended on the last day of the Nationals meet in Edmonton. Top-three at nationals.
Edmonton is not located at serious altitude, whoever said that it is at "altitude" it is not high enough.
Whatever the hell happened in nationals is straight from the twilight zone. Although in defense of the athletes it was very, very windy anyway....
Not speaking on behalf of AC, but I would assume that the earlier cut-off date to coincide with nationals is to make nationals exciting - a real competition. But I would argue that making nationals mandatory and top-three is fine, but have some sort of flexible deal where athletes clear the standard afterwards and in a case like the men's 1500m where no one is going anyway, send them after running the standard afterwards. After all, they did do the mandatory nationals race and before the IAAF timeline ran under the AC standard.
Mind you, perhaps AC's is thinking, "try to perform at nationals next time." Not speaking on their behalf as I have not had that conversation with anyone....
But ya gotta wonder, eh.
AC doesn't need an overhaul, they just had one after 16 years. There are a lot of positives to take from Canada's current middle/long distance crop of athletes and the leadership.
There is some fine tuning that all the Monday morning quarterbacks can agree on: Declaration, timing of achieving standard and a few other niggles. But there is a lot of good that is going on too.
What about this idea:
Keep nationals mandatory. Must be top-5 at nationals and under the IAAF standard then you are on-deck. Then by the IAAF deadline, be under the AC standard and be top-three in the nation. Brannen and CPT would be going for sure then. Gives them an opportunity to demonstrate their fitness and nationals gets their race - I mean 4-oh at nationals - if the competition was the idea by having deadline at nationals - then it backfired for some reason anyway.