Lenny Leonard wrote:
Avocado's Number wrote:The women's marathon trials standard has been the outliner ever since the first women's marathon trials in 1984. It was finally tightened up significantly for the 2016 trials.
I also don't see much point in having an A and a B standard in the marathon. It's not a huge deal to me, but it doesn't serve the same purpose that A and B standards in other events do, and I think that it creates an unnecessary divide among the participants.
The reason a and b standards are different it other events is that you can run 200 people in a marathon and it is logistically the same as running 20 people. Not so in the 100m or 10000m or long jump.
If you think there should be just one standard, what should it be and should USATF cover expenses?
I'm not actually proposing that there be just one standard, although I think that the single standard worked reasonably well in 1980, 1984, and 1988. (In 1992, the single standard of 2:20 was supplemented by an automatic entry for members of earlier U.S. Olympic teams in the marathon. My very strong suspicion was that this alternative was created specifically to accommodate Alberto Salazar, who had announced his desire to return to competition but had not run a competitive marathon since the 1984 Olympic Games. As it turned out, this modification of the qualifying standard enabled several former Olympians -- Salazar, Sandoval, Durden, and Heffner -- to run in the 1992 trials without meeting the 2:20 standard during the qualifying window. All four of those runners dropped out fairly early in the race.)
I think that multiple standards may be appropriate and useful, but as an earlier poster suggested, the half-marathon standard should be more like 1:03:00 obtained within a shorter qualifying window of something like one year before the trials. It would provide an alternative for serious candidates who, for a variety of reasons (for example, untimely injuries, NCAA or other racing schedule constraints, or exceptionally difficult weather and course conditions in prior marathons), were not in a position to qualify under the usual marathon standard. (The earlier poster also suggested an alternative 10,000-meter standard of 28:00, which also seems reasonable, although individuals who have qualified solely under 10,000-meter standards in the past have, in practice, rarely exercised their right to run the marathon trials.) I would not relax the marathon standard beyond 2:18:00, although I might be willing to give up a minute on the marathon standard in return for requiring qualifying performances to be run on record-quality courses or in races recognized by the IAAF as Olympic Games qualifiers under applicable time standards.
I don't believe that any of the above standards need to be labeled "A" (reflecting a favored status) or "B" (reflecting a disfavored status). I also don't personally care much about whether and to what extent participants' expenses are covered by race organizers or race sponsors, although I believe that it's an appropriate consideration in deciding among competing bids and sponsors for the trials. I am rather strongly opposed to the idea of paying expenses for faster or otherwise favored qualifiers but not paying them for others. The fastest runners generally don't need the race organizers or USATF to pay their expenses (since they almost always have their own sponsors and other resources to cover travel and other race-related expenses), and I don't believe that shifting the burden of race expenses to slower runners should serve as a quid pro quo for allowing such slower runners into the race. (Similarly, slower runners shouldn't be able to "buy" their way into the trials by paying high entry fees, as has been occasionally proposed by some who advocate a more inclusive event.)
By the way, in this post, I haven't really said much about factors to consider and weigh in setting some sort of optimal or appropriate time standard. That, I believe, is a more nuanced matter than some seem to think.