Breaking: 2020 Olympics qualifying will be focused on world rankings, not hitting a standard. How will this impact USA?

Well, it will create more confusion for the fans and discussion on Letsrun.

The US is good and deep in all events. Better than any other country by far.

The US will send 3 good athletes in every event.

But there may be some confusion during the trials of exactly which participants truly have a shot to make the Olympics regardless of how they finish at the Trials.

And we thought the A/B standard days were a little confusing.

Outside of that, it may cause top runners to actually try to run fast and often.

wont change a thing wrote:

If they’ve hit the IAAF time standard and place top 3 they’re in- same as it’s always been.

That's not correct. In 2000, Kristy Johnston had the IAAF "A" time standard, finished second at the trials, and was not selected for the team, because USATF had decided that the trials winner would be guaranteed a spot on the team, even if she had not met the "A" time standard.

If the IAAF time standard is fairly tough -- say, 2:10 or better -- and a strong performance at the trials is, by itself, insufficient to meet the world ranking standard, then USATF could once again be in a position where selecting the trials winner for the team will effectively exclude from the team a second- or third-place finisher who has met the IAAF time standard. In fact, that could have been the effect of naming Galen Rupp to the team in 2016, since he had been unranked in the marathon leading up to the trials and won the trials in 2:11:12.

The ranking will be extremely bad for most American "second layer" athletes. Take a look at the rankin as it is now, and see how low ranked a lot of the good americans are.

Sydney McLaughlin for instance is ranked as the 16. best 400 meter hurdler in the world while

Here are the rules

https://worldrankings-staging.aws.iaaf.org/world-ranking-rules/basics

And here the ranking:

https://worldrankings-staging.aws.iaaf.org/world-rankings/100m/men

Avocado, that was 6 Olympic cycles ago. We've gone 5 Olympic cycles now (including 2020) where the US Team procedures have been set the same. If you place top 3 and have the IAAF standard you're in. The Olympic Marathon Trials qualifying standards won't be tightened- they would only change if the IAAF sets a slower time, as happened in 2016. No way would the IAAF set a time of 2:10- that would exclude a vast majority of the countries around the world.

Ranking is the best system for the U.S. to elevate our performance in the men's marathon. All U.S. male marathoners ( except Galen) are only focused on making the U.S. team NOT being world class marathoners. They know on the day the 2:11-2:12 will make the team. But with a ranking system they would have to run 2:09 to make the U.S. team. The bar will be raised.

They really don't need to complicate a simple sport.

All countries can send up to 3 athletes that hit a certain minimal performance is all they needed.

There is no objective way to rank athletes over a period of time or number of performances.

I don't mind automatic extra berths like the reigning world champion gets you 4 in an event.

The problem is that the none of the sports can have more athletes then the IOC allocates. Each sport then must come up with standards that will not exceed that number. Setting a performance standard is risky and could result in more athletes then are allowed. There is no perfect system but I think the IAAF has the right approach.

One way this could affect the US in an interesting way would be if the above scenario described by Wejo occurred, and that guy that came out of nowhere (or at least down the list) ran his qualifying time on a non-record eligible course, like CIM or even Boston (anyone know if the IAAF accepts marks from those courses for qualification and ranking?)

Imagine if some dude gets his qualifying time at CIM, then the trials are slow due to weather or tactics, so his trials time isn’t enough to be ranked or meet the standard. Is he not going to the Olympics?

The IAAF will only accept performances from IAAF Certified Courses that have a "drop" in elevation that does not exceed 1 meter/ kilometer. Courses with any separation will be accepted - that means point to point courses are ok.

IAAF Certified means that the course must be measured by an IAAF level "A" or "B" measurer.

wejo wrote:

But if the US has 3 guys with great rankings and someone comes out of nowhere to get top 3 at the Trials they should be on the team. That is best for the sport and the team.

scares me when I agree with you

what problem are they trying to solve?

are they trying to prevent "one time wonders", doesn't seem to be an issue, ever

other thoughts:

running races already suffers from a lack of popularity with the public, a weird points system just makes running even more obscure and unrelatable

can someone be ranked higher simply by volume? if an elite runs several marathons a year vs a somewhat faster runner who only does two, who is higher ranked?

is IAAF going to post lists of ranks? their stats are often out of date, their website slow and unreliable

when unnecessary complexity is added to a system, I start looking to "follow the money" - who is profiting from this change?

I repeat that this will be a shambles esp for the USA and NCAA .

The trials won’t count, how can they when entry is for Olympics is based on “rankings”.

Is there a sub clause I have missed.

There's benefits to using world rankings. Lets say Evan Jager falls at the last barrier and finishes fourth. In the old system he's sh#t out of luck. But as a top 10 world ranked steeplechaser, he can be added to the team. At the discretion of USATF of course. World Champion and gold medal decathlon favorite Dan O'Brien no heighted in the pole vault in the 1992 Olympic Trials. Tough luck, Dan. Under the old system, he failed to make the team and the Olympics. Under the new system he could still be placed on the team.

Does this qualifications system incentivize achieving the world ranking through half marathon performances? Must a marathon have been run? Is there a Max number of performances added for a ranking score?

Does this still limit each nation to 3 athletes, meaning this is a system to choose the 74 top marathoners not from Ethiopia/Kenya?

Les wrote:

There's benefits to using world rankings. Lets say Evan Jager falls at the last barrier and finishes fourth. In the old system he's sh#t out of luck. But as a top 10 world ranked steeplechaser, he can be added to the team. At the discretion of USATF of course. World Champion and gold medal decathlon favorite Dan O'Brien no heighted in the pole vault in the 1992 Olympic Trials. Tough luck, Dan. Under the old system, he failed to make the team and the Olympics. Under the new system he could still be placed on the team.

Um, under the old system both Jager and O'Brien could be selected to the teams by the USATF "at their discretion" anyway. But the USATF correctly chose the system where the athlete determines his own destiny

Really? How could USATF add an athlete to an Olympic team after they already announced the athletes on the team would be the top three finishers who made the standard? Wouldn't that be changing the rules ex post facto? Or are you referring to before the present standard was established?

Standardized wrote:

The PDF that acompanies the release you pasted does include some additional detail on qualification (including field sizes), but what remains unclear is how the IAAF language and guidelines will be imposed at a championship like the US Trials.

.

I don't see a link to the pdf. Where is it?

Les wrote:

Really? How could USATF add an athlete to an Olympic team after they already announced the athletes on the team would be the top three finishers who made the standard? Wouldn't that be changing the rules ex post facto? Or are you referring to before the present standard was established?

Your last sentence answered your question. USATF could've selected their teams anyway the want, as long as it meets the IAAF requirements.

malmo wrote:

Les wrote:

Really? How could USATF add an athlete to an Olympic team after they already announced the athletes on the team would be the top three finishers who made the standard? Wouldn't that be changing the rules ex post facto? Or are you referring to before the present standard was established?

Your last sentence answered your question. USATF could've selected their teams anyway the want, as long as it meets the IAAF requirements.

Yes,but only from those high enough on the IAAF ranking but by the time of the trials they could be useless.

It will be a shambles.

Bumping this thread to bring up some questions rather than start a new thread.

Regarding qualification by world rankings: Even with a goal field size of 80 for the marathon (or 100 for the World Champs next year), I imagine they'll have to go pretty far down the ranking list to get there. For example, I looked at the top 300 ranked athletes in the marathon in 2017. I noticed that Kenya, Ethiopia, Japan, Eritrea, and Uganda all had more than three athletes on the list. Other countries probably did as well, but those were the ones I accounted for. Only 55 athletes of the top 300 remained after taking out those countries' number 4-whatever runners. As the list goes down, more countries are represented, but other countries also reach their quota of 3. It would take a much less busy day to go through and figure out exactly where #80 or #100 falls, but my guess it would be something slower than 2:15 or so.

Am I understanding how this works correctly? If this is the case, the US should still have a decent number of athletes eligible to qualify by world ranking, thus the top 3 at the trials would likely all be people who are qualified anyway.

For other countries, qualifying may still require something faster than 2:19:00, but maybe not a whole lot faster if my suspicions are correct. If anyone else wants to weight in or point out something I'm missing, that would be great.