New 2020 Olympic Standards Posted - They Are WAY Tougher - Will US Olympic Trials take a hit?

GreekYogurt wrote:

Guess Alexi Pappas should be glad she took the backdoor to the Olympics in 2016, she doesn't make the new standards for 2020.

Lol, sad but that was my thought. She can kiss her plans of running again in 2020 good-bye

Hardloper wrote:

GreekYogurt wrote:

Guess Alexi Pappas should be glad she took the backdoor to the Olympics in 2016, she doesn't make the new standards for 2020.

Lol, sad but that was my thought. She can kiss her plans of running again in 2020 good-bye

The Standard for the 10000 is 31:25, she has run 31:36 it is hard, but not mission impossible.

Yeah, this will definitely kill the Trials, as currently structured. I agree with the article on this site that athletes should earn spots for their countries and that the country should then be able to send any athlete of their choice to fill those spots (with some sort of minimum qualifying standard, something like being currently ranked top-500 in the world and/or being one of the top 250 performers in either the current or preceding year).

The article on this site is right that this qualification system shouldn't be used for the first time for the Olympics, but wrong that it should be used for 2019 Worlds as a test run; it shouldn't be used until 2021, so athletes could have a couple years to understand and get used to it before it's implemented (and then also so, once it is used and its ramifications are known, it could be tweaked for the 2024 Games).

It is maybe too bad they dont instead make an A, B, and C standard. Any country can send one athlete with a C standard, or two with a B standard, or 3 with an A standard.

This allows deep countries to send 3, but smaller countries can still send one reasonable person with a C standard to represent them, similar to 2016 and earlier.

So under this new system if an athlete with a high ranking is injured is it still required that they go?

I used the "FINAL 2018 U.S. COMPREHENSIVE LISTS (as of 01/18/19)", which has the top times run in the US in 2018. I determined how many people from all of 2018 would qualify for the 2020 standards based ONLY on times. I've bolded events that have fewer than 3 people qualifying by time, meaning they'd have to qualify by the IAAF World Rankings. I've ONLY included the running events, not field or combined events.

Race -----(Qual time)---# athletes qualified

MEN

100m ----- (10.05) --- 10

200m ------ (20.24) --- 7

400m ------- (44.9) ---- 9

800m ------- (1:45.2) -- 4

1500m ------ (3:35) ---- 1

5000m ----- (13:13.5) - 2

10,000m --- (27:28) --- 0

Marathon - (2:11:30) - 1

110H ------- (13.32) --- 3

400H ------- (48.90) --- 5

3KSC ------- (8:22) ---- 2

20km RW -- (1:21:00) - 0

50km RW -- (3:50:00) - 0

WOMEN

100m ----- (11.15) --- 13

200m ----- (22.8) ---- 25

400m ----- (51.35) --- 16

800m ----- (1:59.5) -- 4

1500m ---- (4:04.2) -- 5

5000m ---- (15:10) --- 5

10,000m -- (31:25) --- 0

Marathon - (2:29:30) - 8

100H ----- (12.84) --- 13

400H ----- (55.4) ------- 6

3KSC ----- (9:30) ------- 3

20km RW -- (1:31:00) - 0

http://www.usatf.org/usatf/files/4b/4bbd8e7a-6466-4205-a2b6-44fc980a609e.pdf

Drainthefecesswamp wrote:

It is maybe too bad they dont instead make an A, B, and C standard. Any country can send one athlete with a C standard, or two with a B standard, or 3 with an A standard.

This allows deep countries to send 3, but smaller countries can still send one reasonable person with a C standard to represent them, similar to 2016 and earlier.

Something like this?

A standard for the marathon: 2:10

B standard for the marathon: 2:13

C standard for the marathon: 2:16

A standard for 10000m: 27:20

B standard: 27:45

C standard: 28:06

A standard 5000m: 13:00

B standard: 13:10

C standard: 13:20

A standard 1500m: 3:30

B standard: 3:35

C standard: 3:40

Now what if you have one of each? Having tough standards in my opinion promotes doping. As most of the current times are out of the natty range for most elite runners.

Also, the qualification system is almost entirely backwards. Having higher tiers of competition where more points are available is good (that encourages top athletes to compete head-to-head in top meets), but the IAAF is undermining that by giving out the bulk of points for time/mark and only giving out (relatively small) bonuses for winning or placing high in top-tier meets/races/competitions. As such, an athlete can earn fewer points by winning a slow or tactical major race (Centrowitz at the Olympics, Desi at Boston, most championship distance track races, sprints held in less-than-ideal conditions in Eugene) than by running fast at some obscure lower-tier race (Webb's mile AR, some of these sprint meets that are basically glorified practices in Florida and Southern California).

It should be the reverse: athletes who win a top-tier competition should earn a set number of points for winning or placing high (say, 1500 for winning WCs/Olympics, with 1400 points for silver and 1300 for bronze), and athletes who win or place high at a slightly lower-tier of competition should be rewarded with slightly fewer points (say, 1300 for winning World Indoors or the Diamond League Final, 1250 for winning a Diamond League race or your Area Championship, 1200 for winning your national championship, etc--the IAAF already has tiers like this in place in the current system). Relatively small bonuses should then be given on top of that (points equal to 10% of an athlete's time/mark/performance's value on the IAAF performance tables, maybe?).

Yeah, oof, I'm in favor of a world rankings system, and even using it for qualifying purposes, but it really seems like they're rushing into this.

The Fokus wrote:

It appears that many do not understand the qualification process just announced for the 2020 Olympics.

Read. Absorb. Understand.

Then return to the board.

Sadly that won't happen

Hardloper wrote:

The Fokus wrote:

It appears that many do not understand the qualification process just announced for the 2020 Olympics.

Read. Absorb. Understand.

Then return to the board.

Sadly that won't happen

Why don't you give us a nice, simple explanation then? So we can understand it all without leaving the board?

Ok then that's helpful wrote:

Hardloper wrote:

Sadly that won't happen

Why don't you give us a nice, simple explanation then? So we can understand it all without leaving the board?

The brojos literally wrote an article that is the explanation. What else do you want? Should we think for you, too?

those qualifying times are stupid,too steep,and way out of reach even for most elite athletes.itll only make the drug problem even worse.almost literally everyone will have to take copious amounts of drugs just to qualify,and clean athletes will have no chance at all.many to most countries wont be able to field any athletes who are A standard,and will have to get by,on B's,apart from maybe kenya,usa,ethiopia,jamaica,and one or two others in certain events.its gonna kill a lot of peoples olympic dreams.

rojo wrote:

American Chris Derrick is ranked 319 in the marathon right now. BUt if you take out all of the people from Kenya/Ethiopia after 3, he moves all the way up to the top 60 and they take 80 for the marathon.

Exactly what I'm on about. There are 259 runners better than him? But he gets to go and they don't because it's about countries, not athletes. That's just stupid, and it's embarrassing that a country's fans would even want their athletes to qualify that way, knowing they don't really belong.

If nobody but Kenyans and Ethiopians can be in the top 80, then the championship marathon should be only Kenyans and Ethiopians. They earned it. This is why nobody considers the olympic marathon the top race.

Rojo, the worrying thing going forward is this may encourage people with otherwise high integrity, that say can do 13:23, to resort to 'other' ways of getting to 13:13.

The other interesting thought is the women's 800m. If the ruling goes against the intersex athletes medal winning times jump from 1:55 to 1:57. For example my club has several 'gals' in the 2:01/2:02 range presently. For them that is a massive moving of the goal posts in just a couple of years and for them to get near 1:59-flat they need to be invited to bigger/better meets with great conditions not available to them here.

rojo wrote:

Also we really wish the IAAF retroactively produced rankings for both 2016 and 2017 and shown us how the system would have played out. It’s hard to analyze it without seeing how it would have worked in the past

Obviously not as helpful as for a championship year, but they have provided rankings for 2017/18 here -

Big Texas Tone wrote:

The 2016 standards were too low, in many's opinion.

Why not just allow the athletes with the top 30 times/heights/distances set in the last 24 months qualify for the Olympics? This seems like the easiest way by far to organize a competition where the best of the best compete with each other.

Bad Wigins wrote:

Exactly what I'm on about. There are 259 runners better than him? But he gets to go and they don't because it's about countries, not athletes.

I sort of agree with your point but at the same time I wonder if these arguments can become never ending, for example: what about the thousands of runners who cannot go to the Olympics because they are not identified as women even though they have surpassed women's qualifying standards which are about gender discrimination and not the athletes?

Not speaking about any other distances, but for the marathon:

"In addition, the top 10 finishers in the marathon at the 2019 World Championships will be considered to have achieved the standard, as will top-5 finishers at IAAF Gold Label Marathons and top-10 finishers at Abbott World Marathon Majors held during the qualification period."

So what are those glod labels? The next 30 are there:

https://www.iaaf.org/competition/calendar/marathon-and-road-races/iaaf-gold-label-road-races#30

Looks like there are quite a few opportunities there. Not one in the US though, but maybe in autumn?

Then there are the Abbott World Marathon majors:

https://www.worldmarathonmajors.com/

6 of them, including 3 in the US. I believe top10 can be achieved by someone not running 2:11 sometimes.

Maybe only one current US marathoner has achieved the time standard, although I understood he has had surgery so might not be able to repeat the feat (time will tell), but I really wouldn't be that surprised if two or three other US marathoner would sneak into the standard through placing at a major or a gold label, thus not needing the world ranking. Someone caring enough to have a look at results from last year majors and gold labels in order to get a grasp of how that could play out?

That being said, I can sympathize with some blue collar marathoner winning a not IAAF labeled marathon to qualify for the US trials and not having time to build a work ranking.

BroJos said: Our #1 concern is protecting the significance of the #1 track and field meet in North America – the US Olympic Trials.

I freely admit that when I read this I got up on my high horse a bit because at first sight it seems so insular and inward looking; rather than consider the good of the sport as a whole your main concern is a single meet held once every four years in the US?

but having thought about this a bit I do get your point, which is not just valid for the US OT but for national championships and OT's in many other countries. it is essential that whatever the system of qualification we retain the potential for an underdog to rise to the top and to come unexpectedly to the fore at the trials /national championships and qualify as of right in the cauldron of competition.

would Billy Mills have qualified under this new system? in 1964 he was a relative unknown; his only appearance in the NCAA was 5th place in the 5000m in 1960 and that year he finished 6th in the OT 5000m. in 1963 he made his first appearance in a national championship finishing 8th in the AAU 3 miles, then in June 1964 he did the 5000m / 10,000m double at the US Inter Service Championships at Quantico (14:53.0 / 30:37.6). no one was talking about him as an Olympic contender, apart from Gerry Lindgren the contenders were Pete McArdle, Pan American Games Champion and AAU Champion with 29:03.0, Ron Larrieu 29:20.4, John Gutknecht 29:40.0, Mills was not even in the conversation, until he finished 2nd to Gerry Lindgren at the trials in Los Angeles and one month later he was Olympic champion.

this is exactly the sort of trajectory that has to remain possible. if selection for major games can only be made on the basis of world ranking or having previously achieved some artificially inflated standard then there is no longer any possibility of dreams coming true.

cheers.