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

another runner wrote:

This is going to completely kill post collegate running in the US. It is also going to kill the trials for the casual fan. If you make qualifying hard to understand to the casual fan they will be confused and aren't going to care at all. Why do we have do many idiots running this sport?

Completely agree with this statement.

Also, this makes it tougher for clean athletes to qualify and possibly might cause more clean athletes to dope.

Unexpected consequences.

The women’s qualification standards are far easier then the men’s.

US men’s distance running will be made up of imported runners.

This will cause more athletes to consider doping.

I am not watching.

David S wrote:

I get that the goal is to get athletes to compete more so they can have a high ranking, but if you're exempted by a qualifying time, these rankings are only going to apply to the slower athletes. The guys with the qualifying times are at the top of the sport, they're the ones I want to see racing more!

You wrote exactly what Jonathan Gault said to me last night. As we were talking amongst ourselves writing the article, we asked ourselves, 'What is the point of the rankings?' Our answer was marketability and to make people run the top events more often. But Jonathan pointed out the biggest stars will have no problem hitting those standards. A Noah Lyles or Usain Bolt can still sit on the sidelines and pick and choose where he gets a big appearance fee.

I think a lot of people are overreacting here. What people fail to understand is that roughly 50% of the spots will come from world rankings. I't

But I do think they should 100% protect a country's right to send the 3 best. If that country has 3 spots based on rankings/times, then it should send any three it wants.

I know there is a ranking site out there but it's not easy to edit/manipulate. Like I can look and see the top 25 US guys in the 1500, but if you do that, you can't see there world rank. I'd also like to have a button where I can limit the rankings to 3 per country so I can see where the US guys/gals are in terms of the Olympics.

You also can't go to the world rankings and search by name. People on here are crapping on Alexi Pappas. Well I'd like to see where she is ranked in the 10,000 (and where that would have played out in 2016) but I don't feel like scrolling through page after page to see if she is even on there.

The should have reached out and explained this thing much better, asked for feedback before dumping it on the globe.

One more thing. While we included Chelimo's tweet in our article about him saying he wouldn't have qualified in 2016, I feel like that's almost certainly not true. He was 8th at World Indoors that year so I assume that would put his world ranking up pretty high.

Wrong. The Olympics are a competition between countries, not individuals. The Kenyans and Ethiopians already dominate the elite start lists in the WMMs and Diamond League events. No need to have yet one more competition between the athletes of 2 countries. As noted in the original article, Americans have medalled in many events that included 6 or more East Africans. Additionally making it a competition between individuals rather than countries changes the tactics of the race, making it much less interesting ATMO

Bad Wigins wrote:

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.

With a night to think about this I think 1) The Men's Olympic Marathon Trials is most impacted.

2) The system will encourage the "B" level pros to span the globe trying to rack up points. On our podcast a few weeks back, Jordy Williamsz was saying one of the reasons they were racing indoors this year originally was to get IAAF points that would help them qualify for Worlds.

3) Couldn't agree more. Any race 800+ can often be tactical. WINNING and RACING needs to be encouraged over time. Or say it's shit weather at some DL meet for the sprints and someone wins with a slow time in a sprint. That should be rewarded less than someone winning in a fast time in perfect weather?

And will their be set criteria on who can get in these meets?

4) I see it is confirmed Top 10 in a WMM is guaranteed entry into the Olympics. So that will encourage guys to just show up, take a spot, run super safe, never be on TV, finish in 2:13 and get a top 10.

Take NYC for example. They invite a handful of African runners, a few from other countries, and mostly Americans. Now people will be encouraged to run super conservative to get in the top 10 rather than trying to go for it. Is that what we want?

Say a guy like American runner X (say Bernard Lagat) goes out in 2:11 pace,blows up and dies and runs 2:15 in 15th place. But comes back and beats the 2:13 guy to win the Trials. You're telling the guy who just took it safe and ran 2:13 should go to the Olympics?

NO. The only caveat that needs to be made to the system is to make sure the system makes gives enough points for an Olympic Trials that has 3 qualifiers in it to make sure the top 3 go to the Olympics. Qualifying spots in general should be earned by COUNTRY and can be given away how that country wants if it has a Trials race.

Forget doping, just declare that you're now identifying as a woman, then stamp your foot and call people transphobic if they try to protect the integrity of women's athletics.

On our weekly conference call this morning, Jonathan Gault posed a great hypothetical. In 2016, Galen Rupp made his marathon debut at the US Trials. He ran 2:11:13. Let's say the course was in Atlanta which is hillier and he runs 2:11:33 - just off the standard. Would that one race have been enough to put him into the Olympics where he medalled?

We’ve always felt that any individual country should be allowed to send the three people they want – if they have three people eligible to go in that event.

Within a two-tier qualification system of standards plus trials, by replacing individual runners securing spots through their own performances with nations securing spots through individual performances, you introduce a massive[/b[ free-rider problem. For each individual runner, there will be minimal incentive to race seriously throughout the season, as each benefits from capitalizing on the efforts of three other runners to secure a chance at the Olympics. Essentially, the entire track season turns into an figurative championship race, where everyone sits back until the big kick (in this case, probably right around/at the Olympic Trials), where they try to hit the standard and win OTs in the same window, leaving the earlier portions of the track season out to dry. Awful idea, in my opinion.

comparing men's and women's standards, there is a major gap relative to the world records.

Women's 100m is about .66 back, men's .47.

women's 400m is close to 4 seconds back, men's 1.8 seconds.

women's 800m is over 6 seconds back, men's 4.3.

and so on.

women's 5000m 36, men's 59s

women's 10000m about 2:10, men's 1:11.

I was expecting a two minute vaporfly pace inflation, ie. 2:15->2:13, 2:37->2:35

but 2:29:30 ? 2:11:30 ?

nike just killed almost every American hopeful

less than 50 American women in all of history have broken 2:30 and that includes the past two years with vaporflys

2:11:30 is 93.5% of the approximate 2015 world record for men

2:29:30 is 90.5% of the approximate 2015 world record for women

So - a side question: what does this mean for the Olympic marathon trials, next go-round?

Per the Ted Stevens Act, the B standard to get into the marathon trials can't be any faster than the IAAF entry standards.

However, since the IAAF standards have just changed significantly (heck, the IAAF standard is now significantly faster than the women's A Standard for the 2020 trials) will the US Oympic trials standards be changed next time around? It will not be a very big race if limited to 2:11:30/2:29:30 plus those qualified via rankings or top 5/10 finishes.

If they really wanted to raise the standard of the Olympics, they'd take the top ranked athletes instead of creating a circus event that allows some 12 second male 100m runner from Pago Pago to become an Olympic athlete.

But you could end up with events of one color. Or one or two nation.

It looks like even the average poster on here doesn't understand the qualifying system. If they don't understand it how is the casual fan supposed to?

The real problem is how these new standards encourage doping. I would bet that doping will become the new norm over the next 10 years like it was in cycling.

Its all about the opening and closing ceremony. And the IOC members undercover payments.

zoomzoomzoom wrote:

nike just killed almost every American hopeful

You are an idiot.

Does this mean that the women's standard can finally go down from 2:45?