No American marathon is more compelling than the Olympic Marathon Trials. But if USATF and the IAAF don’t act, the drama and intrigue of the Trials could be destroyed in 2020. Please take 30 seconds to tweet, post, and share about this issue with the tags @USATF, @iaaforg, @USOC, @nbcsports, and #savethetrials. We couldn’t care less if you share this article — we just want awareness to the issue in general. Write your own article and we’ll reshare it.
There reality is there is no good reason why the first three across the line at the US and Japanese Olympic Trials shouldn't automatically be allowed to go to the Olympics. The countries are definitely sending three anyway and by not granting those two races gold status, the IAAF is doing the exact opposite of what the IAAF rankings were intended to do. When Seb Coe announced the rankings in 2017, he said the intent was as follows:
"For the first time in the sport’s history, athletes, media and fans will have a clear understanding of the hierarchy of competitions from national through to area and up to global events, allowing them to follow a logical season-long path to the pinnacle of athletics’ top two competitions.”
In our mind, the hierarchy of the competitions and logical path doesn't get any easier to understand than Olympic Trials then Olympics.
Our proposal is that any country that has more than 10 runners at sub-2:15 or sub 2:33 that holds a Trials Marathon gets the top 3 finishers granted an auto qualifier if they don't have it.