My take: It makes sense that people hoping to get in via world ranking as different countries will be opening up at different times but I see no reason why they should not count 'A' qualifiers. If you hit your A qualifier, it should count. Period.
It makes sense. This keeps the duration of the "window" to qualify for the games roughly the same as during other Olympiads. Also, given your suspicions of dopers abusing this time, I'm surprised you don't see the anti-doping justification of this. If athletes could hit the standard in a time when out of competition will be less frequent (not to mention, you can't have in-competition testing when there are no competitions) then it would give dopers a huge advantage.
So I don't think this entirely illogical. Two obvious reasons stand out to me.
1) Denmark is already starting to lift some restrictions and China just opened up Wuhan for the first time today since January. Meanwhile there are some countries literally only just beginning their shut downds. Say Denmark remains stable from now on, a Danish athlete might have over a year of extra time to get a qualifying mark in, meanwhile there are others who may be stuck in quarantine for months yet. Setting the start point down the road ensures that it is likely that all athletes will have been able to get out of quarantine, get a decent training block in, and then compete on a level playing field.
2) Beyond that, a big thing is also anti-doping. Right now all testing is effectively suspended and is yet to be reintroduced. By having the start time be Dec 1st it enables time for anti-doping to get back up to speed properly so we aren't seeing a bunch of people qualify for Tokyo with doped up times.
Damn, this really does not look good for fall Marathons now.
rojo wrote:
My take: It makes sense that people hoping to get in via world ranking as different countries will be opening up at different times but I see no reason why they should not count 'A' qualifiers. If you hit your A qualifier, it should count. Period.
Bingo. Foolish to rule out anything that might happen in the fall. They should have started with August 1 and then moved it later if necessary. If there is a chance to have US meets in the fall, why punish those athletes?
What does this mean for those looking for marathon top 10 at Gold Label Races? Does this mean Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago and New York To 10 no longer grant A standard? If so, that's completely necessary by World Athletics. They need to think big on who and how athletes are affected when making these kind of decisions.
edited:
What does this mean for those looking for marathon top 10 at Gold Label Races? Does this mean Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago and New York Top 10 no longer grant A standard? If so, that's completely UNnecessary by World Athletics. They need to think big on who and how athletes are affected when making these kind of decisions.
ColdTake69 wrote:
Damn, this really does not look good for fall Marathons now.
It hasn’t looked good for fall marathons for weeks. Except for potentially having small elite-only fields, cancellation of mass participation races is all but certain. If there is a small race in mid September (when we’ll probably be at our lowest levels of cases) in your area that goes forward, you better race it. As October comes around we’ll enter the next peak of cases. This will continue until their is a vaccine.
Makes sense. There won't be any races this year anyway.
An Olympian wrote:
edited:
What does this mean for those looking for marathon top 10 at Gold Label Races? Does this mean Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago and New York Top 10 no longer grant A standard? If so, that's completely UNnecessary by World Athletics. They need to think big on who and how athletes are affected when making these kind of decisions.
The athletes hoping for a fall
Marathon season already had that season in 2019. With it postponed to Dec 1, that still gives a 3month longer qualification window than originally planned. You get 2 indoor seasons, 2 attempts at races like Houston Marathon, etc.
It is normal, because of this situation that is actula in the world, I mean the virus, we will hear about many changes...
sheeplechase wrote:
It makes sense. This keeps the duration of the "window" to qualify for the games roughly the same as during other Olympiads. Also, given your suspicions of dopers abusing this time, I'm surprised you don't see the anti-doping justification of this. If athletes could hit the standard in a time when out of competition will be less frequent (not to mention, you can't have in-competition testing when there are no competitions) then it would give dopers a huge advantage.
The anti-doping thing is actually a great argument. I do wonder if they should have some flexibility to move this if there ends up being a flurry of action in September and October on the roads/track provided they can ramp up testing.