Standards for Paris Olympics posted; Sam Tanner named to New Zealand's world cross squad...
With the holidays coming up, you're going to see that the site will not be as active until after the new year, though we will be going through past posts as well as the world, US and collegiate lists to compile the winners of the Mercanator Awards.
That said, if there's any breaking news in the world of track and field, we won't hesitate to post something.
OLYMPIC GAMES STANDARDS POSTED...
Just to make things easy for you to follow along, I've gone ahead and embedded both the qualifying standards, as well as the targeted number of athletes per event.
The Olympic track & field program includes 23 men's and 23 women's events, plus the mixed 4 x 400 relay and the 35k mixed team race walk.
The standards are the toughest that World Athletics has ever issued for the Olympics. Their intention is for 50 percent of the field to come from those making the standard, and the rest of the field filled from the world rankings (filtered using the 3 entries per country).
For the 10,000m, combined events, race walks and relays, the qualification period runs from 31 December 2022 to 30 June 2024. For the marathon, the qualification window is from 1 November 2022 to 30 April 2024. For all other events, the qualification period runs from 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2024.
How will athletes be affected by this? Athletes will have to get the standard, or compete in enough World Athletics Tour meets (i.e. Diamond League, Continental Tour, World Athletics Challenge, regional championship meets like Pan Ams, etc) to accumulate enough points to obtain world rankings.
In the United States, many collegiate meets, including the NCAA championships, may have to put their meets on the World Athletics calendar and run meets under World Athletics rules in order for athletes to get world ranking points, a point of contention that USTFCCCA executive director Sam Seemes brought up at last week's convention.
In the marathon, which has a time qualifying standard of 2:08:10 for men and 2:26:50 for women, January 30, 2024 is a key date: any athlete ranked higher than the 65th athlete on the filtered quota place "Road To Paris" list (which will be published sometime in the latter part of 2023) using the 3 per country filter is considered as owning the standard.
In the USA, USA Track & Field & the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee may choose to reallocate a quota place to an unqualified athlete, (emphasis mine) provided the athlete in the qualification window has achieved at least a 2:11:30 (men) or 2:29:30 (women) performance. Coincidentally, the 2:11:30/2:29:30 were the marathon standards for the Tokyo Olympics and the World Championships in Eugene.
With the 2024 US Olympic Marathon Trials set for February 3rd in Orlando, the onus will be on the athletes to run 2:11:30/2:29:30 either before or on the day of the Trials to guarantee a spot on the plane to Paris.
LetsRun's Jonathan Gault has a great piece on the Olympic qualifying standards.
SAM TANNER NAMED TO NEW ZEALAND'S WORLD CROSS COUNTRY CHAMPIONSHIPS TEAM...
Athletics New Zealand announced Wednesday (Thursday morning in New Zealand) that former Husky Sam Tanner was named to the New Zealand national team for the World Athletics Cross Country Championships in Bathurst, Australia on February 18th.
Tanner will run on the 4 x 2k mixed relay team.
According to the Athletics New Zealand release, Tanner will be joined on the team by former national 1500m champion Eric Speakman, New Zealand women’s 3000m steeplechase champion Anneke Grogan, and Rebekah Greene, a 4:14.81 1500m runner.
The former Husky set a personal best of 13:32.74 in the 5000 at the Daikin Night of 5s held in Auckland on December 17th.
NOTE: World Athletics. LetsRun.com and Athletics New Zealand contributed to this report.
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