High Jump Injustice at the Olympic Trials?

[Al in NYC]

don't know how long it was down, but is fine for me now

Page is up, but always resets to the W100m no matter what event I choose in drop down or which browser I use.

[Steele]

If the USA wants its athletes to be able to stay home and still earn bonus points then just stump up the cash and get more high level competitions in the USA.

It only appears Euro-centric because Euro countries invest more in the international level of the sport.

There is nothing to stop any non-Euro country from getting more meets, just look at the number of competitions in Asia compared to 20 years ago.

"...just stump up the cash..." You've been around a while, you know the financial state of the sport in the U.S. And who is this "USA" you're talking about? We don't run a government funded sport.

They won't be high level competitions without some Europeans, are they going to be as willing to fly to the West Coast for a meet as USAians are to fly to Europe?

Europeans, not their countries, invest in their sport. And I would posit that soccer is the only major sport grabbing a lot of eyeballs in Europe relative to T&F. It would be a little tougher if Europe had the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, etc. elbowing T&F into the corner.

Also, there can only be a finite number of high-level meets in a season, so countries can't just "hold a meet". The U.S. holds lots of meets. Remember, the main topic here is that WA is skewing the game, devaluing other non-Euro meets and over-valuing low level Euro meets. To my point, that makes them Euro Athletics, not World Athletics.

[Al in NYC]

A big source of confusion is that there are really two sets of world rankings. There's the list we're most familiar with, where athletes are listed in the order of their rankings points.

I and many others wrongly understood that an athlete who ranks in the top X on that list (where X is the field size for their event) would have achieved the equivalent of the auto-Q standard, and then national federations can select up to 3 athletes who have achieved either.

But then there's another list, the "Road to Tokyo" list, where they merge in athletes with the auto-Q standard, while also adjusting for the 3 per country limit. Athletes with the standard take precedence over those who don't; each athlete with the standard (up to 3 per country) effectively bumps down the ranking of those who don't. That's how Inika McPherson is #27 on the simple list but #33 on the blended list, and the blended list is what is used to determine who is eligible to go to Tokyo.

Theoretically, if there were 32 athletes with the standard (after considering 3 per country) in an event with field size 32, nobody could qualify via world rankings in that event, not even the #1 ranker (of course, in practice the #1 ranker is almost certain to have the standard anyway).

If I understand it correctly, looking at the world lists going back a couple of years, 26 have the standard (after removing those not eligible due to 3 per country quota, etc.), leaving 6 ranking places available to get to a field of 32. Butts-Townsend is in that 6. McPherson falls just outside that 6 by 1 point.

[18.99s]

I wasn't aware that people were ducking the DL meets. On the contrary, aren't most athletes and their agents jockeying to get a spot on the starting line of DL meets?

Most are, but the top 3 or 4 in some events will demand appearance fees and then it often becomes unprofitable to pay more than one or two of them. Or sometimes none.

[18.99s]

Everyone seems to be ignoring a clear agenda with the Rankings (which IAAF was up front about at the time of their launch): that they want to encourage/force athletes into the main circuit meetings (i.e. DL and Continental Tour). The (flawed) logic was that somehow the awarding of meeting points would lead the very best athletes into more head-to-heads.

I don't have a problem with that goal, but the implementation was flawed on multiple levels. They made the mistake of conjuring up their own ranking system instead of using a decades-old widespread tested system like Elo which rewards head-to-head contests against top-rated opponents (the better your opponents, the more your score increases if you beat them and the less your score decreases if you lose to them).

And then they diminished the importance of rankings by allowing athletes to qualify via standards. The top 3 or 4 athletes in each event who have a tendency to dodge each other or price themselves out of meets will almost all have the standard anyway, so rankings have no significance to them. For the rankings to motivate them, there would have to be something like a wild card offered to the #1 ranker of each event.

That can be done without increasing the field size; if the field size for an event is 48, 1 is a wild card and everybody else fights for the other 47. But then would the IOC tolerate some countries having 4 per event in the Olympics?

[ThrowsMom]

The system is too simple.

Not too simple, in my opinion. But just wrong. “If it isn’t broke don’t fix it”. The top list had some problems but NOTHING like what we are seeing with the rankings.

[gh]

...
That can be done without increasing the field size; if the field size for an event is 48, 1 is a wild card and everybody else fights for the other 47. But then would the IOC tolerate some countries having 4 per event in the Olympics?

if the IOC ever changed things. it would be to go to 2 per event.

in any case, track (like all sports) also has to meet an overall cap on participants, so it's a zero-sum game; for every person you add you need to subtract one somewhere else.

[Conor Dary]

Europeans, not their countries, invest in their sport. And I would posit that soccer is the only major sport grabbing a lot of eyeballs in Europe relative to T&F. It would be a little tougher if Europe had the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, etc. elbowing T&F into the corner.

Track is barely a thing in Europe these days...at least compared to 20+ years ago. And compared to soccer it is insignificant... if the sport disappeared tomorrow I doubt few in Europe would care.

Football is far bigger in Europe than all those US sports combined...the European Championships make the Super Bowl look like a Children Sports Day....

[NotDutra5]

Page is up, but always resets to the W100m no matter what event I choose in drop down or which browser I use.

Click back to all disciplines and then choose the event you wish. Anytime anyone has posted a link to a specific event, I've had to do this which goes back to the first time I looked at it.

[NotDutra5]

If I understand it correctly, looking at the world lists going back a couple of years, 26 have the standard (after removing those not eligible due to 3 per country quota, etc.), leaving 6 ranking places available to get to a field of 32. Butts-Townsend is in that 6. McPherson falls just outside that 6 by 1 point.

This is correct

[sprintjump]

Why can't a system be devised based on an average over a required number of competitions? Very broadly, but something like a minimum of eight competitions over an eligible time period that closes just before a country's national championships.

This is derived from my point of Jelena Rowe actually being the #2/#3 jumper for the season of 2021. Her season average is over 1.90... McP - 1.88... Ty Townsend - 1.85

This proposal is again, very broad, but would something like this be possible?

[ATK]

Why can't a system be devised based on an average over a required number of competitions? Very broadly, but something like a minimum of eight competitions over an eligible time period that closes just before a country's national championships.

This is derived from my point of Jelena Rowe actually being the #2/#3 jumper for the season of 2021. Her season average is over 1.90... McP - 1.88... Ty Townsend - 1.85

This proposal is again, very broad, but would something like this be possible?

Though I would love athletes to compete often, not every athlete has equal access to competitions (not even just high quality/acceptable) or are dealing win injury and recovery so cant compete as often. Also not every country has a national championships or require all athletes to compete at it.

[NotDutra5]

Why can't a system be devised based on an average over a required number of competitions? Very broadly, but something like a minimum of eight competitions over an eligible time period that closes just before a country's national championships.

This is derived from my point of Jelena Rowe actually being the #2/#3 jumper for the season of 2021. Her season average is over 1.90... McP - 1.88... Ty Townsend - 1.85

This proposal is again, very broad, but would something like this be possible?

I think it would be pretty difficult to enact. Also....would this be applicable to all events as I doubt the rules would be written differently for each of the standard T&F events as to qualifications.

Plus this would all be because of the plight of one athlete who, at the very least, was a periphery athlete on the world stage. We've had much bigger flops (including at this year's OT) which have not caused a change in procedure to this point.

[sprintjump]

Fair enough, but I just see a protocol that, at least in my eye, has more weight than a meet ranking system. Many of us have been to mid-season collegiate meets where an event was simply the best competition on the planet for that particular event, but as some have mentioned, those meets rank poorly. The final mark for the competitors didn't really mean much, even though it was a significant result.

Some athletes are receiving credit for competitions that were nearly three years ago, and their whole world has changed since then. They are not that competitor anymore. That's just pure silly.

[Steele]

So much for European countries investing in the sport. See article on home page re: Lovisa Lindh, Swedish 800m runner. Ranked 22nd in the world, SOC won't send her to Tokyo because (they don't think) she has a real shot at making the final.