Let’s Talk Olympic Track & Field Qualifying

So what’s going on in the running world lately? The indoor season just finished with a bang, Spring marathons are coming up, IAAF Cross Country is on the horizon and… wait… IAAF did what now? And USATF said they would largely ignore it?

Let’s dive into the proceedings; a few week’s back IAAF announced that they would be revamping it’s Diamond League competition to better suit a television broadcast and be easier to digest for a live audience. This announcement was also coupled with their complete overhaul of the Olympic qualification system by:

1. Making the Olympic standard tougher to comply with smaller fields for Tokyo.
2. Announcing world rankings that would then determine the top competitors from each country by weighing top finishes in Diamond League, Marathon Majors, and other events vs simply running fast as an insurance policy for athletes who are unable to compete at their country’s trials.
3. That it would be to each country’s discretion about whether to send athletes simply based on the rankings or to choose their own athletes as long as the event has 3 or more athletes who achieve the standard.

IAAF then released a database of how the world rankings would have looked last season if there was a World Championships, and I went ahead and compiled those rankings…