The Olympic Trials Marathon Is Gold Certified; Let’s Talk Olympic Qualifying… Again

Earlier this year, I wrote a piece detailing IAAF’s change to a World Rankings system instead of the traditional system where member nations pick their representative athletes out of a pool of Olympic Qualifiers. In that piece, I detailed my 3 main takeaways from IAAF’s initial announcement:

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.

That last point is where today’s announcement matters, it may be at USATF’s discretion but USATF claimed that IAAF would have to give Atlanta’s 2020 course the Gold…