Only one Athlete per Nation rule: Keep it? Drop it?

[De_Gambassi 1,225]

With the exception of fencing, every combat sports (boxing, wrestling, judo, TKD + weightlifting) only allow one athlete per country and per category during the olympics. You have to go back to 1924, to find a combat sport.(boxing) that allowed multiple entries per nation and per category.

 

Same with the "boat sports" (cannoeing, rowing, sailing), which also allow only one athlete per nation and per boat. Here, you only need to go back to 2004 , to find one of these sport allowing multiple entries per boat (cannoeing slalom).

 

It is also worth noting, that with the exception of women boxing and the longer boats (rowing eights, k4), these sports allready have more entrants that other sports that do allow multiple entries per country such as trampoline or women's BMX (16).

 

Personnaly, I'm against this policy (oh... the surprise). Generally speaking, I think the overall international representation should take the back seat during the olympics and the focus to be put on the better athletes regardless of their nationality or continent.

 

For instance, back in 2012, the future C1 slalom gold medallist (Tony Estanguet) had to beat the then current world champion (Denis Gargaud... future gold medal winner in Rio) during the french nationals just to make to London. Doest it makes sense to had one these two gold contenders stay at home to make room for a kazakh or chinese that very few cared about ? Does it make a better event ? Does it make for a better publicity for the sport ? I'm sure @hckosice could share some similar stories.

 

Not every athletes will have has much patience, and many will drop the sport due to lack of oppurtunities, some will change nationallity, and in case of combat sports, some will go through hell just to make to a different weight category.

 

I believe that you only need to relax this policy just a bit to make this whole qualification process much smoother and utimately to have a better sporting event .By exemple, if you allow only the top three nations in salom to have two entries per boat, that only means 12 athletes. An other exemple, in judo, you could allow two entries as long both athletes are ranked in the top 8 of their respective category, which would mean 15 athletes at the moment, etc.

 

I think there is much to win here for a little cost.

 

Thoughts ?

 

 

[heywoodu 15,355]

Agreed, mostly. Not unlimited, but that's why I like your suggestion at the end.

[phelps 7,862]

keep it and enforce it...

 

I mean, I know that this is not fair to some great athletes, but nowadays you keep the Olympics at the center stage of sports in almost any Country because with this system also the smallest Nations can find 1 or 2 medals to celebrate every time...

 

if we grant the top athletes in every discipline a start despite making a Country-based selection "a priori", the risk is that in most sports we're going to see in the medal table basically only the powerhouses in each discipline...

 

so, I think an event like the Olympics need to keep this rule in place in order to give to more smaller Countries more chances to keep their interest in the Games (which would drop drastically if most of them can't even find 1 or 2 athletes in the a final of the whole program)...

for instance, I can tell you for sure that here in Italy if we wouldn't be regularly up in the top 10 of the Olympic Medal Table, no attention would be given by the media to the Olympics (and we are already now always at risk of not having enough tv coverage for the Games, especially the Winter Games, which are normally less successful for us and because winter sports are not followed in large part of our Country)...

[dcro 10,210]

Yeah, more quotas for powerhouses means less medals and less participation for smaller nations. In the long run that just makes sport less competitive as it's the Olympics medals or just participation that is the key of sport development and general interest around the World...

 

The last time that canoe slalom had multiple quotas was in 2004. Then both Japan and New Zealand didn't participate. At all. In Rio last year they both got a medal, so there is no need at all to go back at multiple boats.

[De_Gambassi 1,225]

  On 9/5/2017 at 12:21 PM, phelps said:

so, I think an event like the Olympics need to keep this rule in place in order to give to more smaller Countries more chances to keep their interest in the Games (which would drop drastically if most of them can't even find 1 or 2 athletes in the a final of the whole program)...

for instance, I can tell you for sure that here in Italy if we wouldn't be regularly up in the top 10 of the Olympic Medal Table, no attention would be given by the media to the Olympics (and we are already now always at risk of not having enough tv coverage for the Games, especially the Winter Games, which are normally less successful for us and because winter sports are not followed in large part of our Country)...

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Let's say, we had this one athlete per country rule enforced for every sport. Sure, it might mean more italian medals in swimming or athltetics, but much less so in fencing or shooting. At the end of the day, we might see a very similar medal distribution between countries. You simply traded medals from the hands of the more competent athletes to lesser ones.

[heywoodu 15,355]

Still, there should be some solution to prevent situations where one nation has the two or even three best athletes in the world but can only choose one. It sucks to have the biggest competition in the world, but with only a small part of the best athletes in the world. 

[Agger 1,664]

  On 9/5/2017 at 1:13 PM, De_Gambassi said:

 

Let's say, we had this one athlete per country rule enforced for every sport. Sure, it might mean more italian medals in swimming or athltetics, but much less so in fencing or shooting. At the end of the day, we might see a very similar medal distribution between countries. You simply traded medals from the hands of the more competent athletes to lesser ones.

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For bigger countries, yeah. Not for smaller ones.

In our (Denmark's) case, I don't see much more than a few sailing classes (49er FX, Laser Radial and possibly another one) as possibilities for extras.

 

I could to some extent do with some more or less extreme situations (maybe something like the doubles in badminton), but it would need to only be a few.

[Werloc 3,176]

I guess I would be ok with only one boat per country during the Olympics, it's just a bit disappointing that you can only enter 1 during the World Championships, World Cup events, Continental Championships etc. Many athletes are left on the sidelines, because they can't get to these events and are forced to form 4's / 8's in Rowing if they ever want to compete. It's a huge problem here in Lithuania for our canoe slalom and rowing, since most of our athletes are always capable enough to reach finals/semi-finals in the most important competitions, a few of the athletes that can't beat them and the younger generation pretty much doesn't get to compete anywhere for the full season and that leaves the teams with no reserve, because there's a certain amount of sideline time that a person can take before calling it quits.

Edited September 5, 2017 by Werloc

[George_D 1,206]

i dont agree. Olympics is a competition that must includes the BEST athletes of the world. With this rule a lot of high class athletes will stay out and will never have the chance to compete in such a big festival.

 

 

[hckošice 15,127]

I´ll say it this way, it´s not entirely fair to have for example a clean sweep in Beijing 2008 womens fencing sabre by USA but we didn´t had the chance to do it in the mens canoe slalom C1, I am not going to say that it would have happen for 100% but let say the truth in the 2008 year it definitely wasn´t impossible to happen. If they want this 1 per country rule so let do it in every sport then not only in some privileged sports with team events.

 

Alexander Slafkovský one of the best canoe slalom C1 rider in the world in more than last decade, won almost everything but never had the chance to compete at the olympics just because we can send only 1 athlete in this event..and is not easy to beat names like Michal Martikán or Matej Beňuš in a internal qualification...same with the Škantár cousins they were always second behind the Hochschorner bros in C2, so they didn´t got the opportunity to compete under the 5 rings, they finally did it at 33 years old for Rio and in their first olympics they immediately won gold