Athletics Qualification to Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic Games

[JoshMartini007 2,769]

Unsurprisingly not every nation's best athlete is a 100m runner. Once World Athletics saw how many World Ranking athletes would miss out they changed the rules to force as many nations into the 100m events.

[LowerSaxony 205]

3 minutes ago, JoshMartini007 said:

Once World Athletics saw how many World Ranking athletes would miss out

What a surprise. They allow universality spots while restricting the number of participants. If they were not able to account for this in advance, that's blatant incompetence and ignorance.

[dcro 10,210]

18 minutes ago, LowerSaxony said:

Actually, the athlete from Timor Leste who got an universality place for the 100 meters is a 5000m runner. Guess he's not the only one. It's a shame. All that WA/IOC wanna have is as most flags as possible and the pretense of universality - they do not care about the athletes AT ALL.

Same with the gender equality. The IOC hinted they would overhaul the WA system and essentially 'guarantee' that every nation would be eligible to enter a man and a woman at the very least. Nothing of the sort has happened.

[dcro 10,210]

Granted, the IOC also messed up here? Per the qualification system, 100 m universality spots should have been no different than the other universality spots. Ranking qualifiers should have been removed in their favor.

 

But then they made this unfortunate exception for the 100 m events, which was probably approved by the IOC to begin with...

[JoshMartini007 2,769]

13 minutes ago, dcro said:

Granted, the IOC also messed up here? Per the qualification system, 100 m universality spots should have been no different than the other universality spots. Ranking qualifiers should have been removed in their favor.

 

But then they made this unfortunate exception for the 100 m events, which was probably approved by the IOC to begin with...

I imagine it was a compromise between the two. I bet WA would love to have added on to each event like they did for the 100m, but that would have easily pushed them above 1900 athletes. Even now, they may go above that number depending on how many relay-only athletes are selected.

[intoronto 6,559]

What a mess a further 50 quota spots will need to be found in 2024....

[Makedonas 2,239]

1 hour ago, LowerSaxony said:

Actually, the athlete from Timor Leste who got an universality place for the 100 meters is a 5000m runner. Guess he's not the only one. It's a shame. All that WA/IOC wanna have is as most flags as possible and the pretense of universality - they do not care about the athletes AT ALL.

That's like Kristina Alvertsian from Armenia who is a triple jumper but will be running in the 100m, which she never ran in her entire life until last week

[Jur 689]

I dont get why just put those athletes in their events. You're going over the limit want it or not, at least gave the best athlete of each country a try.

 

I read thta the  athlete their federation propose where all marathonians and WA rejected their quota and asked them to invite their best 100 athlete instead.

[Dunadan 1,103]

It's clearly to limit the costs for the hosts, a 100m runner takes less space in the Olympic village and eats less.

[dcro 10,210]

6 minutes ago, Jur said:

I dont get why just put those athletes in their events. You're going over the limit want it or not, at least gave the best athlete of each country a try.

Apparently they are doing all of this to "protect" those 44 non-100 m universality athletes... Because if they put them too over the limit, then additional 44 quotas would have to be added as well...

 

And to think football got 100+ late quotas just like that...

 

This is scandalous. If it concerned some big nation (or involved cannabis), it would make all the headlines, but now nobody will even scratch into this story.