Four more qualifying procedures revealed

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has today revealed four more qualifying procedures, meaning more than half of the qualifying procedures for Paris 2024 are now known. Fencing, Golf, Judo and Taekwondo have all released their qualifying systems.

Fencing

Fencing has twelve events, six per gender: Individual Foil, Epée and Sabre events, and team equivalents. Just like 2020, there are a total of 106 athletes per gender. For each event, if an NOC qualifies a team, then the three team members also take part in the corresponding individual event. Otherwise, only one athlete can participate per NOC in the individual event (this is similar to Archery).

For each team event, eight teams will qualify. The team members will take up 24 places in the individual events, with ten individuals qualifying for a maximum of 34. When universality and host places are added, an individual event can have at most 37 places. There is one male and one female universality place in total, and the hosts have six places, in addition to any places they qualify.

All team places will be earned from the FIE official Senior Team Ranking List of 1 April 2024, with all four zones guaranteed at least one place if they have a team in the top 16. The ten individual places will be qualified as follows: six from the FIE Individual Senior Adjusted Official Ranking List of April 2024, discriminated by zone, with two for Europe and Asia-Oceania and one for America and Africa, and the winners of four FIE Zonal Qualifying Events in April 2024 (exact dates and locations tbc). The only change to the 2020 system is two host places have gone to the universality section.

Golf

Golf has a men's and women's event, and just like 2020, sixty golfers of each gender will participate at the Olympics. And the qualification system is unchanged too. There is one host spot, and 59 qualification spots. The Olympic Golf Ranking (17 June for men and 24 June for women) is the only qualification pathway. There are at most four athletes per NOC, but only if they are in the top fifteen: otherwise there is at most two. Also, there is a guaranteed place for all five continents. Finally, if the host spot is unused (as is likely) it will be a universality place instead.

Judo

Judo's programme is unchanged from 2020, with seven men's weight classes (60, 66, 73, 81, 90, 100, and +100kg), seven women's weight classes (48, 52, 57, 63, 70, 78, and +78kg) and a mixed team event. However, they have had their quotas reduced, with 186 men and 186 women, down from 193 of each in 2016 (so one less athlete per individual event).

There is no direct qualification for the mixed team event: instead, if you have six eligible athletes (one man and one women from the three lightest classes, the three middle classes, and three heaviest classes) you automatically enter. Each individual event has at most one athlete per NOC. For each event, France will qualify a place.

The top seventeen highest ranked athletes on the IJF World Ranking List (published 25 June 2024) for each event will qualify a place. Then, 100 additional places in total (50 per gender) will be qualified through Continental Rankings, listing all athletes in all events, separated per continent. The top 12 Africans in both genders, the top 13 European men and 12 European women, the top ten Asians in both genders, the top five Oceanians in both genders, and the top 10 Pan American men and 11 Pan American women will qualify. However, out of these 100 places, there is at most one per NOC.

Finally, there are five Team invitation places: one NOC per continent that has five out of the six athletes necessary to qualify for the Mixed Team event will have the extra judoka qualified, so they can participate. There are also fifteen universality places. This system is similar to 2020's system.

Taekwondo

Taekwondo is another sport to be unchanged from 2020, with four men's weight classes (58, 68, 80, and +80kg) and four women's weight classes (49, 57, 67 and 67kg). Each event has sixteen places, although athletes from the Refugee Olympic Team might be added as a seventeenth. There is one athlete per NOC per event. There are fifteen qualification spots per event, with either one of the two host spots per gender or one of the two universality places per gender to make up the sixteenth place. Five athletes per event qualify from the WT Olympic Ranking published on 6 January 2024. The winner of the WT Grand Slam Champions Series (Wuxi, CHN, 16-17 Dec 2023) in each event qualifies one spot, with the remaining nine spots earned at the Continental Qualification Tournaments, two for every continent apart from Oceania, which just gets one.

These four systems are all very similar to 2020, and are all mostly rankings based. Fifteen sports (Aquatics, Athletics, Badminton, Canoe, Cycling, Equestrian, Football, Rowing, Sailing, Skateboarding, Sport Climbing, Surfing, Tennis, Table Tennis and Weightlifting) are yet to publish their system.

Patrick Green

Writer, Totallympics News