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One thing that has surprised me on here is the apparent complete acceptance/support of World Athletics ‘interfering’ in national selections by offering invitations which in my opinion put governing bodies in an uncomfortable relationship with athletes. To me this is fundamentally wrong. They should set qualification standards and that’s it. A cutoff on numbers based on rankings could then prevent field sizes which are unmanageable. No way would other sports I can think of stand for this interference.
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11.08 for the women's 100m will rule out Imani Lansiquot unless she can improve her pb.Comment
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That is presumably what she is and will continue to do...improve and achieve her objective
I note no mention of the super shoes and their screaming obvious benefit to times on the track, which should be reflected in higher standards e expected.
FINA have 2 separate standards I believe for all swimmers.
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Hate when people use another sport that they worked in as their model, have we learnt nothing from the past leadership team
(personally hate the whole points ranking system)Comment
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If our sprinters cannot go 11.08 in the 100m or better they dont go probably . Endless whingeing about standards is pointless. As for our wonder coaches.!!.
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Kathy Cook should never have gone then, right? Or Olympic finalist Jeanette Kwakye? I've no objection to good standards, and if we were talking about someone who'd run 11.2x I'd be on board, but almost all these standards are slightly too far on the bonkers end of hard, which becomes self-defeating.
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I don't quite see it in the same way - it is not really "invitations" is just another way of doing the selection criteria. WA will invite the top XX athletes so you are to all intents and purposes qualified in just the same way as if you achieve the standard - in all cases the local federation can say "no" (c.f. the US team where if they go by their usual rules will potentially have multiple qualified athletes in somethng like the M100m but if the fastest of those false starts in the heats at their trials they won't be on the plane).
The issue is that WA cannot compel fededations to select the the athletes that WA believe are the right representatives. Now with the UKA position ref the invitation places it's pretty clear what the position is for just about every GB athlete; meet the standard and you're on the plane. Don't meet the standard and you're not.
(That's all a separate discussion from whether the standards are too high etc).Comment
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Yep 10 years ago we tried copying cycling; having a central system in Loughborough but that didn't work. And now it's swimming that we must copy.
Am all for learning where appropriate from other sports but you also need to recognise that not everything is easily transferable. Important to respect the difference between sports (and athletics is effectively a series of sports within one overall sport umbrella.
Does anyone seriously think this selection policy will lead to increased numbers of medals won by GB? I don't but would love to hear any reasoned arguments from others. My bet is medals won will still be around the usual number of 6/7.Comment
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I don't think people necessarily like them. I don't; they're complicated & convoluted. The objective of getting people competing more doesn't work at the top level as these athletes are obviously good enough to get the auto standard e.g. We'd all love to see Sydney McLaughlin race against Femke Bol more but the former doesn't seem to be interested And they don't work for some events at all like the 10K or Multi-Events where you can't compete week-in and week-out to boost your ranking.
I'd love it if there was just a set standard and World Athletics just accepted that sometimes target numbers will be exceeded and other times the target field sizes will be lower which should broadly even out. but we are where we are. And given that World Athletics have a target of 50% qualifying by rankings it seems ridiculous to largely ignore this route.
I have more issue with national federations like our own who are happy to pretty much override 1 of the main routes of qualifying to major championships.Comment
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If someone comes in and blindly says ‘This worked in x sport so we’ll do it this way in athletics’ then yes I agree.
But if someone comes in and cherry picks the best elements of what’s worked elsewhere and applies then sensibly to athletics then I’m all in favour. We can be pretty insular as a sport and should be more receptive to fresh thinking. Buckner as an athletics man with experience of other sports ought to be well placed to do that (although may partly depend on exactly what objectives he’s been set).
Ref the standards themselves, some are definitely tough, others less so and all must be seen in the context of current and previous talent.
As Philipo implies the 800 times of just under 1.45 and 2.00 aren’t that demanding in the super spikes age plus we happen to have the depth of talent to easily fill all the places.
In the field we won’t get near 85 and 63m javelin throwers. But at times in the past we could have and a good number of them. Unlikely to get any 2.32 HJs or 8.25 LJs but again in the past we could have fielded a couple in each event at times. Virtually every other sport improves over time, so unless we’re saying our stars were doped up to the eyeballs, the question is less about the standards and much more about why in several events we’re literally nowhere near as good as we were 10, 20 or 30 years ago. Participation, coaching, investment……
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The approach in swimming may make sense where a world leader can pick up 7 medals in a single games.
The most anyone can realistically expect in T&F is 3... possibly 4 if you get someone with Bolt's dominance and Kerley's range.
If there is a genuine belief this will drive standards up in the long run, it's depressing how it isn't patently obvious the idea is flawed. If they're trying to hide a funding issue, they should be open about that and people may be more accepting. I imagine you may also find sponsors more willing to step up if it is specifically to send an athlete to a major games.
It's funny how this comes around the same time as Jaz (quite deservedly!) getting so much press and attention - how many of those previous teams would she have made by this policy? Would she have stayed in the sport if she hadn't been selected? It's not like she doesn't have a lot of other strings to her bow.Comment
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ultimately it's because British Athletics is skint. If you're in the world rankings you should go to the champs. If every country did what we want to do, we'd have very small fields in some events.Comment
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For the Lansiquot fanclub, some facts. Her best legal performance last year was 11.15 in ht 2 of the CG. She was last year in 77th position according to WA Toplists. All her other performances better than that were wind assisted acc to P of 10. Her runs last year in various place were way off 11.08. So why the heck posters here have highlighted a sprinter who has not yet demonstrated the talent and performances to achieve 11.08, I do not know.Comment
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In regards to money, id love to see a breakdown of staff vs athletes at a champs, and costs involved for thisComment
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There's a lot to unpack and plenty of people who have made good points. All I will add is that given Buckner is allegedly highly valuing the relays (given the quote Laps provided), it seems somewhat perverse that he's making it harder for the 200m/400m runners to qualify in individual events.
I hope it works, I really do. But I worry that it won't and that all it will do is push promising but unproven athletes to make difficult decisions that won't work out in the favour of athletics fans.Comment
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