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So no Ugen (Olympic funding), with arguably 1cm being the deciding factor. I would have thought her the better bet, but good to see an invitation being accepted at least.
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as I have repeated many times, Ms. Sawyers is a marketing gold nugget, articulate, very pleasing on the eye, and active on social media... not Ms. Ugen's strengths, but had she continued her involvement in relays I think she may have had a better season in the jumps and proved of greater utility as back up for the 4x100, at least something to consider for next year. -
No problem with recognisng Sawyers' additional appeal, and if IAAF was simply going down the list then Sawyers would always get the first offer. Would have been quite contentious to reject Sawyers but accept Ugen if she was the next on the list, despite the disparity in the funding arrangements. The only discretion UKA has is to reject an invitation, they don't get to choose who is offered a place, and based on current year performances Sawyers is 1cm better.
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I note that the proposed number of 110m hurdlers by IAAF is 40 athletes, and yet an athlete such as the Begian is number 55 in the Ranking list. That suggests does it not that a heck of a lot of athletes between those numbers were turned down by their Federations or were not eligible because 3 athletes were already selected by their own Federations any way and the only 4 somes in events are 2017 WC winners or DL champs in 2019.Am I correct
I beleieve things will be different for Tokyo 2020 with harder qualifying for sure.Comment
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There are 15 US men in that top 55, so knock out 12 of those leaves you with 42 potential athletes. There's also 6 Jamaicans, so knock out a further 3 etc etc. So no need for any refusals before you end up with asking the 55th ranked athlete to participate if you want 40 in the heats.
Not quite the same, but I did a spreadsheet for the Olympic quals based on World Rankings which does the work for you - tells you how low an athlete could be ranked to be invited, once all the 3 per nation spots are taken up. See https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing
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Phil Norman has announced on Twitter that British Athletics rejected an IAAF invite for him to compete at Worlds. Suspect they'll reject every invitation based on the reasoning they gave him - 'Not a potential medallist in Doha or Tokyo'.Comment
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Invite accepted for Sawyers and Lansiquot also added to the team following Dina’s diamond league titleComment
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Just how stupid and myopic of British Athletics to reject Norman (and Fillery, Strickler and Knight) on those grounds. Do they *want* to put off people from taking up the sport? I understand not want to send folks there to just make up the numbers, but especially in Fillery (U-23, just 20 years old), Stricker (25) and Knight's (24) cases, we're talking about athletes who have still got years of development left in their careers and all of them have set numerous PBs this season too. Why not give them the opportunity to go to Doha and possibly get better again at the champs?
This "Not a potential medalist" mantra is pure BS that hinders rather than advances athletics in Britain.Last edited by RunUnlimited; 14-09-19, 18:23.Comment
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The IAAF brought in the A standard + invite system in 2017. Before that it was the A/B system. The B standards for 2013 (I can’t find 2015) were:
110h - 13.50
3kS - 8.32.00
SP - 17.20
400h - 56.55
In 3 of the 4 cases athletes would have met the B standard and fulfilled all the other criteria about being improving athletes who didn’t have global championships experience. Jessie Knight has taken 2 seconds off her PB this year, I can’t understand how she can’t be seen as an improving athlete who deserves a chance. Fillery has produced 6 PBs this seasonComment
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Actively discouraging athletes who have done so much to improve themselves in a major championship season (in particular Fillery, who won a bronze at the Euro U-23's and has set more personal best times since then, and Knight who has made massive progress this year), is so very wrong-headed and counter-intuitive.
Winning medals is great of course, but that isn't the be-all and end-all in athletics.... Getting a PB on the day, or advancing to a semi-final or final of an event also counts. Are you telling *me* that Fillery or Knight wouldn't be good enough to at least make a semi-finals at Doha? Well, I guess not in the eyes of Neil Black at least....Comment
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The BA selection document says, about accepting invitations only for potential medallists:
"The aim of this approach will not be to either exclude developing athletes or those for whom making an Olympic team is the ultimate goal, but to ensure a more focused, higher-quality team in order to deliver a high level of service to all selected athletes."
What a load of nonsense. It sounds like people are being rejected to avoid the support staff having to give a couple of extra massages. It's such a stupid policy. Max Jones, when he was Head Coach (or was it Performance Director? I can't remember), used to send everyone to major champs that he could. It's not as if the medal haul has gone up since the infamous UK Sport 'medal or nothing' concept came into fashion. It's ironic that the IAAF have put a video on Twitter showing Jonathan Edwards coming 35th at one champs before he eventually won silver and then gold, headlining it 'Never give up'. BA give up on athletes before they've had their first chance to show what they can do. Of course nobody is going to come 35th because the size of the fields has shrunk...
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As I've posted elsewhere, the fury at this time of year is mis-directed - by this stage in the selection process the policy and approach is fixed. Half a second quicker and Norman would have been going by rights, without any say by UKA, so there must be an available budget for it.
How can we construct real pressure to force UKA to adopt a selection policy which maximises team sizes for WC and OG and removes as much discretion as possible? Does such a policy have to get an approval at a body which can be influenced by the grass roots etc? Or at least disected and challenged so that if there are restrictions in the policy, there is transparent information about the real rationale behind it?Comment
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The August 2019 published OG selection policy has the following in relation to invitations:-b. In the selection meetings, the Performance Director, in his/her absolute discretion, may choose to select athletes who have not already qualified, subject to subsequently receiving an IAAF World Ranking Invitation, provided the following is true:So who is going to be ranked in, say the top 16 in the world (making a presumption that the top 16 will provide all of the top 8 at the Games), and not qualify through the normal selection routes?
i. They satisfy all other eligibility requirements at paragraphs 1.1(a), (b), and (d) to (g) above; and
ii. The Performance Director believes they are potentially capable of a top 8 individual placing at the Games.
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If quali is harder for Tokyo, and we've a policy of not sending athletes unless they'll be finalists, it could be a very small team we send...
That said, I am also partly of the mindset that if you're not good enough, you're not good enough. There's plenty to admire in terms of athletes performing at their best on the global stage, but the Olympics is about celebrating and watching the cream of the crop.Comment
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There is also a developing athletes clause for Tokyo allowing for athletes who.are deemed to have future medal potential. So under this clause someone like Phil Norman probably still misses out but likes of Amelia Strickler and Jessie Knight would probably go. So the team size will probably be similar to Doha.
I am in favour of taking all athletes who qualify for all champs. I personally think that due to the prestige of the Olympics it rankles more when athletes are overlooked there.
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The whole question of so called "potential medallists" is largely a subjective nonsense AFAIAC; how the heck anybody can ascertain fairly who has or has not the medal potential in any time frame is beyond me.
As for some comments by other posters about the size of our team and whether the widest range of athletes should be selected,, to me i can only see the whole WC/OG events as an elitist construct which suggests that its for the best only. I reject the idea of selecting athletes who perform one outlier effort of say getting into the GB team based on a one tenth of a second or a centimetre qualification which is not replicated before or after such an occasion.
If the belief is for the widest team possible being selected is correct, lets get rid altogether of Qualifying standards or Rankings and let the IAAF insist on all Member Federations holding a national Trials and just selecting the top three. Those not quite up to a certain consistent standard might qualify, but if they can perform at the specified time in say the top 3 then you might argue that such a selection method is fair and reasonable. After all, think of the athletes who are invited to Globals with no qual standards achieved their particular country by any athlete; thinking of the 100m.Comment
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I think it might have been on the previous version of this forum, but I remember a thread from 2015 which noted down all of the GB athletes selected that year via the "podium potential" clause and I'm sure if we found it now not one of them will have won an individual world or Olympic medal... probably not even made a world or Olympic final. It had people like Asha Philip, Danny Talbot etc on it. So to say British Athletics use the 'podium potential' feature for anything other than to select their funded favourites is laughable.Comment
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i think world champ talbot gets a bye from this discussion even if it is in the relays, as for the podium feature who knows how young athletes are going to turn out , im sure that from a young age dasher was expected to win world and olympic medals but i doubt the same was thought about laura muirComment
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Why? He has never made an individual global final which is the whole point of 'podium potential'. Or because he's one of the more likeable athletes it's ok to gibe him a bye? Sounds like the mentality British Athletics have with their selections
You're right though, there's no way of telling how athletes will turn out, which is why the podium potential clause is so stupid.Comment
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