14th
Tight security at the Beijing Games; US athletics qualifying rules
This is too amusing not to post:
Included on the illegal items list for spectators at the Olympics next month are “crossbows and daggers”.
Also, I learned something new, which I thought I’d share, about qualifying rules for the USA Athletics (that’s the official name for what us Americans usually call “track & field”) squad, based on this story from today. In general, to make the Olympics, a trackster has to 1) finish in the top 3 in her event at the Trials, and 2) meet the “A standard” during a certain window of time established by track’s governing body (roughly from the beginning of the year to a few weeks before the Games, with a bit of variation for a few endurance events).
When the top three haven’t all met the A standard (true for 6 out of the 43 non-relay events this year), typically the best three from among those who have met the A standard are selected. … but there are some weird exceptions, partly based on the fact that there’s also an Olympic “B standard”, by which an athlete can qualify if she’s the only representative for a given country. (Basically, if country X wants to send 3 people, they have to meet a tough A standard. If noone meets the A standard, then it can send one person who meets the B standard. If noone meets the B standard, then the country doesn’t have a representative in that event.)
Here’s what I learned. The USA athletics team’s philosophy is simple:
1) Send as many athletes as possible to the Olympics.
2) Send the top finishers in the Trials such that you’re adhering to principle #1.
(Among other things, that means that if a B-standard athlete wins and beats the only A standard athlete in the trials, the B-standard athlete goes to the Olympics. If there are two or three A standard athletes, though, they’ll go and the B-standard athlete stays home.)
I like these principles: maximize participation, and then select by performance.
The relays provide the only exception to these rules; for relays, individual representatives in the distance that makes up the relay are automatically on the team (e.g., the 3 women who qualify in the 100m are on the 4x100m relay), and coaches select the remaining members according to various (largely subjective) criteria.
