World Athletics has acknowledged the issues in how they’ve set the women’s standards. For example, 13 women ran the new 5000m standard of 14:36 on the track last year, and 10 ran the 10,000m standard of 30:40 (limiting it to three per country). In the men’s steeple, essentially everyone at last year’s world championships hit the standard. In the women’s steeple, Gabbi Jennings ran 9:06.61—just barely missing the new 9:06.5 cutoff—and then the next qualifier after the top six or seven was Marwa Bouzayani of Tunisia with a 9:01.46. There’s a five-second gap in the middle. The depth just isn’t there the same way it is on the men’s side, and that likely influenced World Athletics’ decision making.
Qualifying Standards: The Twist In The Tale
There were a few additional changes that may be a little unexpected, and will greatly shift how athletes schedule out their next year of competition.
For purposes of qualifying standards:
- The marks must be achieved in a Category C event or higher; this broadly means a Diamond League, a Continental Tour Gold, Silver or Bronze meeting, or a National or Area Championships (and for this year, the World Ultimate Championships). For road 5K and 10K, a Category E road race counts.
- Indoor 200m track will not be accepted to qualify for track races. Oversized indoor tracks will still count—so long to BU… time to get acquainted with the Dempsey at the University of Washington!
- Discus marks need to be thrown within the confines of a traditional athletics facility (sorry Throw Town Ramona).
These changes seem to be part of a concerted effort by World Athletics to try and improve the regular season product, and to also reduce instances of athletes benefitting from special conditions—like those found in Ramona and on the indoor Boston University track—to achieve qualifying marks that they may not be able to replicate elsewhere.
The requirement to run qualifying standards at a Category C or higher meet effectively shoots the NCAA system in the foot. Most collegiate meets aren’t on the World Athletics calendar, and even when they are, they’re Category F or D. There are not a lot of Category C meets in the United States. This is potentially going to force American athletes to the European circuit.
To get bronze-level status, a meet needs a minimum level of prize money and a certain number of events. In the US, the dollar amount required isn’t enormous from an American perspective. If people want to create Category C meets or convert existing ones, it’s possible. But you also have to meet some of the other structural requirements World Athletics has in place event diversity and meet structure. In other parts of the world outside of Europe, the availability of Category C meets may be more of an issue, particularly with the funding of the prize money and other requirements.
The other issue is that getting into higher-category meets is deeply political. There’s no qualifying system. It’s often who does your coach know? Who does your agent know? Is your sponsor the meet sponsor? There’s no rule that says a meet has to let you in because you meet a certain criteria.
Sometimes you see a Diamond League start list and you think: what is that athlete doing there when someone who needs the race is sitting at home? Often it’s because the agent manages one big star athlete at the meet and has said they’ll send said star if you also let this up-and-coming athlete in.
Right now it’s so subjective and political that it can be genuinely unfair to athletes who don’t have the right connections.
R.I.P. Boston University’s Indoor Track
The change in the rules to prevent the use of most indoor times to qualify is clearly aimed at Boston University’s magic track where the likes of Grant Fisher, Cole Hocker, and Jimmy Gressier went to achieve their 5000m qualifying standard for the Tokyo World Championships in 2025.
There are essentially no quality 5000m races in the U.S. indoor season outside of BU. The athletes who can run 12:50 on the fabled Boston track can probably do it on the Diamond League too. The athletes that BU really served were those on the margin—the people who ran 12:49 at BU but might run 12:55 outdoors. That’s maybe three or four athletes in the world. And the key point: indoor performances still count toward world rankings. So the calculus becomes: why go to BU for a fast time with no prize money and no placing points when you could go to a higher-category outdoor meet, run a few seconds slower, and earn more points overall?
One slight loophole is that oversized indoor tracks still count for purposes of running qualifying standards. Will we see athletes flocking to the Dempsey over at the University of Washington to use their oversized track to try and run qualifying standards during the indoor season?
Goodbye Throw Town Ramona
The inability to throw a qualifying standard in Ramona removes a major opportunity for an event group that already is among the worst compensated in the sport. Having to travel to Europe to try to throw a qualifying standard at a meet that fits the new requirements might prove prohibitively expensive for some.
But the counter-argument: of the five American men who exceeded the new standard of 67.20 meters last year, only one did it at a certified non-Ramona facility. If you can’t throw the standard outside of Ramona, are you realistically in contention for a medal at Worlds? Probably not.
In addition, marks from Ramona still count for world rankings, so throwing further in Ramona could be one way to boost your ranking and push for qualification, so it perhaps doesn’t mean that Ramona is entirely dead.
In general, in the throws and horizontal jumps, athletes get so many more opportunities to compete. You can throw discus two days after your previous competition, six attempts per meet, 40 to 60 attempts over a season. The world rankings in throws are genuinely reflective of ability in a way that it isn’t always for running events.
How Tough Are The New Qualifying Standards Really?
We have taken a look at how many athletes (when limited to three per country) would have achieved the 2027 entry standards in 2024 and 2025.
Notes:
- The following analysis is based on performances in the calendar year rather than the qualifying period for the Olympics or the Tokyo World Championships.
- For the discus this includes marks from Ramona. In 2025 16 men who threw over 67.20 did so outside of Ramona.
- For the 10,000m and 5000m this does not include times achieved on the roads
- It isn’t possible to analyse the Race Walks as the new distances were not really contested in 2024 and 2025
Source link ← Back to News