I just updated the women's 10,000 recap that Jonathan wrote when he talked about the Olympic qualification. Here is how it now reads:
There are only 27 spots in the Olympic 10,000 field so the auto standard is very fast -- 30:40, a time only six Americans have ever run. So Valby and Schweizer will have to rely on qualifying via world ranking. The good news for both of them is that that is likely to happen.
World ranking is determined by an average of your two best performances during the qualification window. After tonight, Valby will have 1213 world ranking points. She has 1221 from running 30:50 at the Bryan Clay Invite in April and will get 1205 for running 31:41.56 tonight (1155 for the performance plus 50 bonus points for finishing 2nd in a Category B competition).
Schweizer will have 1209 world ranking points. She has 1218 from running 31:04 at The TEN in March and will get 1200 for running 31:41.56 tonight (1155 for the performance plus 45 bonus points for finishing 3rd in a Category B competition).
If you look at the Road to Paris list, and remove the injured American Alicia Monson from the list, that would put them at #29 & #30 on the list - and 27 go to Paris.
Updated Road To Paris Standings
#27 - Elly Henes - USA
#28 - Klara Luken - Slovena
#29 - Valby - USA
#30 - Schweizer - USA
That doesn't sound good at first glance but two of the people ahead of them would be Americans they beat in the Trials in Katize Izzo (qualified via xc) and Elly Henes (world rank #27). If you removed them from the list as USATF wants to honor the order of finish at the Trials, Valby and Schweizer would move up to #27 and #28. Thus if there was one scratch, USATF could send the top 3 from the Trials.
And it seems likely that there will be at least one scratch from people ranked in the top 27 as the following must be considered:
- Eritrea's Rahel Daniel hasn't competed since February of 2023
Sweden's Sarah Lahti hasn't competed since March. She had hamstring surgery, won't even start running until next month and her makes it sound like she's definitely not running the Olympics.
- Uganda's Annet Chalangat may not be entered as she has never broken 34:00 on the track (although she was 16th at World xc).
- France's Alessia Zarbo, the former Oregon Duck, might not be entered as she has track pbs of 4:19.99, 9:15.98 and 15:50.47 and 32:28.57.
- It's not clear that Britain will use all three of its spots as Eilish McCoglan (who has the standard) is coming back from injury and dropped out of Europeans, Jessica Warner-Judd (who has the standard) has been suffering seizures in races and Samantha Harrison (who could replace them) hasn't raced all year.
The Road to Paris is not finalized -- the qualifying window ends on Sunday and we still need results from other national championships to roll in -- but Valby and Schweizer may have done enough to secure their spots.