Amby Burfoot says: do away with the Olympic Marathon Trials

Excellent post. To be fair, D’Amato did finish top 8 at the 2022 world championships, so she’s not just a time trialer. Other than that, I agree.

Lindwurm earned her spot today. She mentioned after the race that she was a Division II walk-on. I’m glad the current system allows someone like her to make the team. I’m also glad that middle school, high school, and college runners who watched today’s race can be inspired by her achievement.

Worked out pretty well today. Top 2 in both races are obvious. Lindwurm ran a smart and courageous race in heat that should mimic Paris. Korir bided his time and uncorked a great moves. His credentials are in line with the rest. Maybe Panning was in better shape, but he misjudged it and I don’t see how a selector would pick anyone besides Korir. Fauble/Rupp don’t deserve a bye in.

Seems like this backfired on you in the most spectacular way thanks

Known bitter old jaded poster reaffirms why he has this reputation? I’m shocked.

It didn’t backfire on Amby at all. Intellgence is rare, and if you had more you would know that one doesn’t make an appraisal of a system based on one race. Amby was simply suggesting that the system be reassessed. He committed no crime. People may disagree with him but to use one race to negate his proposal is symptomatic of a small mind.

How did it backfire? Personally, I like the trials and prefer it to a selection committee. But your argument is that Burfoot's idea was bad because...the Trials results are the best match for the Trials results.

The only possible way to even sort of evaluate whether the teams picked today were the right ones is to see how they do in Paris. They looked good today; that's pretty much tautological.

Molly Seidel is a great example of someone who wouldn't have been chosen by selectors, but made the team in Tokyo, and came away with a medal. One point for the Trials system. If Fiona O'Keeffe does well in Paris, that will be another point. On the other hand, we'll never know how Keira D'Amato would have done because she didn't make the team.

Again, the Trials system is great, and has historically chosen very good teams, but we can't use it as proof of its own correctness.

Excellent post. As you say, this other poster was essentially saying, the people that did well today are the best possible US entrants because you saw what they did today. Which is absurd on its face. The people that did well today did well today and they deserve to go to Paris but they may or may not be the best representatives for the US in Paris and we simply cannot know.

I just became aware of this thread. I retitled it as Amby deserves mention.

The Olympic Marathon Trials are amazing and shouldn't be touched. They are not only a way to select the US Olympic Marathon Team, they are a celebration of distance running the US.

Do not touch them.

Hundreds of runners keep competing in the US just to make the Trials. These are the most influential runners in every community.

Without the Trials, there wouldn't be a LetsRun.

Sure a committee some years could pick a better Olympic Team SOME years. Some years I think they'd pick a worse one.

A committee wouldn't have picked Molly Seidel in 2020 and wouldn't have picked Fiona O'Keeffe this year. I guess the argument is they would have made their debuts earlier. But a committee is going to reward past performance generally over current form/potential which a Trials shoes.

If they were ever to get rid of the Trials I think going with something like the Japanese system would be the way to go. Top 2 guaranteed and 3rd discretionary spot. But this is America and the American way is top 3 across the line make the team.

I'm not arguing for changing our trial system and I am absolutely impressed with both of their performances. But if you say that the primary purpose of our trials system is to find the runners who will perform well at the Olympics you cannot know if that's what it did on Saturday until after the Olympic Marathon is finished.

You point is well taken EXCEPT you cannot even know it AFTER the Olympic Marathon is finished. And as for Wejo, when you insinuate it is the way we do it so it is the best way to do it, this is also laughable. The most accurate way to describe it is we do it this way because we think it is the best way, or we are too lazy to tinker with it, or we cannot be sure of a better way, etc.

In fairness to Wejo, you did acknowledge that there could be years where a different selection process might prove more efficacious, and other years where it wouldn’t be the case, in terms of getting the best runners to toe the line at the Olympics. But your justification that this site wouldn’t exist without the Trials cannot be an argument for having the same selection process in the future, but you know that.

If there are 3 spots I've always liked the idea of 2 earned and 1 discretionary, but that wild card pick only used in unusual circumstances. American figure skating has done that occasionally, when a medal contender is injured. That system could have rescued Dan O'Brien in 1992 decathlon after he no-heighted in the pole vault. Even other American decathletes were saying how ridiculous it was for O'Brien to miss Barcelona.

If there are only 2 spots then no wild card consideration. And the problem with the wild card in the first place is that it will be abused, depending on leadership at the time. Some regimes will properly define unusual circumstances while others will attach it every time a personal favorite doesn't qualify.

The US marathon trials format has been outdated for decades It made sense up until about 1980-88 at the latest.

Nothing American about this setup aside from the stupidity of having our best race unnecessarily for too little pay.

No reason for a 26.2 trials race either as 10mi or 13.1 would be ideal but also draw more of the 5000/10000 track talent to test at a longer distance

Or simpler yet go down the US half marathon list.

You're right and I even thought the same thing after that last post I made. No matter what you do you can never know what would have happened had you done something else. It's hard to look at our results in the '72 Olympic Marathon and think we could have gotten an even better result if we had some other procedure. But it could have happened It's hard to look at the result Great Britain got in '76 and think they almost would have to have done better if they'd had no trial. But they might not have though with three DNFs I'm not sure doing worse was possible.

The reason I think it would be a good time to re-think our system because it's 56 years old and the marathoning world is a lot different now than in 1968. I do think that some of the best arguments for retaining it have less to do with knowing it will pick the best team and more to do with larger effects it probably has. I have to think it creates greater depth in US running because getting into the trial is a goal for so many not quite elite marathoners and the revenue and attention it brings to the sport is not something to chuck away casually.

I agree with this. This is the best way.

Yeah. In the world where Mantz gets a big cramp and finishes 4th, people would start worrying that we left our best guy behind…

now if you want to argue our best isn’t good enough to matter, you might have a point. It isn’t like we have a 2:04 guy missing a team because they caught the flu…

I'm sorry, but when is the last time that a medal threat was left off the U.S. marathon Olympic team due to the trials process? It almost happened in 1984 but didn't?

1) So how many US medal threats have there been?

2) How does one define a medal threat?

3) These questions are very difficult to answer without the benefit of hindsight, and even then somewhat.

I am not sure most would have considered Steve Spence, for example, a medal threat before the 1991 World Championship Marathon, but of course it is pretty easy to see that he was after the fact.

Exactly. All more reasons that holding a trials is the best way to do it.

Amby says the purpose of the trials is to select the best 3 to the team, I assume he means the 3 with the best chance of medaling.