*A total of 410 men and women qualified to compete at the 2024 USA Olympic Trials marathon in Orlando, Florida.
*A total of 259 men and women actually completed the race.
*A total of 81 of them finished the race under the 2:37:00 (women) and 2:18:00 (men) qualifying standards. That's only 19.7%.
*The weather conditions at 7:00 AM would have been much better for the athletes with finishing times for most being around 9:10-9:45 AM. Why didn't that happen?
*Looking back at the controversy of awarding Orlando over Chattanooga and then trying to start the race at 12:10 PM and 12:20 PM originally (instead of the 10:10 AM and 10:20 AM compromise), does anyone care about the athletes with the selection process???
*As much carnage as there was in the race it would've been even way worse had they been starting the race at 12:10 PM and 12:20 PM. Between USATF, the LOC and NBC they all should be held responsible for personal safety and negligence. At what point do the actual athletes have any say or power in what goes on? Who represents them?
LRC note from Rojo:
I don't think there was a lot of carnage in Orlando. Most of the top people in a non-rabbitted race on warmish conditions ran like 1-2 minutes off their pb.
Did some people blow up? Of course, when a lot of people try to run over their heads to force themsleves to an Olympic team in a warmish conditions, the aftermath isn't going to be pretty. This isn't Ethiopia - we don't select teams based on fastest SBs.
I think the temps were great in Orlando to mimic what can be expected in Paris this summer based on the last 5 years of weather data.
I have compiled a spreadsheet showing you the last 10 years of weather data for the Paris Airport at 8 am (Olympic marathon start time) and 10 am for August 10th. During the last 5 years, it's normally been a little warmer in Paris than it was in Orlando but the sun won't be as high so it's a good tradeoff.
The second page of the spreadsheet also shows you how far off (or ahead) of their PRs each runner in the top 10 was.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GvMW6jpvndhFniakC2eFsVJqdGg0uzRfCh6DdDpA4Wg/edit?usp=sharing