We’re lower than 10 weeks from the top of the Olympic marathon qualification window, and three Canadian runners have hit the usual, with two out of six positions secured on Canada’s marathon staff for Paris 2024. With nonetheless three vacancies, what is going to it take from Canadian marathoners to fill the ultimate spots? David Monti, a U.S.-based athletics journalist and creator of Race Outcomes Weekly, helps us delve into the Canadian Olympic qualification image.
Final weekend, Rory Linkletter grew to become the third Canadian runner (and second male) to hit the usual, along with his Thirteenth-place end in 2:08:01 in Sevilla, 9 seconds beneath the lads’s Olympic mark of two:08:10. Malindi Elmore and Cam Levins have already been named to the Canadian Olympic staff; each ran the usual earlier than the Jan. 30 nationwide staff cutoff. Though Linkletter has met the usual, he isn’t assured a spot; if two males had been to run sooner than 2:08:01 by Could 5, he may very well be outdated (although that appears unlikely, at this level).
As of Feb. 19, Linkletter is among the many 66 worldwide time qualifiers for the Olympic marathon, making certain his spot in Paris, so long as Athletics Canada selects him. With Linkletter assembly the usual, the remainder of the lads’s image turns into sophisticated. Monti says Ben Preisner, Trevor Hofbauer, Tristan Woodfine, or some other rising marathoner will probably need to run sooner to make it onto the Canadian staff in Paris.
“With Levins already named to the staff and Linkletter hitting the usual, there’s only one spot,” says Monti. “Ben Preisner is the one different Canadian within the ranked checklist primarily based on factors, and at the moment sits 86th, exterior of the 80 spots out there. That’s not good, with a bunch of spring marathons forward–computerized qualifiers will probably take a number of extra quota spots.”
(Each the lads’s and ladies’s fields for Paris have 80 assured spots for athletes who hit the usual. When World Athletics got here out with the Olympic requirements, their aim was to fill at the very least 50 per cent of the athlete quota per occasion by way of qualifying requirements, and the opposite 50 per cent by way of the factors system.)
“On the ladies’s facet, all 80 quota locations have been stuffed (topic to the three-per-country restrict), primarily based on the qualifying commonplace of two:26:50 or high 5 at a Platinum Label marathon,” says Monti. That implies that zero athletes will get in on factors, that means Natasha Wodak, Andrea Seccafien, Leslie Sexton or some other Canadian girls with aspirations of being on the staff might want to run the two:26:50 commonplace to be chosen. The excellent news is that the quota of 80 shouldn’t be a tough cap. Monti says so long as a rustic has room on the squad (three per nation, max) World Athletics will enable full groups to be entered if three athletes from one nation have made the Olympic commonplace. The variety of entrants may go as excessive as 100.
Linkletter hitting the usual on the 2024 Sevilla Marathon, implies that a complete of 66 males have certified (as of Feb. 19); as well as, one man (Tebello Ramakongoana of Lesotho) has a assured spot on factors, as a result of he was inside the first 64 ranked athletes by the Jan. 30 staff cutoff. Which means Preisner, who’s coming off a near-two-minute private finest of two:08:58 on the Beppu-Ōita Marathon in Japan earlier this month, will probably have to run once more and hit the usual to be chosen for Paris. “Ben may up his rating place to get into the highest 80 by working an distinctive marathon or half-marathon,” says Monti. “However it’s extra probably that he’d have to run one other marathon and hit the mark of two:08:10.”
Woodfine, then again, is listed on the elite begin checklist for the 2024 Boston Marathon in April. His solely hope of attending to Paris could be inserting within the high 5 at a Platinum Label highway race, (which may very well be Boston), which might probably earn him a spot on the Olympic staff. (Even when Woodfine ran the usual however positioned exterior the highest 5, his time wouldn’t depend, as a result of Boston’s course being ineligible for information and Olympic qualification, as a result of it’s a net-downhill course.) Enjoyable reality: the fifth-place runner on the 2023 Boston Marathon got here throughout the road in 2:08:35, which is near the Olympic commonplace.
Because the Could 5 marathon qualification deadline for the Paris Olympics approaches, three spots stay vacant on the Canadian staff–two on the ladies’s facet and one on the lads’s. The prospect of fielding a full Canadian marathon staff in Paris, consisting of three males and three girls, stays slim however something may occur over the subsequent 10 weeks.
