Time For A New Selection Process
Posted by Jimmie R. Markham | August 23, 2008
Sports Illustrated track & field writer Tim Layden, writing recently about the USA 4×100m relay teams’ disastrous performances at the Beijing Olympics, had this insight about our selection process:
Efforts have been made in the past to conduct national relay training, but in the end, the brutal U.S. Trials system prevents coaches from knowing until the last minute who might be sent to the Games or the worlds.
That got me to thinking. I had always thought that our choices for a selection process were limited to an either/or scenario: a one-shot trials or a committee process like the one USA Gymnastics uses—one that leaves the athletes little or no say in the matter. Imagine a selection process that was similar to the points system used to select the athletes who will compete in the IAAF’s World Athletics Final next month. Here’s how that one works:
After the last [IAAF World Athletics Tour] Meeting before the World Athletics Final, the 7 Athletes having the highest number of points with their best 5 results (4 for throws) will qualify for each event of the World Athletics Final.
If we took that selection process and modified it to select a team of three athletes per event, we would be able to account for the injuries and other life events (births, marriages, family emergencies, illnesses, etc.) that inevitably happen within the four-year Olympic cycle, we would have a selection process that is not quite as brutal as the one-shot system we currently have and we would still empower the athletes to control their own destinies. Now doesn’t that make at least a little bit of sense?
At the same time, we could better control how we market our sport. Room could be made for a stateside tour that would have implications in the selection process. Imagine, as a track & field fan, going to watch an event that is part of an ongoing Team USA Olympics/World Championships Selection Tour instead of having to ship all of our best athletes to Europe every summer. That would draw in more people to the sport, wouldn’t it?
This type of process would also solve a problem that has manifested itself in recent times: our dwindling attention spans. A nine-day meet just seems so long, doesn’t it? Who decided that every athlete in every event has to be chosen in a single meet? Why not allow for some flexibility that would allow the process to happen in a more-compact-yet-still-fair manner that would leave us all room to lead our busy twenty-first century lives? And if we customized that selection process to account for the necessity of having relay teams in place long-enough before the Olympic Games began so that they could actually practice baton exchanges (hello?), then we might not embarrass ourselves four years from now in London.
Answer me this: why do the relay teams necessarily have to be the same athletes who have qualified in the individual events? Again, why not allow for either/or scenarios? Do you mean to say that, within our vast pool of prospects (one that numbers 304,947,141 as of 8/23/2008) we can’t find 3 athletes for the 400m dash and 4 other athletes for the 4×400m Relay? Heck! I’d bet we could find all seven athletes, plus a couple of reserves, right now at Baylor University, the home of Jeremy Warner’s once and future coach.
Of course, that would probably be the end of the US Olympic Trials as we know them. That meet could still be a part of a larger whole, but with this kind of selection process, it would no longer be the end-all, be-all of American track & field. After a mediocre Olympics of which that meet may have played a major part, that may not be such a bad thing. And don’t give me that crap about the Olympic Trials being a too-important part of our history to just throw it away. It’s your choice: would you rather have a great trials or—now that Vladimir Putin has begun the Second Cold War—a team that wins truckloads of gold medals in the Olympics?
Topics: Blog, Commentary, Olympic Games, Team USA |