Persimmon Alley Press
Persimmon Alley Press
  • About Persimmon Alley Press
  • Books
    • Close Encounters with the Cold War
    • Mother's Century: A Survivor, Her People and Her Times
    • Encounters: Ten Appointments with History
    • Killer Protocols
    • Clean Coal Killers
    • The Killer Trees
    • A Feast of Famine
    • Molly Malice in Alterland
    • Alligator In My Basement
    • Sudden Addiction
    • The Flesh of the Cedarwood
  • Smoke the Dottle
  • Richard's Rants
  • Contact

Rant 642: A Better Way to Select an Olympic Team

7/2/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
Donovan Brazier, hands down America’s best-ever 800 meter runner, won’t be going to Tokyo for the Olympic Games. He finished a shocking last in the 800 track trials final at boiling hot Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon. Only the top three finishers at trials make the Olympic Team. One race on one day was determinative, despite Brazier’s consistently stellar performances over the last five years, which included a collegiate record, a world championship, and an American record (the old record had stood for 34 years).
 
Brazier simply had a bad day, something to which everyone can relate. For that, he was punished with the shattering of his Olympic dream.
 
The Olympic track and swimming trials are unforgiving. Both select Olympians on the basis of a single race for swimmers and runners and a single field event for throwers, jumpers and vaulters.
 
It should not be this way. Most other countries do it differently, selecting their teams, at least in part, on the basis of overall performance over time. The UK’s system is a model we should consider. The British Olympic Association, in conjunction with each of the 33 Olympic sports national governing bodies, selects the team based on competitors’ “potential to excel at the Olympics.” While this customarily means that the top finishers at the UK trials make the team, it allows for flexibility to select others who might not have excelled at the trials, but whose recent past performances merit consideration.
 
Even in the U.S., several other sports take a different, more equitable approach to choosing their Olympic athletes. Gymnastics, for one, selects several team members on the basis of one or two competitions (the U.S. championships and the Olympic trials—the men’s and women’s teams do the selection a little bit differently from one another) and the rest using other criteria that reflect either performances over time or prowess in a particular gymnastics exercise.
 
Both U.S. track and swimming should follow suit. Since only two swimmers can go to the Olympics in each event, perhaps only the trials winner should get one spot while the other might be based on performances across recent competitions. Similarly, perhaps the top two performers at the track and field trials should qualify, with the third spot going to a competitor who proved himself or herself over a specified time period.
 
It seems grossly unfair to me, a former track and swimming competitor, that a single contest on a particular day should destroy a career of top-tier excellence and Olympic aspiration.
 
Dick Hermann
July 2, 2021

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Author

    Richard Hermann is the author of thirteen books, including Encounters: Ten Appointments with History and, most recently, Mother's Century: A Survivor, Her People and Her Times. Soon to be released is his upcoming Close Encounters with the Cold War, a personal reflection on growing up in the nuclear age. He is a former law professor and entrepreneur, and the founder and president of Federal Reports, Inc., a legal information and consulting firm that was sold in 2007. He has degrees from Yale University, the New School University, Cornell Law School and the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s School. He lives with his wife, Anne, and extraordinary dog, Barkley, in Arlington, Virginia and Canandaigua, New York.

    Archives

    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed