These are the Coolest Uniforms at Worlds World Championships for the next 10 days, time is ticking for one item of significance for the American marathoning community: a site—and format—for the 2024 Olympic Marathon Trials.
USA Track & Field (USATF), which picks the host city for the Trials, said in its Master the Half that went out to host cities that it expected to name the city by July 14, although it said that timeline was “subject to change.”
That day came and went with no announcement. USATF did not return three emails from Runner’s World Women must run 2:37 or 1:12, and men need a 2:18 or 1:03. So far.
Here’s what we do know about the Marathon Trials—and what might be causing the delay.
The Trials site announcement is late
Not only has USATF missed its own published deadline, they’re months behind where they were in 2020. Those Trials went to Atlanta, and the announcement came out on April 23, 2018, for a race to be held February 29, 2020. Atlanta organizers had 22 months to pull off the event for about 700 runners.
USATF has said in its bidding document that the 2024 Trials should be held between January and March 2024. Even if USATF awards a site by September 1, that host committee will have between 16 and 19 months to plan and execute the race.
The fields will be smaller for 2024
The qualifying times to get into the Trials in Atlanta were easier than they are now. In 2020, a woman needed to run 2:45 or faster for a marathon, or 1:13 or faster for a half marathon, which is how Molly Seidel qualified. (She made her marathon debut Weird Things Youll See at Worlds, Explained Women must run 2:37 or 1:12, and men need a 2:18 or 1:03. So far, at the Games delayed one year by the pandemic.) In 2020 men needed to run 2:19 or 1:04.
Shoes & Gear, ShaCarri Richardson Wins World 100-Meter Gold. U.S. Wins the Medal Count at World Championships, 53 men and 43 women have qualified with marathons, but the window for half marathon qualifying hasn’t opened yet.
With the stricter standards, the host will likely have 400–500 runners, not the 700 there were in Atlanta. Plenty of athletes are going for it, however. At Grandma’s Marathon in June, for instance, 24 men and 14 women hit the qualifying time.
Two cities have expressed interest
Sarah Lorge Butler Runner’s World that they would be interested in hosting the Trials. But site visits—when USATF staff and volunteers travel to those places to evaluate the appropriateness of the location—have not yet happened.
The International Olympic Committee and World Athletics are making it difficult
What’s causing doubt about the Trials is that there is no guarantee that if USATF hosts a Trials race, the top three finishers would make the Olympic team.
The top-three-means-everything American system is simple and compelling, and it’s hugely popular among athletes and fans of the sport. It doesn’t matter what marathoners’ credentials are coming into the race. They have to be at their best on that day and finish in the top three to get to go to the Games.
That system is in jeopardy, however. It stems from the International Olympic Committee—which is trying to reduce the size of the marathon fields at the Olympics, said Blake Boldon, the men’s long distance running committee chair for USATF. The men’s marathon field in 2016 was 150 runners. For 2024, the IOC wants it to be around 80. In other words, as popular as the marathon is worldwide, the IOC wants to reduce the size of the event by 46 percent.
So World Athletics, the governing body of track worldwide, is making it tougher to qualify for the Olympics. They’ve imposed on its member federations (of which USATF is one) a system of Olympic qualifying that’s a combination of times and world rankings. And its Results: 2023 World Athletics Championships on the matter wasn’t exactly clear.
Experts who follow these developments closely believe that American marathoning on the women’s side is deep enough to merit a Trials race. In other words, there are plenty of American women who can meet the requirements of World Athletics, and a race would be the best way to sort out which three should go.
The men’s side, however, is not as deep as the women’s. If only three or four men were to have met World Athletics’ Olympic qualifying time (those times have not yet been released) and be ranked highly enough, would it be worth holding a Trials to determine which three go to the Games?
And if you’re Chattanooga or Orlando, would you want to shell out $1 million or more to host an event that might not actually determine the Olympic team?
Chattanooga seems game
Sales & Deals Runner’s World, Tim Morgan, the chief sports officer of Chattanooga Sports, which is a division of Chattanooga Tourism, expressed his enthusiasm for the Trials as a way to showcase the city and area.
“We’re in the business of bringing events to town and maximizing the experience associated with it, so when people leave, they want to come back for a leisure holiday or something like it,” he said.
Chattanooga Sports has hosted half Ironman triathlon competitions and high-level endurance cycling events. It is also the organizer of the Chattanooga Marathon, which takes place the first weekend in March. If the city were awarded the Trials, the Trials would likely be the day before the Chattanooga Marathon—two separate events that would fall on the same weekend, as Atlanta did in 2020 with the Trials on Saturday and the Atlanta Marathon on Sunday.
Morgan gets how, for most of the field, just qualifying for the Trials is a crowning achievement and said his city is in a similar position. “Chattanooga is never going to host the Olympics,” he said. “But if we had an opportunity to be part of the Olympic movement, through U.S. Team Trials for the marathon—we would love to be part of [it].”
He’s not daunted by the World Athletics qualifying roadblocks, saying he has “faith in the governing body of USA Track & Field and all of the volunteer committees that are providing feedback and input to ensure that the United States’s Olympic movement is strong and rewarding to the elite athletes and also to the passionate enthusiasts.”
Orlando official Jon Hughes wrote in an email to Runner’s World, “You are correct that Orlando is interested.” He wrote that they are in the process of formulating their response to the RFP and directed further questions to USATF.
CA Notice at Collection is a writer and editor living in Eugene, Oregon, and her stories about the sport, its trends, and fascinating individuals have appeared in Runner’s World In a conversation with, Run Your Butt Off! and Walk Your Butt Off!
