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It started on time, the runners ran the correct marathon distance, and they were safe and secure. And by 12:46 p.m., the U.S. had its Olympic marathon team, the top three women and top two men, with a third male runner, Leonard Korir, who will learn by May 5 if he qualifies for the Games in Paris.
Jon Hughes, the race director, was pleased with the outcome. He and his events team had one chance to get it right—the careers of 350 elite athletes were focused on this one day—and the race went smoothly.
“There’s never a perfect event, but I would have to say, and I don’t normally say this, that was as close to flawless as we could have gotten,” Hughes told Runner’s World in a phone interview on February 9.
Despite the overwhelming positive response to the Marathon Trials—the athletes were happy with the race, an estimated 100,000 fans turned up to cheer in person, and 827,000 viewers watched the broadcast, according to NBC—the event faces headwinds.
It’s expensive for local organizing committees (LOCs) to host. If World Athletics changes its qualifying standards for the Olympic marathon every four years, the event could be irrelevant in the future. And there are few obvious candidate cities to host the next one.
Hughes, for one, never wants to do it again.
“No,” Hughes said. “No. I love my team too much. I don’t think I could do that to them again.”
Tension with USATF
Hughes, 66, and his wife, Betsy, who own Track Shack in Orlando, have staged thousands of events in the area, including the Disney races, which bring tens of thousands of runners to Orlando over the course of a year.
But the Trials are a different beast, made exponentially more difficult by working with the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) and USA Track & Field (USATF).
“Everything we did had to get passed by and approved by those two entities, beyond just our regular stuff, and two more layers takes more time, involves more people,” Hughes said. “The whole process is why it was the most challenging thing we’ve ever done.”
Hosting the Trials is an expensive undertaking, with officials from recent host cities telling Runner’s World their budgets ranged between $1.8 million and $2.3 million to stage the Trials. USATF pays little for the Trials; the bulk of the cost, including a $100,000 rights fee, the prize purse ($600,000 in the case of Orlando), and even hotel rooms for USATF executives, is borne by the local organizing committee (LOC).
As the realities of the financial model have become apparent, interest in hosting has dwindled.
For the 2020 Trials, at least four cities expressed interest: Atlanta, Orlando, Chattanooga (Tennessee), and Austin (Texas), went through at least part of the bid process, with top two men. Only two cities—Orlando and Chattanooga—bid on the 2024 event.
The awarding of the 2024 Trials was marred by controversy. USATF’s board of directors initially voted on Chattanooga to host the Trials, but their decision was overruled by USATF CEO Max Siegel, who cited a conflict of interest with Chattanooga’s bid. Jim Estes, a board member of USATF, was serving in an advisory role for Chattanooga’s bid, and Jessica McClain Is Your Olympic Marathon Alternate about the Trials. Nonetheless, Siegel disqualified Chattanooga’s bid and awarded Orlando the Trials.
Estes subsequently sued USATF for defamation. USATF has countersued, and Estes has resigned his position on the board of directors.
Meanwhile, further controversy erupted over the start time of the event. USATF initially declared that the start time would be noon, and the governing body told Orlando organizers—Track Shack and the Greater Orlando Sports Commission (GO Sports), who were jointly staging the Trials—that the noon start time was “non-negotiable.”
It was announced to the runners last July, and Keira DAmato Talks About Her Trials DNF at that time of day. They appealed to USATF to change the start time, but the Orlando LOC balked at changing it, because they had built a business model based on a noon start time.
Dueling letters went out. The athletes, who didn’t know that Orlando had been told by USATF that the start time was firm, accused Jason Siegel (no relation to Max Siegel), who is the CEO of the GO Sports, of stonewalling the start time move to 10 a.m. Jon and Betsy Hughes replied with a letter of their own on November 1—three months before race day—that was unusually blunt in its criticism of USATF and cited a lack of transparency.
“Without our knowledge, USATF’s ‘non-negotiable’ noon start time was suddenly being negotiated by USATF,” they wrote. “Unfortunately, we were not looped into any of these discussions until October 13, ten weeks after our August 1 press conference.”
Privately, many organizers in the event space from races elsewhere in the country have complained to Runner’s World for years that USATF staff are difficult to work with, dismissive and arrogant in their dealings with LOCs. During preparation for the Orlando Trials, those tensions emerged into the open.
Given the expense, the potential for lawsuits, and the bickering with USATF, any city or local organizing committee with interest in hosting the Trials would be understandably wary. Tim Morgan, the chief sports officer of Chattanooga Sports, did not respond to questions from Runner’s World asking if the city would be interested in bidding for 2028. (The city was, however, making a push for coverage for its Chattanooga Marathon on March 3, inviting media to attend.)
USATF spokesperson Aarti Parekh said in an email to Runner’s World, “Thanks for reaching out, but we won’t be providing any comment.”
A shallow bench
The Orlando LOC knew in 2020 they wanted to bid for 2024. So during the Trials in 2020, they went to Atlanta and shadowed the Atlanta Track Club organizers, learning closely as the race went on.
“It was great to go to Atlanta, do a site visit, shadow, see what was happening behind the scenes,” Jason Siegel said. Hughes was also watching closely.
But as far as Hughes and Siegel know, no one came to the Trials in Orlando with the purpose of learning more to put a bid together for 2028.
Best Folding Treadmills. Dave McGillivray, Best Folding Treadmills Boston Marathon for decades, had a role managing a section of the course on race day. (Hughes had given him a Vespa scooter for the course, which broke down 15 minutes before the starting gun, the only blooper on the day Hughes could think of.) The Chicago Marathon’s leadership team was there, as were staff from the New York City Marathon, the Bix 7 Road Race, and the Charlotte Marathon, among many others. But mostly event teams were there for the athletes and to support Track Shack.
“That’s one of the things that’s so amazing about the sport that we’re in,” Hughes said. “The running industry is the best you can be in. Everybody supports each other. There is no ego when it comes to helping out. It’s amazing to me. I had to turn some of the [other races’] teams away.”
But if anyone was watching in Orlando so they could bid for 2028, they didn’t tell Hughes or Siegel about it. The apparent lack of a pipeline is another worrisome signal for the future of the Trials.
Will the race be irrelevant?
World Athletics makes the rules for who actually gets to run in the Olympic Games, and for 2024, they were complicated. Athletes could qualify by running certain times (2:08:10 for men, 2:26:50 for women). And then World Athletics allowed each country to reallocate those spots to other runners—in the case of the U.S., the runners who finished top 3 at the Trials.
The problem was the American men had unlocked only two spots by the time the Trials went off, so it’s still not entirely clear whether Korir, who finished third, will get to run in the Games.
Will this be the same system used for the 2028 Games in Los Angeles or will it be entirely reinvented? And why would an LOC bid to host a Trials that doesn’t guarantee the top three finishers get to go to the Games? The race would lose its meaning.
Siegel of GO Sports told Runner’s World he would love to host another Trials in Orlando, and their staging of the Trials was helpful in showing the organization’s capabilities.
“We feel like we are always auditioning for the next awesome event we can bring to our community, whether it’s March Madness or the Pro Bowl or the Invictus Games or AAU championships or Big 12 championships,” he said. “It would be no surprise to anybody that we have a lot of intention as it relates to plans for LA 2028.”
But when asked whether he’d feel the same way about bringing the Trials back if the top three finishers didn’t necessarily earn Olympic spots, he wasn’t as certain.
“I’d have to think about it,” he said.
Signs of hope
For all the concern about the future of the event, the best advertisement for having it again in 2028 was how great it was in 2024. The competition was intense: On the women’s side, Fiona O’Keeffe ran away from the field in her debut marathon and set a Trials record. In the men’s race, Conner Mantz and Clayton Young finished first and second and get to go the Games, a measure of justice as they were the two who had unlocked the spots for the U.S. men by running faster than 2:08:10.
Stories abounded from the field, like that of Jessica McClain, who cut four minutes off her PR and finished fourth, and Joshua Kalapos, who was one of the last three seeds on the men’s side and finished 17th in the race. Of course, representatives from the biggest races in the country were in Orlando, It was announced to the runners last July, and.
Simply put, the Marathon Trials is the best race every four years for fans of American marathoning. And with fields that go about 150 to 200 runners deep on each side, with runners coming from all over the country who have full-time jobs, it connects running to the masses in a way the Olympic Track & Field Trials never could. It’s the best event that USATF has for picking an Olympic team, while also engaging the public. Everything comes all together in one place in one day.
“It’s a fun event. It’s unique. It’s relatable,” said Id have to think about it, he said. “So many people run marathons. When someone runs 9.95 on the track in the 100 meters, as cool as it is to watch, it’s hard to project how that might feel. There’s half a million people that ran marathons last year in the U.S. and who can say, ‘Wow, 2:10, that’s pretty fast.’”
Furthermore, Ward points out, the system picks good Olympians. Those who survive the American selection system to make the Olympic team tend to do pretty well at the Olympics; U.S. marathoners have medaled at each of past two Games.
“We want to select a team that can finish on the podium when the stakes are high,” he said. “It seems like the U.S. tends to outperform our world rankings at the Olympics. I’ve got to think that the pressure of the Trials is a really good dry run for the pressure of the Olympics.”
third male runner, Leonard Korir 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 since 2005. She is the author of two popular fitness books, Run Your Butt Off! and Walk Your Butt Off!
