inside looking out

In my (and most others) opinion our athletes should get until July 23rd (the IAAF deadline) to achieve Olympic qualifying standards. Now that I’m done trying to race this summer I can complain without looking like I’m whining about my own situation.  I know it can be pointed out that the July 6th deadline was published months ago and now is not the time to complain.  As an athlete I know that you plan on getting the standard well in advance but, unfortunately stuff happens and things don’t always work out as planned.  You never want to think that you’ll be scraping for standards late in the season.  For me I’ve run my fastest 5000m times in July and often at Heusden, which falls this year on July 20th.  There are a handful of athletes who will be able to achieve Olympic standards in the next two and half weeks although they may not get them this weekend in a championship race.

Here is a little excerpt from this article.  I really like this quote because Gary has already satisfied AC’s time standards for Beijing but he still is willing to let everyone know that the early deadline is not good for our athletes…

While Athletics Canada names its team Monday, other countries wait until the July 23 International Olympic Committee deadline.

Reed’s opinion is: why not wait?

“The whole thing is, when you set forth the criteria, my opinion is the criteria should allow for the maximum allowable time to make the team, but they chose not to and that is their decision,” Reed said. “But I think the more people we can get there, the better shot we have at medals.”

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