The Olympic qualification race (Part I)

How tough are the entry standards in athletics for the Rio Olympics? Apart from the 18 athletes who had achieved the standards up to the end of the South Asian Games how many other Indians could reasonably be expected to at least aim for these standards?

Less than six months remain for the Olympics and less than five months for the athletes to achieve the standards.

As had been the pattern in the past, with a large majority of the athletes the target has remained “qualification for the Olympics”. You can’t blame them of course. When the standards themselves are so high as to make most of them beyond the reach of lesser-rated athletes at the international level, qualification alone would look and feel a “great achievement”. The fans are also happy if an athlete whom he or she follows makes the grade. The federation will of course be elated if the numbers get swelled.

No one is interested in looking into whether targets, set at the beginning of a season, or under a long-term development plan, were achieved at the end of a particular year. Camps, camps and more camps are held as though these camps would produce the miracle that Indian athletics is looking for.

Two finalists in 2012

To be fair to the Athletics Federation of India (AFI), the Sports Authority of India (SAI), the athletes and the coaches, it must be admitted that the last Olympics produced one of the best results for Indian athletics in a long time when one considered the two final places for our athletes. Vikas Gowda (8th) and Krishna Poonia (7th) made the discus finals, K. T. Irfan took a gallant 10th place in 20km walk and Tintu Luka made the semifinals in the 800 metres.

Unfortunately, there was hardly any analysis of the performance of the rest of the 14-member squad many of whom fared disappointingly.  Discus thrower Seema Antil was close to making the final, though. That squad contained four walkers plus one male marathoner while this time we already have seven walkers including two women and six marathoners including three women who have made the cut-off.

(At the time of writing four more male walkers had reportedly made the ‘cut’ in 20km event through their performance at the National racewalking championship at Jaipur, but one would wait for confirmation about the status of the event before confirming their qualification. At the time of writing the IAAF had not listed the Indian National championships among the approved walk events in 2016 that would allow qualifiers to be eligible for Olympics. It might have been because of a delay in communication or else there actually was no prior approval. One needs to check this out further.)

That leaves just five others, shot putter Inderjeet Singh and discus thrower Vikas Gowda among men, and Tintu Luka, steeplechaser Lalita Babar and shot putter Manpreet Kaur (Sr.) among women to have obtained the norms for Rio.

Athletics is one sports discipline in the Olympics where they don’t ask you to go through a set of qualifying events or earn quota places or clock standards in pre-designated or pre-approved meets (except road events). In relays teams would be eligible based on their placings in the World Relays (up to top 8) plus rankings based on two best timings for the next eight.

Tougher standards

Otherwise an athlete can achieve a standard in any national or international event where the IAAF rules are in place and competent technical officials are around to make sure that everything is according to rules.

This time, though, the standards have become tougher than before. The IAAF has done away with the practice of ‘A’ and ‘B’ standard. There is just one standard now. It is stiffer than what used to be the ‘B’ standard where a country could field one athlete in an event with ‘A’ standard allowing up to three.

This is why the Indian athletes are seemingly struggling to attain these standards which could have been achieved from May 1 last year and can be achieved up to July 11 this year. For 10,000m, marathon, race walk and combined events the qualification period started from January 1, 2015.

The IAAF has fixed certain target numbers for each event and accordingly fixed the standards. If the slots are not filled athletes could be invited to fill up places according to a ranking list, irrespective of having achieved the standards.

(Contd. Part II)