Last year, in a controversial move, the IAAF announced that it was doing away with qualifying standards and was instead developing a world ranking system to be used for determining entries into the World Championships and Olympics moving forward. It was met with a vast amount of criticism, for a number of reasons (which were pretty much all valid).
As a result, the IAAF backtracked and announced that they would still begin the world ranking system this year, but only so that athletes can get used to the system and see how it works. It won't be used for World Championships qualifying, which will be done the old way with qualifying standards in each event. Although, they're evidently planning on the world rankings being a full-go by 2020...and that's what they'll use as the sole means of Olympic qualifying (there will still be qualifying standards, but they'll be so high only the top handful of athletes will reach them).
They recently released a world ranking simulation based on last year's results. They did this to help people understand the system while also showing an example of how it'll work. And, I've gotta say, after checking out the sample 2018 rankings, those concerns/criticisms from the athletes certainly seem justified. It provides some clarity about the process, but there are still plenty of questions that need to be answered.
For starters, there is an inherent flaw in the system. The IAAF has said that the whole point of the world rankings is to encourage top athletes to participate in the top competitions, with the bigger meets worth more points (just like in tennis, where the Grand Slams are worth more). However, Diamond League meets are invitation-only, which gives an inherent advantage to the biggest names. And, at the same time, it indirectly penalizes those athletes that have to compete at lesser meets because they aren't "good" enough for the Diamond League.
The rankings are designed to reward consistency, with athletes needing to compete in five meets in order to get a score (less in the longer events). However, that doesn't guarantee they'll go head-to-head, which was also one of their desired objectives. It also means that since a Diamond League discipline will be contested at least five times, the top athletes theoretically don't have to compete in any non-Diamond League meets and it will have no impact on their ranking. Which completely defeats the purpose if the point was to get them to compete more.
Performances also seem to have no bearing on the rankings. Instead, they appear to be based strictly on results. More specifically, head-to-head placements. But what if an athlete sets a world/area/national record? That performance should be rewarded. Even if it's with bonus points. Setting a record is incredibly difficult. It shouldn't be irrelevant when it comes to world rankings.
And, frankly, what was the problem with the old method of going by the yearly performance list? Yes, the idea of rewarding consistency over a single good performance in April is a good one. But people are going to understand a descending-order performance list a hell of a lot more easily than a complicated point system.
I'll use the women's 800 as an example since the 2:00 threshold is a simple one. There were 27 women who ran faster than 2:00 in 2018 (and a handful who just missed). So, it's a lot easier for all involved to set a qualifying standard of 2:00, then go to the descending order list after that to fill the field (in the 800, that's 48).
Which brings me to my next point. The world rankings identify the top athletes in each event, and they go down that list until they hit their target number for the World Championships/Olympics. However, since countries are limited to three entries per event, they sometimes have to go pretty far down in order to get to that number. In the men's 5000, for example, seven of the first 11 are Ethiopian, so they have to go to No. 63 before getting a full field of 42.
That's not where I have a problem, though. My problem, rather, is those four Ethiopians in the top 11 who could be World medalists, but would have no shot at even going if selections were based strictly on rankings.
Or, take the United States. There are a whole lot more than three Americans who'd make the cut in pretty much every event. Going back as long as anyone can remember, the top three finishers at U.S. Nationals make the team for World/the Olympics. I don't think anyone involved with USATF has any desire to change that system. My guess is they'd figure out some way to do it where the top three go as long as they're above the cut-line, but that will need to be clearly spelled out. Especially in the super deep events like the men's 100 or women's 400 hurdles.
There's also no provision for athletes returning from an absence, whether it be for injury or another reason. Allyson Felix and Veronica Campbell-Brown just had babies, so they obviously didn't run in 2018. Likewise, David Rudisha has been injured for about two years and Wayde Van Niekerk's 2018 was cut short by injury. Four Olympic gold medalists, none of whom have any performances to base a world ranking on. All four of them can obviously get into Diamond Leagues, but how do you determine their status for other meets if you're using their non-existent world rankings instead of their performances?
On the surface, the idea of world rankings isn't a terrible one. But the process by which the IAAF plans to determine them definitely has its flaws. For starters, it doesn't say anywhere on the IAAF website how many points an athlete gets for winning an event at a given meet. All it says is that the "Performance Score=Result Score + Placing Score." What any of that means is anybody's guess.
In order to get people on board with the process, it needs to be more transparent. We need to know what the rankings mean and how they're calculated. And they shouldn't be used as the only qualifying system for major events, either. I have no problem with using them as a supplemental qualifying system, but they can't just eliminate the old method altogether. An athlete should be able to know that reaching a certain standard (or, for Americans, getting the job done on the day, when it counts) is good enough to get them into the World Championships or Olympics, regardless of their world ranking.
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