Track Repechages In Paris

Believe it or not, the Paris Olympics are just two years away.  As a part of the two-years-to-go celebration, they unveiled the entire Olympic competition schedule.  More on that tomorrow, but there's one particular aspect of that schedule that I want to touch on now.  The introduction of a repechage round to track & field.

This news first came out on Monday as the World Championships were ending.  The repechage rounds will be added to the track & field program in all events from 200-1500 meters, including the hurdles.  There's already a preliminary round in the 100, so there won't be repechages in that event.

So, in the events with repechages, there will now be four rounds instead of three.  The automatic qualifiers out of the first round will only have to run three rounds, though.  They'll advance directly to the semifinals.  Everyone else, meanwhile, will have to run the extra race.  Which obviously puts a huge emphasis on being an automatic qualifier.  Which may be the point.

To make room for the repechage round, they've gotten rid of the time qualifier, aka the "small q," which would round out the field after the automatic qualifiers.  It varied by event and the number of heats, but there were typically anywhere between three and six athletes who advanced on time, which gave those athletes a safety net if they were in a tough heat and didn't get an automatic spot, but still posted a good time. 

The time qualifier is actually important, too, since there's inevitably that one heat that's much stronger than the others, meaning someone who otherwise would can't automatically advance out of it.  At least with the "small q" in play, they know that a good time should be enough to get to the next round.  It's a sort of fail safe.

When I first heard about the repechage round, I actually thought it, too, could be a sort of fail safe.  I look at Nia Ali and Daniel Roberts, who both fell in the first round of their respective hurdle events at Worlds.  Both were potential medalists, but both were eliminated because of their fall.  With the repechage, the fall wouldn't mean the end, though.  They'd get another opportunity to advance.

While new to track & field, the idea of a repechage isn't a novel concept.  Every combat sport except boxing has the repechage tournament that gives everyone who lost to the two finalists a second chance to compete for the bronze medal.  The survivors of the tournament face the semifinalist from the other side of the bracket for one of two bronze medals.  (I still have no idea why they give out two bronze medals in the combat sports or why they have two bronze medal matches...why not just have those two winners fight each other for one bronze, like in every other sport?)

Of course, the difference with track & field is that the athletes who come out of the repechage will still have the chance to win gold.  So, it's really more like rowing, which has the opening heats, then repechages, semifinals and finals.  In rowing, the heat winner moves directly into the semifinal, while everyone else goes to the repechage for the remaining semifinal berths.  That's the format track & field will use.

I can actually see the benefits of the format.  It gives TV and fans another round to watch and, theoretically, makes the first round more competitive since everyone will be gunning for the "big Q" to avoid the repechage.  No time qualifiers also makes it a lot more straightfoward and, thus, easier to follow (no trying to remember what the bubble time is).  It also takes away the advantage those in later heats have by knowing what time they need. 

Most importantly, it guarantees everybody at least two races.  You put in all that work to get to the Olympics, which only happen once every four (or five...or three) years, and, in many cases, it can be over in an instant.  With the addition of the repechage round, a men's 200-meter runner's Olympic racing experience doubles from 20 seconds to 40.

However, there's one group that isn't too keen on the idea of repechages, and it's a pretty important one.  The athletes.  This article from Athletics Weekly, a British publication, found some of the critical tweets from athletes and conveniently put them all in one place.  And, I must admit, all of the points they made are valid!  They had one common argument, and it's a pretty good one: the athletes who have to run the repechage will be at a tremendous disadvantage in the later rounds!

At the end of the article, they suggest that all this negative feedback may force World Athletics to reconsider the idea of repechages.  That, however, seems unlikely.  Once World Athletics finds an idea it likes, it sticks with it, what everyone else thinks be damned!  (Yes, I'm talking about the convoluted world rankings here.)

Besides, the aforementioned Paris 2024 competition schedule already has the repechage rounds listed, so the planning for this has obviously been going on for quite some time.  Now, that Olympic competition schedule is nowhere near final and subject to change, so it's still possible that they could eliminate the repechage rounds and adjust accordingly.  But, again, that doesn't seem likely.

What I'm curious about is what the ultimate solution will be.  World Athletics claims that athletes were consulted in the decision-making process, but who knows if that's actually true or not?  Will they listen to the athletes' concerns and make changes to the qualifying system?  And, if so, what will those changes be?  One thing seems for sure, though, whether the athletes like it or not, the "small q" is out and the repechage is in for Paris 2024.