Road to the Olympics: The new Athletics qualification system for Tokyo 2020 (Part 1)

Until Rio 2016, athletics qualification for the Olympics was largely based on entry standards. If an athlete could touch a certain mark even once during the qualification period (i.e., about one year before the Olympics for most events), he/she would qualify, subject to limitations on maximum number of athletes per country.

While there were a few changes from London to Rio, namely the abolishment of separate ‘A’ and ‘B’ standards, qualification still largely depended upon an athlete’s best performance, irrespective of his/her other performances. Even the IAAF World Rankings, used in Rio to fill up invitational places, simply listed athletes in order to their best results. The effect was that athletes used to look out for meets with favourable conditions, like high altitude and just enough tail winds (i.e., just under the limit beyond which results became inadmissible) in the hopes of putting in that personal best that would make them Olympians.

However, Tokyo 2020 will see some changes.

Entry standards still exist, but have been greatly toughened. For example, the Rio entry standard for Men’s 100m was 10.16 sec, which has been reduced to 10.05 sec for Tokyo. As a comparison, in 2018, 113 sprinters hit the mark of 10.16 sec but only 36 of them hit 10.05. After accounting for athletes that meet the entry standards, the remaining spots will now largely be filled by the newly launched IAAF World rankings, which take into account an athlete’s best reasonably recent results, as well as the level of the tournaments those results were achieved in.

Also Read: i) Road to the Olympics: Shooting Guidelines for Tokyo 2020 (Part I) ii) Road to the Olympics: Shooting Guidelines for Tokyo 2020 (Part II) iii) Road to the Olympics: Weightlifting Guidelines for Tokyo 2020

The changes, however, are still not as major as was once expected. Initially, IAAF had declared that entry standards would be set so high so as to only account for exceptional performances, with the bulk of Olympic qualifiers coming through the World Rankings. However, since then, the IAAF has set a target of having about 50% of the qualifiers come from entry standards, with the balance 50% coming from the World Rankings, and has set the entry standards accordingly.

K.T. Irfan has become the first Indian from athletics to qualify for Tokyo 2020. (Photo: The Hindu)

The Golden Rules

The below rules are golden rules and cannot be broken under any circumstances.

1. For every country, there can be a maximum of 3 athletes in each individual event and 1 team in each relay event.

2. There will be a total of 48 events at Tokyo. The below table shows the maximum number of athletes that can participate in each event.

Event	No. of Men	No. of Women
100m	56	56
200m	56	56
400m	48	48
800m	48	48
1500m	45	45
5000m	42	42
10,000m	27	27
110m Hurdles	40	-
100m Hurdles	-	40
400m Hurdles	40	40
3000m Steeplechase	45	45
4 x 100m Relay	16 teams	16 teams
4 x 400m Relay	16 teams	16 teams
4 x 400m Mixed Relay	16 mixed teams
High Jump	32	32
Pole Vault	32	32
Long Jump	32	32
Triple Jump	32	32
Shot Put	32	32
Discus Throw	32	32
Hammer Throw	32	32
Javelin Throw	32	32
Decathlon	24	-
Heptathlon	-	24
20km Race Walk	60	60
50km Race Walk	60	-
Marathon	80	80

Relay Qualification

Relay qualification is simple. For all the relays, the top 8 countries at the World Athletics Championships in September will qualify directly for Tokyo. The remaining 8 qualifying countries will be the ones registering the best times during the qualification period of 1 May 2019 to 29 June 2020.

Entry Standards

For all individual events, an athlete achieving the below mentioned entry standards in the qualification period will qualify directly for Tokyo 2020, provided the golden rules are not broken.

Event	Men	Women	Qualification Period
100m	10.05	11.15	1 May 2019 - 29 Jun 2020
200m	20.24	22.80
400m	44.90	51.35
800m	1:45.20	1:59.50
1500m	3:35.00	4:04.20
5000m	13:13.50	15:10.00
110m Hurdles	13.32	-
100m Hurdles	-	12.84
400m Hurdles	48.90	55.40
3000m Steeplechase	8:22.00	9:30.00
High Jump	2.33	1.96
Pole Vault	5.80	4.70
Long Jump	8.22	6.82
Triple Jump	17.14	14.32
Shot Put	21.10	18.50
Discus Throw	66.00	63.50
Hammer Throw	77.50	72.50
Javelin Throw	85.00	64.00
10,000m	27:28.00	31:25.00	1 Jan 2019 - 29 Jun 2020
Decathlon	8350	-
Heptathlon	-	6420
20km Race Walk	1:21:00	1:31:00
50km Race Walk	3:50:00	-	1 Jan 2019 - 31 May 2020
Marathon*	2:11:30	2:29:30

* For Marathon, achieving a top-10 finish at the 2019 World Championships, a top-5 finish at a Gold Label Marathon or a top 10 finish at the Marathon Major Series is also equivalent to achieving the entry standard, irrespective of the timing.

However, for certain events, namely the 100m, 200, 100m/110m hurdles, long jump and triple jump, wind-assisted performances are not accepted as entry standards. These events require the wind to be +2.0 m/s or below for the entry standard to be valid. Further, for the combined events, if the wind in one of the events exceeds +4 m/s AND the average wind across all events exceeds +2 m/s, then the entry standard is not accepted.

Indoor performances for all field events and races of 200m and longer are accepted as entry standards, even though they are treated a little differently to outdoor performances in the World Rankings.

It can be also seen from the above table that since the qualification period is yet to begin for most events, entry standards cannot be achieved at the upcoming Doha Asian Championships, except for the 10000m men’s and women’s events where the qualification period began in January.

World Ranking

Once the athletes qualified by attaining the entry standards are accounted for, the balance spots in each event will be filled up on the basis of the World Rankings at the end of the qualification period(and a few universality quotas).However, the total number of athletes that will be traveling to Tokyo is set at 1900, whichmeans that a few events may see lesser number of athletes than the number stated in the golden rules.

World Rankings are maintained for every individual event. In addition, there is an Overall World Ranking which allows us to compare athletes across events. However, only the event-specific rankings matter as far as Olympic qualification is concerned. There are no world rankings for relays.

In a nutshell, World Rankings are composed of an athlete’s best 2 to 5 performances during the last 12 to 18 months (depending on the event- for most events, it is best 5 performances during the last 12 months). Points are earned for the actual result, as well as the placing, with placing points being dependant on the category of the competition.

An interesting aspect to note is that for the purpose of World Rankings, the Area Championships (or Continental Championships) seem to have been given an inflated status. First of all, the results achieved in the last Area Championships can be included for the World Rankings irrespective of when they took place. So, results achieved at the upcoming Doha Asian Championship in all events maybe a part of an athlete’s World Ranking score which will eventually decide Olympic Qualification despite the fact that the championship is taking place over 14 months before the World Ranking cut-off date for Olympic Qualification.

Secondly, for most events, results older than 9 months from the World Rankings date start to lose some points. However, the Area Championships are exempt from even this rule no matter how old the results are.

And lastly, the Area Championships have been given a higher-than-expected category to begin with. For example, the Asian Championships have been placed in the same category as the more competitive European or African Championships. Further, they are even placed one category higher than the Commonwealth Games and the Asian Games.

This inflated status of the Asian Championships means that valuable World Ranking points can be obtained that would be difficult to obtain in any other competition. As an example, Neeraj Chopra’s Gold-winning but modest 85.23m throw in the 2017 Bhubaneshwar Asian Championships earned him almost the same number of World Ranking points as the much superior 88.06m Gold-winning throw at the Jakarta Asian Games! This is because winning Gold in the “more prestigious” Asian Championship made up for the fact that the actual winning throw was much shorter.

Tejaswin Shankar will miss out on competing at the Asian Athletics Championships.

Hence, it is extremely unfortunate that talented athletes like Tejaswin Shankar (High Jump)and M Sreeshankar (Long Jump) have not been selected in the Doha-bound team by the AFI. Both these athletes are on the border-line of being able to achieve the entry standards, with Tejaswin having a PB of 2.29m (as opposed to an entry standard of 2.33) and Sreeshankar having a PB of 8.20m (as opposed to an entry standard of 8.22). Thus, in case they fail to achieve the requisite entry standard, the points earned in Doha could have gone a long way in helping them qualify for Tokyo. On the other hand, missing Doha due to injury should not have any adverse effect on Neeraj Chopra’s qualification chances as he would be expected to achieve the Javelin entry standard of 85m with relative ease.

Universality Places

Finally, countries which fail to qualify at least 1 male and 1 female for Tokyo may enter their best ranked unqualified athlete of the appropriate gender in one event except the combined events, 3000m steeplechase and 10000m. However, the final decision of accepting such entries will rest with the IAAF. While this rule may not directly affect India, it will affect the number of slots available in each event to be filled from World Rankings.

(Part II of this series will look at the World Rankings system in extensive detail.)