Not all the windows are closed; but snooze now and one may slam shut very abruptly

For the first time since 1 December, 2020, the day that the qualification window for the Tokyo 2020 re-opened, athletes are not currently trying to qualify for an Olympic Games or World Championships. The window for Paris closed on 30 June, and with next summer’s World Athletics Championships scheduled to start on 13 September 2025, as far as everyone is aware, there is to Road to [Global Championship] window open.

A brief respite from ranking points.

Or so you’d think.

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The European Indoor Championships will be held in Apeldoorn, Netherlands, for 6-9 March next year. The qualification window opened earlier this year. Some athletes – including Ireland’s Rhasidat Adeleke, Ciara Mageean, Sarah Healy, Brian Fay and Sarah Lavin - have already qualified having surpassed the relevant entry standards this year. Others will qualify by achieving the entry standard outdoors later this season or indoors in early 2025. 

However, as both the World and European governing bodies for the sport are still determined that half the field come from rankings, a not-insignificant number of people will have a much more convoluted journey to the Dutch city.

Now is possibly the most important time for them to be competing.

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European Indoor Championships are often a target for athletes on the margins of international representation. The event has traditionally been an ideal first taste of competing at an international championship.

But things not near as straightforward as they used to be.

And getting there (or not) will teach an athlete some hard lessons on the flaws of the world ranking system.

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If you’re hoping to race the 3000m in Apeldoorn, and you don’t reach the automatic standard of 7:43 indoors (or 7:36 outdoors) for men or 8:48 (8:39) for women, then you better have run at least two decent outdoor 5000m races during the qualification period.

Qualification by ranking for championships, even indoors, is based on the World Rankings, which are designed for outdoor events. Indoor competitions can count, but are valued less. And their contribution is limited, depending on the event.

Qualification for 3000m indoors is based on 5000m rankings, so at least two of the three performances that count towards an athlete’s final ranking must be outdoor 5000m races. Multievent athletes who wish to qualify by ranking must have at least one score from an outdoor decathlon (men) or heptathlon (women). 

400m hurdlers who race 400m indoors (what else are they going to be doing over the winter?), must count at least three outdoor 400m races among their five scoring events; 60m sprinters and sprinter hurdlers will need at least three performances from the longer outdoor equivalent of their event.

For 400m, 800m and 1500m athletes who’ve been injured all this season, the task is near impossible: their score too will need to include three outdoor performances, no matter how often they race indoors in January and February 2025, how many World Indoor Tour events they win or how close they get to the standard (unless, of course, they surpass it).

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For once, field eventers aren’t being screwed. Because World Athletics no longer distinguishes between indoor and outdoor performances in throws and jumps, rankings for athletes in these events can include any combination of indoor and outdoor performances.

For the rest, it’s a minefield.

There is no sitting back and kicking in this game. If you’re not with the leaders now, someone who raced smarter will take your place.

The square peg has evolved: qualification by world ranking mutated to farce

The qualification window for the European Indoor Athletics championships closes at midnight next Sunday, 19th February. The coming week provides the final few opportunities for athletes to gain qualification.

But for some it’s already too late.

For many, the best time to qualify was last summer! And many needed to race distances that they don’t plan to race in Istanbul.

Welcome to the world of qualification by rankings!

It is rocket science

It is anticipated/hoped/feared [delete as appropriate] that approximately half the fields for Istanbul will be filled with athletes who’ve achieved the qualification standard indoors at any time over the past year, or an even more stretching standard outdoors in the same time period.

The remainder of the spots will be filled by world ranking, a system which was not designed with indoor performance in mind. 

Qualification for any championships these days is far more complicated than it needs to be. Qualification for Euro Indoors this time round, even more so.

So let me explain it in simple terms: someone at European Athletics (and/or higher up the athletics food chain) has fecked up!

Major championship qualifying explained

*Takes a deep breath*

World Athletics introduced world rankings as a way to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics. Their target when setting the standards was for 50% of the field to come from qualification standards, the other 50% to come from world rankings. There was a target number of places for each discipline, so places were allocated to those who had Auto Qs first, and then the quota was filled with the next best ranked athletes.

There was much shock at the initial standards for Tokyo, until athletes realised they could qualify with lesser standards through rankings. And as it happens, shoe technology meant that in some events (especially the longer distances), the original standards weren’t quite as eye-watering as they first appeared, and some quotas were met with auto standards alone. The head scratching over rankings, however, continues.

The 50% thing is still the ambition, and so the standards for the world championships later this summer, and Paris next year, are even stiffer than the carbon-fibre plates that’ll be needed to achieve them. 

European Athletics have followed suit, and used rankings to fill approximately 50% of the fields for last summer’s championships in Munich. And now – horror of all horrors – they’re using them for the European Indoors in Istanbul next month.

World ranking points are gained through a combination of the performance time or distance, the placing in the competition, and the level of the competition, with major championships, and top-level circuit competitions earning more points. Points from and athlete’s best five (field events, and distances up to and including 1500m), three (steeplechase and 5000m, 20km walk), or two (multievents, marathon, long walk) events are averaged to give a ranking score for that individual. 

The rankings aimed to be all encompassing, and so athletes can include up to 1 or 2 non-standard event scores in their ranking. A 100m ranking can include two indoor 60 metre performances, a 3000m steeplechase can include one 2000m steeplechase time, and a heptathlon ranking can include a pentathlon result.

Still with me?

There are numerous issues with the rankings. But there’s one major, over-riding issue with using rankings for indoor competitions that should be causing some blushes right now. You cannot qualify for an indoor championships through the ranking system using indoor performances alone. 

And thus, 60m hurdles hopefuls needed some fast races over 100m or 110m hurdles last summer; heptathletes and pentathletes needed a decent decathlon or heptathlon score, and 3000m runners need at least two 5000m times to their name.

Anyone who missed last summer – through injury, illness, maternity leave, or otherwise – needs to get the rather stretching automatic standard in their respective event – or they have no chance of making it at all. 

But shouldn’t athletes just be aiming for the automatic qualification standard anyway?

That’s a take. But a pretty flawed one.

The powers that be seem pretty set on the 50% thing, so if through some magic bean (or shoe) approach athletes all achieve auto standards, then the standards will just get tougher for the next time. 

Yes, automatic standards, in many cases, are a formality for medal hopefuls, but championships are championships because they contain more than just the medal hopefuls. 

And athletics is so dependent on rounds that they’ve added in a whole extra pointless round of them for the next Olympics. They need more than just the potential medal winners to make an event.

And if we’re talking about raising the standards, the rankings are doing the opposite.

Take the women’s 3000m – a distance, by the way, that medal hopeful Ciara Mageean has not yet qualified for, and if she doesn’t run 8.48.00 or faster at the Irish Indoor Championships next weekend, where she’s unlikely to have any assistance in doing so, she won’t, but I digress. Take the 3000m. The standard two years ago was 9:10.00. The standard this time around is 8:48.00. That’s a 22 second difference. Shoe technology has improved times a bit, so you’d expect the times to improve. You’d expect to fill the filed with athletes who run 8:55 or faster.

But that’s not the case. There’ll be athletes with sub 9 performances who don’t make it to Istanbul, while those with times in the region of 9:00.00 to 9:15:00 will fill ranking spots.

And with some countries introducing their own criteria and B standards, it’s likely that the quota won’t be met in some events.

That’ll be embarrassing.

Rankings were supposed to reward consistency. But it doesn’t matter how many times you’ve run 8:49, if you’ve not run a couple of 5000m races, you can’t make it.

Good athletes will miss out.

But that’s what happens when you use a qualification system that’s not designed around indoor performances (and not fit for purpose at the best of times, but that’s a conversation for another day).

The peg isn’t just square; it’s warped, splintered in a few places, and wrapped up in remnants of the material used to make the emperor’s new clothes.

The hole, I believe, is still round.

Ultimatum

I try really hard not to rage against the athletics establishment just for the sake of it (my Twitter feed may indicate otherwise, but I do actually try). World Athletics, European Athletics, Athletics Ireland... they’re all just a collection of individuals, passionate about the sport, doing their job, right? And the more we complain about the establishments, the less likely the right, passionate, doing-it-for-the right-reason people are to put themselves in the firing line. And so I try really, really hard not to complain about everything they do.

But y’all making it really difficult for me right now.

So here’s the deal.

Stop using world rankings as qualification for major championships. Abolish repechage rounds before we ever have to sit through that particular embarrassment. Get rid of byes at European Championships. Bring back the 50km walk, and don’t even think about that 2x35km mixed relay crap you’re talking about.

Do all that, and I’ll stop complaining.

But whatever you do, please do not use world rankings to qualify athletes for an indoor championships.

Please, on behalf of highly strained blood vessels everywhere, don't ever do that again.