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Reporters huddled around officials from USATF, the B.A.A. and NYRR in the corridors of the IUPUI Natatorium to hear the announcement that the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials for the 2008 Games in Beijing would be held in New York City and Boston.
The announcement, driven out of the track stadium by a thunderstorm which swept through Indianapolis and forced evacuation of the stadium, marked several shifts from recent marathon trials, the most obvious perhaps being the size of the venues. In recent Olympiads, the Trials have been held in small or mid-sized cities as one-time events. These races will be held in conjunction with the mega marathons held annually in these cities. The men's trials will be in New York on the weekend of the 2007 ING New York City Marathon, and the women's in Boston the day before the 2008 B.A.A. Boston Marathon.
A related result of this is the projected media attention on the Trials. "We have 1,000 credentialed media in Boston for Marathon Weekend," explained B.A.A. Executive Director Guy Morse. "This is the right time to make the move to the major stages and the major cities," concurred NYCM race director Mary Wittenberg.
Another quirk is the scheduling. While the men's date in New York is not yet set - the bid was based on a Friday morning race before the Sunday morning NYCM, but television opportunities might move the race to Saturday - it will be 41 weeks before the Olympic marathon in Beijing. Wittenberg observed that this was judged to produce the best possible team for the Olympics; in 2004, for example, the time frame between the men's Trials and the Olympic marathon was the longest it had ever been, historically, and that produced the men's first medal in 28 years.
"We were also looking at the Japanese model," she explained, pointing out the Japan's fall and winter marathons had produced multiple World Championship and Olympic marathon medalists in recent years, including the last two women's Olympic gold medals.
The timing would also allow shorter-distance specialists like Dathan Ritzenhein, Matt Gonzales, Fernando Cabada or Ian Dobson, none of whom have run marathons so far, to run the marathon Trials and recover in time to race well at the track Trials in 2008. Qualifying times have been added to allow men to run the Trials as a debut marathon with a 5,000m track time of 13:40 or a 10,000m time of 28:45; women could enter with a 10,000m mark of 33:00 or faster. Olympic qualifying standards have not yet been announced by the IAAF.
Neither race will follow the point-to-point courses made famous by the city marathons; instead, new multi-loop courses have been designed. New York's will include multiple loops in Central Park; Boston will start with a loop around that city's historic downtown before running several laps of a loop on the Charles River patterned on the course of the Tufts 10k.
Morse pointed out that the cooperation already in place between the races, both part of the World Marathon Majors circuit, would be another aspect of the Trials.
"This is going to be a wonderful celebration of American distance runners at a time when they can compete with the best in the world," said Wittenberg. "It's bigtime, and it's the right time."
Posted by Parker Morse at 4:09 p.m. | Tags: Press Releases
David commented, on August 24, 2006 at 8:01 p.m.:
I don't think permitting a runner who has run 13:40 or 28:45 and has not legitimately qualified for the marathon trials is fair or the right thing to do. These times do not prove that a runner can run a competitive race. This decision must have been determined by a non runner. If you are going to pick times out of thin air you should just open the field to anyone who wants to run the marathon trials. That includes the one hour 10k runner.