Why should we seek to prevent that tired old scenario of yours? Track and Field and marathoning are athletic competitions. The whole concept of competition is to win -- everything else is an afterthought.
GET YOUR QUALIFIER BEFORE YOU GO AND WIN THE DAMN THING ONCE YOU'RE THERE! Everything will work out after that. malmo -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2001 7:08 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: t-and-f: Hosting 2004 Olympic Marathon Trials In a message dated 12/04/01 11:19:05, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: << Problem: You have just made an unsupported assumption--that the top three will go. Unfortunately, as we saw in 2000, that is not a valid statement, and I don't see any evidence yet that the situation will change by 2004. So we can run it under terrible weather conditions, have a winner who might have just caught the only good race of their life on that day, and leave two other athletes with more consistent competitive records at home. >> Rich has hit on the real kicker here. Malmo and the rest of the hardcores can say things along the line of "get your A qualifier before you go" all they want, but that doesn't prevent the situation--one which we seem to keep seeing--of the conditions making for nobody getting the A on the day, so if there's any kind of surprise winner (a person who probably would have gotten the A if they had been running in a friendly site) who comes in slower than A, then that person blocks all the good intentions, given that the winner goes. Indeed, given the frequency of non-A winners, I'd say one's best chance of making the team would seem to be training to WIN the fershlugginer race, no matter the conditions, and not worry about time, becuase only the winner is likely to go. gh
