In an earlier post I discussed USATF’s qualifying procedure change that means marks from high school and college meets not on the World Athletics Calendar no longer count for qualifying for the Olympic Trials.
Disclaimer: I do not know which athletes would have chosen to compete at the Olympic Trials had their marks counted. It costs money to enter the meet, many athletes chose not to flush that money down the drain, knowing their marks would not be accepted. This article is about who had the choice taken away from them.
Women’s High Jump
This event suffered from a significant number of marks that did not count and athletes with qualifying marks who did not enter. Some of the athletes who did not enter are competing in the heptathlon or other events.
The target field size was 24 and the minimum entry standard was 1.80. Only 21 athletes had marks that counted and entered the meet.
Three athletes had marks that did not count but next best marks that were high enough to get in:
Cierra Allphin, BYU, had a mark not count from a BYU meet
Jamari Drake, post-collegiate, had a mark not count from a West Georgia meet
Trinity Tomlinson, Texas, had a mark not count from a New Mexico meet
There were 14 women who had marks that did not count and their next best mark was below the minimum to enter…
The second to last column is the athletes’ affiliation, the last is the meet or location of the meet that did not count.
It is hard to predict what the entries would have looked like under the old qualifying system, but I’ll take a stab at it here…
At the 2021 Olympic Trials, there were 24 athletes entered with marks of 1.82 or better, and the field was expanded to 25 to add an athlete with a mark of 1.81. At the 2024 Olympic Trials there will only be 21 athletes in the field, 1.80 was the lowest mark accepted.