Target Tokyo – Australia set to have Olympic athletics team of over 60 athletes

Updated 2 July 2021
Cover image by Casey Sims/Athletics Australia

After over 900 days the Olympic qualifying period has ended, with World Athletics publishing the final list of athletes eligible for selection. All that is left to be done is for Athletics Australia to formally select athletes, and in a few cases, exercise discretion on which eligible athletes have the distinction of being an Olympian in Tokyo, or not.

If Athletics Australia’s selectors pick all eligible athletes there will be 59 athletes wearing the green and gold in individual events, along with another 3-4 relay runners to be added for the women’s 4x400m squad. The team for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio was 60 athletes, including relay runners.

For the second successive Games, Australia did not qualify a men’s relay team (4x100m or 4x400m), while the women’s 4x100m also narrowly missed qualifying, making it a five Games drought since Australia fielded a team. Australia did not qualify a team in the new mixed 4x400m relay.

At the close of qualifying, Athletics Australia’s selectors are left with decisions to make on which eligible athletes to pick in the following events:

• Men’s 1500m: Olli Hoare or Matthew Ramsden (to join the already selected Jye Edwards and Stewart McSweyn).
• Women’s 1500m: Two of Jessica Hull, Georgia Griffith and Abbey Caldwell (to join the already selected Linden Hall). Hull will presumably be chosen, having withdrawn from the 5000m that she had already been selected for.
• Women’s 3000m Steeplechase: Two of Amy Cashin, Paige Campbell and Georgia Winkcup (to join the already selected Genevieve Gregson).
• Women’s 5000m: Three of Isobel Batt-Doyle, Rose Davies, Jenny Blundell and Melissa Duncan.
• Women’s 20km Walk: Two of Katie Hayward, Rebecca Henderson and Claire Woods (to join already selected Jemima Montag)

Before we delve into the presumptive Olympic team and which athletes have missed out, a quick recap of the qualifying process. Firstly, each event has a quota for the number of entries and there were two pathways to be eligible for selection for Australian athletes. To be eligible, athletes needed to either:

• Reach the Olympic qualifying standard; or
• Be ranked within remaining spots (if any) for the quota for their event after universality places for countries with no qualified athletes were added. These remaining spots were based on the World Athletics Rankings. These rankings take into account a number of performances from athletes, assigning points for the overall quality of performance, as well as the placing achieved in competitions, weighted by how important the competitions are. Our article from November last year breaks the World Rankings down in more detail.

World Athletics advised that of the 1900 international athletes set to compete in Tokyo, that around 70% qualified by reaching the qualifying standard, and around 30% from World Ranking places. For Australia’s team, the split will be very similar.

A maximum three athletes per country per event can be selected. The qualifying period ended 29 June and national federations now have until 5 July to enter athletes. It is expected that Athletics Australia and the Australian Olympic Committee will jointly announce the final Australian athletes to be selected this weekend.

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What are the big movements in the past week?

There are so many, especially with the big point scoring opportunities that many international athletes had with their national championships.

The positives for Australian athletes:

• The heroic last minute 3000m steeplechase qualifying mark for Ed Trippas in Spain. His 8:19.60 run moved him to 3rd on the Australian all-time list.
• Jenny Blundell narrowly missing the 5000m qualifying mark with a 15:10.27 solo run at The Crest. With qualified athletes being withdrawn by their national federations, a quota spot opened up for Blundell based on her World Athletics Ranking, with her run at The Crest contributing to her ranking.

And the heartbreak for some that were within the quota for their event, but have dropped out, or who narrowly missed qualifying:

• Matthew Clarke ran a superb 8:22.13 PB in the 3000m Steeplechase to narrowly miss the qualifying standard by 0.13 seconds. Ironically, were it not for Ed Trippas’ last minute qualifier, Clarke would have made the quota for the event based on his World Ranking, but unfortunately misses out by a single place.
• 100m hurdlers Brianna Beahan and Hannah Jones variously being in, and out of, and back in, but ultimately both missing out of a quota position during the final week of qualifying.
• Lauren Boden being overtaken in the final week of qualifying by international athletes and dropping out of a quota place in the 400m hurdles.

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What happens now?

World Athletics outlines the process on their website in detail, but we are really at the pointy end now.

To be succinct, the only thing that happens now is national federations pick which athletes will represent them from the final list of eligible athletes.

There is no further ‘roll down’ if a place is not accepted. The period for not accepting quota positions ended on 29 June and per the World Athletics qualification process ‘Quota places declined after the above deadlines [29 June, or 31 May for marathon & 50km walk] will NOT be reallocated.‘

So, to the final update of our table tracking athletes that are now are either:

• Selected: Already Named by Athletics Australia and the Australian Olympic Committee in a specific event.
• Qualified: Have met the qualifying standard for an event, but have not yet been selected. Can be selected by Athletics Australia.
• In quota: Not qualified but within the final quota for the field size. Can be selected by Athletics Australia.
• Outside quota: Not eligible for selection for the Olympic Games.
• Withdrawn: Athletics Australia advised World Athletics that it would not accept a position in the field for these athletes (as a result of the athletes not wanting to contest those events).

We’ve added some green colour coding for athletes where Athletics Australia just needs to rubber stamp selection, and orange for the discretionary selections required that we detailed earlier.

Tip: If you’re trying to read the table below on a phone, use your web browser and turn your screen to landscape.
Change in scores/ranking/quota cutoff is since last week.

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