IAAF Announces 2020 Olympic Qualifying Standards, Changes to the Diamond League, Progress on Russia and Rule Changes

By Adam Kopet

The IAAF Council met this week in Doha, Qatar, making key decisions that will affect the sport of track and field over the next several years.

Chief among the announcements were the qualifying standards for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. The stated goals of the standards, which are stronger than they were in 2016, is to have roughly half the field qualify through the qualifying standards and the other half qualify by IAAF World Rankings.

This is not dissimilar to the way athletes qualified for the 2016 Olympics in Rio. In events where the preferred field size was not met by athletes who bettered the standard, the IAAF turned to a descending order list to select the next available athletes.

That descending order list has been replaced with the IAAF World Rankings for 2020. Further, more athletes will depend on their world ranking for qualification. Also, the goal field size of the men's and women's marathons has been cut down to 80 athletes each. That is nearly half the field size that started the 2016 Olympic marathons.

The IAAF also announced changes to the 2020 Diamond League series. The number of events that are contested across the series will be cut from 32 (16 men's and 16 women's events) to 24 (12 men's and 12 women's events). The series will feature 12 meets and a single final at the end of the season.

The IAAF is also putting an emphasis on contesting field events outside the stadium in public places when possible. Pole vault and shot put competitions have seen success when held in alternate venues.

In other IAAF news, the Russian Athletics Federation has not been reinstated. The data from the Moscow doping laboratory is still being analyzed by the World Anti-Doping Agency. There are also unresolved issues regarding payments for outstanding costs to the IAAF.

Several rule changes were implemented, including a return to the 60-second clock in all field events. The time athletes were given to make an attempt had previously been cut down to 30 seconds.