In the first of what will almost certainly be a one-part series, we float an idea that is very dumb, but also potentially very fun.

If we get an Olympic Trials Marathon in 2028, we can expect the qualifying standards to be even faster than they were for 2024. This will result in a three-year mad dash to Sacramento or Duluth or Berlin or Chicago to hit those loftier marks. That means that two increasingly major factors in qualification are being well-resourced (those travel costs add up!) and living a flexible life (remote workers and childless 20-somethings have far fewer unmovable obligations). And it means that non-conventionally fast marathons and non-World Majors will continue to be avoided like the plague, which harms local running scenes.

Business as usual will likely produce fields of 200 or so runners, who are primarily pros or semi-pros based out of Flagstaff or Colorado and a handful of 20-something project managers and tech consultants – all of whom are adept at running flat or net-downhill fair-weather marathons. No shots at either of those demographics, but part of the fun of the Marathon Trials is that in addition to selecting a strong Olympic team, it also serves as the People’s Championship.

The Olympics (and World championships) select their fields from a combination of time standards, world rankings, and automatic qualifiers – why should the Olympic Trials be any different? At the end of the day, people like winners, and people want to be winners. No one scrawls “Finish top 45 at CIM” on their bedroom wall as a kid.

So here’s our silly proposal: make the qualification time as steep as you want, or better yet – just invite the top 50 athletes on descending order. Then round out the field with the winners of a Marathon State Championship series. Pick one established marathon fielded annually in each of the 50 U.S. states and anoint it that state’s championship marathon. The winner (ideally a resident of the host state) of each race’s 2027 edition receives automatic entry into the Olympic Trials.

What makes for a cooler story? Spending thousands of dollars to travel the continent – or globe! – in order to find the perfect race in which to join a throng of runners and ride a wave of attrition to the promised land of a desired time? Or claim ultimate “hometown hero” status by mastering a challenging course, in front of your friends and family, to become the State Champion?

This being the Dumb Idea Corner, there are kinks to be ironed out in this proposal. What happens when half of NAZ Elite “moves” to Alaska and Wyoming just by paying a few months of rent, or when the 20th fastest marathoner from California misses an OTQ in favor of a slower Rhode Islander? Maybe there are tweaks to be made, or maybe that’s just life. What this Eurovision model lacks in true parity, it makes up for in INTRIGUE. Imagine the Montana Marathon Champion – who qualified at 6,000 feet in a time 20 minutes behind the conventional OTQers – coming out of nowhere to finish 10th. Local news would go bananas. And it gives an expensive, elaborate event production new avenues for storytelling beyond the six lucky people who make the team.

It’s not a perfect system – but then again, neither is the existing OTQ. All we ask is that the higher-ups at USATF consider this silly idea before they roll out the standard press release of new times and qualifying dates and call it a day.

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