As evidenced by recent changes to the voting procedure for the end-of-year awards, World Athletics has proven itself to be a governing body that listens to its constituents. That’s why after now having a week to fully digest the new standards and qualifying procedures for 2027, this newsletter is now more prepared to dive into the implications and perhaps make a couple suggestions.

To quickly recap the updated system, there key takeaways:

• The standards are harder
• Rankings are more important
• Meet quality matters

In its press release, World Athletics noted that they’re targeting 40% of qualifiers to earn their spot via entry standards. Using the 2027 standards, last year’s qualifiers would have been achieved by 32% of the full World Championship field—meaning there is a big bet on another significant increase in depth, or that 40% number is a bit facetious. The world rankings only became relevant in 2020, and every year a greater emphasis has been placed on them. Like boiling a frog, the infrastructure of the sport is slowly changing without everyone recognizing it.

Why is World Athletics walking further and further away from entry standards? Because they’re not stupid. The sport is better when the top athletes are competing against one another regularly. And when an athlete can time-trial a qualifier at an indoor college meet in December and then disappear until championship season, that’s bad entertainment. At the same time, they want to protect the stars and guarantee that they’ll be on the biggest stage at the end of the season, so expect the various wild cards to remain (and possibly expand).

While the headlines focused on the eradication of the BU Indoor Track, it’s not a targeted attack. Instead, all races on 200m tracks will no longer be eligible for standards nor will meets categorized below the “C” designation (they still will count for ranking points). The goal here is to consolidate the number of meets athletes are competing in.

By rearranging the incentives, World Athletics has made their stance clear: athletes are competing at way too many different meets. It’s difficult to follow where everyone is and it’s easy to avoid competition. Imagine a perfect world where every top professional competed in the same 10 meets—you would always tune in.

But there is an obvious problem with the finite number of lanes on a track. Chasing standards was also about accessibility. Any time, anywhere… if you’re fast enough you could prove it and make it to the big stage. This is different from other sports, where no matter how many home runs one dude might hit in a rec softball game, he doesn’t get to play in the World Series.

So here are three suggestions to improve on this gradual realignment of the sport:

1. Eliminate time standards entirely and replace them with an auto qualification quota. The issue with depending exclusively on rankings is that an athlete exploding onto the scene won’t qualify. Think about a guy like Cooper Lutkenhaus at the U.S. Championships, who ran the fourth fastest time in the world, but then wouldn’t qualify for Worlds. Instead just declare the top 10 time performances as automatically qualified.
2. Add a bonus to the performance score set in non-rabbitted distance races. One of the advantages of getting into the Diamond League is that athletes get into faster-paced races. Additionally, they get higher placement scores because of the “Category A” distinction so that’s twice the disadvantage. To help offset that edge, let’s throw some extra points to athletes who can run fast on their own.
3. Improve secondary races at Diamond League events. The pre-TV-window races at most DLs are considered “Category F,” despite being held in world-class stadiums that meet the highest technical requirements. Why not have a full program of high-level racing the night before at a higher categorization? From an organizer’s perspective, they’d love nothing more than to have top athletes on hand in case of a scratch in the main program. And from a planning perspective, that’s more opportunity for athletes on the fringe to set schedules earlier, while meets would have promotional and commercial benefits.

Ranking athletes is difficult, and inevitably some very capable athletes may miss out because getting five performances in an increasingly tight window can be difficult. No methodology is ever going to be perfect, and unlike sports such as tennis, the peaks and valleys of fitness and health are extreme. Look at the current world rankings and you’ll see some obvious flaws. For example, the three highest-ranked men on the track in the entire world are all 400m hurdlers.

With the World Ultimate Championships debuting this September, rankings are about to become a much more prominent part of athletics fandom. With a maximum of 16 athletes qualifying in each contested event, qualifying will require peak fitness and an ability to game the system. There are still a few months left; however, if we analyze the Road to the Ultimate tool (as of June 2nd) then there are some fascinating qualification stories already developing:

• W100m - Sha’Carri Richardson and Adaejah Hodge are outside the quota.
• W200m - Julien Alfred and Brittany Brown are outside the quota. Also, eight of the 16 athletes are American.
• W800m - Tsige Duguma and Mary Moraa and are outside the quota.
• M800m - Cooper Lutkenhaus, Marco Arop, and Djamel Sedjati are outside the quota.
• M1500m - Josh Kerr, Yared Nuguse, and Timothy Cheruiyot are outside the quota. Also, four of the 12 athletes are Australian.
• Letsile Tebogo is not in the 100m, and Kenny Bednarek is not in the 200m.
• Olympic champion Grant Holloway has been injured all year, but has qualified.
• Olympic 400m champion Quincy Hall ran 45.54 for eighth in Rabat, but has qualified.

While fitness improves and athletes race more, many of these apparent glitches will course-correct. But still, rankings discourse will be an integral part of the World Ultimate Championship experience.

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