- Joined
- Jun 21, 2003
This is an interesting topic. Track and field gives the reigning world champion a “bye” to the following world championship, however, they do not remove a spot from the champion’s national team.
I tried to look this up, and evidently it is something of hornets nest currently.
https://www.worldathletics.org/comp...revised-qualification-system-for-iaaf-world-a
As I understand it, the International Association tried to revise the rules for the last championship (2019) to make the qualifying standards more uniform for all athletes. But there was a backlash from the athletes, who didn't like the new system, so the Association went back to the old rules and promised to study it some more.
Under the old rules that they went back to, yes, the various world champions get a "wildcard" entry. This includes the reigning world champion, the winner of the "Diamond League," and the champions of various individual tournaments such as the Hammer Throw Challenge and the Race Walk Challenge.
But only one extra athlete can be nominated per country, so if the same country has both the hammer throw winner and the race walk winner, only only gets a free pass. Furthermore each country can only send six athletes total, so the wild card guy can, in some cases, mean that someone else gets kicked off the team.
Every country gets to send at least one athlete even if no meets the qualifying standard.
(By the way, the athletes also complained that the venue was too hot (Qatar), and that there was almost no audience.)
I am not sure if figure skating has anything to learn here.