With the Olympics postponed, should Team USA have athletes re-qualify for 2021?
Former Team USA sprinter Doc Patton initially answered yes.
If an athlete has already qualified for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, that spot should be honored when the Games are held in 2021.
“If they’ve already qualified, you lock those in,” Patton said.
But Patton started having second thoughts in the middle of his answer.
“Well … I don’t know, man,” said Patton, a TCU product who competed at three Olympics.
“This is a whole new year, so maybe you have to prove yourself again. I’d feel for those who prepared and qualified already who may have to redo it. I don’t know. That’s a tough one.”
It’s a question that faces the U.S. Olympic Committee in the coming days. About half of Team USA has already qualified and earned spots in their respective sports.
USA Shooting issued a statement on Tuesday afternoon saying it intended to honor the spots already earned in 2021. The governing bodies of individual sports will likely make the decision.
USA Shooting’s stance is good news for local skeet shooters Vincent Hancock, a two-time gold medalist who qualified for his fourth games earlier this month in Arizona, as well as Austen Smith, an 18-year-old from Keller who made her first Olympic team.
So has Brian Burrows, a Denton resident who qualified in men’s trap shooting and trains with Hancock and Smith out of Fort Worth Trap & Skeet.
“Those athletes who have qualified thus far for the Olympic team will remain the Olympic qualified athletes that we will submit to the USOPC for approval,” the governing body said in a news release. “We are confident that our coaching staff and high-performance team will ensure that these athletes continue to train and showcase the world-class skills that earned them Olympic qualifying berths.”
USAS added, though, that the “situation is fluid.”
To Shelbi Vaughan, a discus thrower out of Azle who made the 2016 team and is attempting to make the 2020 team, keeping the athletes who have already secured spots is “absolutely” the right thing to do.
Those who qualified for 2020, even if it’s postponed, should be representing Team USA in Tokyo in 2021.
“I don’t think it would be fair to give someone else an opportunity to take their spots when they didn’t earn it in the actual Olympic year,” Vaughan said. “The way I see it, the Olympic year isn’t changing. It’s just getting postponed to another year for the safety of all the athletes.”
Retired sprinter Jon Drummond, who won a silver medal in 1996 and a gold medal in 2000, echoed those thoughts. He feels athletes who have qualified should be given the right to represent the country whenever the Games are held.
“It’s going to become a political question, but I think those people have made the team and their spots should be honored,” Drummond said. “The reality is they didn’t shut the Games down. The coronavirus did. It’s not like something happened in our country where we boycotted. This is a worldwide pandemic. Those athletes have done what they’re supposed to do.
“I would fight for that because it’s fair.”
On the flip side, Team USA wants to send the athletes performing the best at that time to try and win as many medals as possible.
For instance, USA Track & Field has already held its marathon qualifiers to determine its 2020 representatives in that sport. A year from now, a competitor who didn’t qualify may be peaking and better suited to win a medal.
Or a runner who may have been sidelined with an injury is now healthy and able to compete.
“That’s a difficult one to answer,” said retired sprinter Jeremy Wariner, a three-time gold medalist. “If I was one of those athletes that were locked in, I’d be pushing for it to stay the same. If I was the other ones, I would say we should have a trial next year.
“That’s going to be a tough one for them to decide. Man, I have no idea.”
Fortunately for track and field and other sports such as gymnastics, most of the qualifying events had yet to happen. But several sports will be forced to make difficult decisions going forward.
Most agreed that the individual sport’s governing body should make a decision when it comes to qualifying going forward. And that seems to be how the U.S. Olympic Committee will handle these situations with USA Shooting issuing its statement.
“The individual governing bodies should definitely make the call,” Patton said. “For the marathon runners, what do you even say? You’ve got to run 26.2 miles all over again? I don’t know.
“But sometimes that’s how sports go. Right now, there’s someone we don’t even know about that next year is going to be perfect for them and somebody is going to fall by the wayside who you thought would’ve made it had it been a year earlier.”
