USA Shooting hits the mark. Athletes shouldn’t have to ‘re-earn’ their Olympic spots.
It’s a good conversation starter.
With the 2020 Olympics being postponed to 2021 amid the coronavirus pandemic, should athletes who locked in spots already have to re-qualify for the Games?
After all, Team USA wants to win as many medals as possible and a lot can change over a given year. It’s a fair question.
But it’s become clear there’s a clear-cut answer too. Any athlete who has already qualified for the 2020 Games should be representing Team USA when the Games are held in Tokyo in 2021.
Look no further than to the words of Des Linden, who finished fourth and one spot out of qualifying for Team USA in the U.S. women’s marathon race last month in Atlanta.
“Anybody suggesting the Marathon Trials be re-run, just stop,” Linden posted on Twitter. “There are 6 athletes who actually have so much to celebrate during this tough time, please don’t [ruin] their parade.”
That mindset is shared by USA Track & Field men’s long distance running chair Ed Torres and women’s chair Kim Keenan-Kirkpatrick who are reportedly in favor of keeping the qualifiers from Atlanta for Tokyo.
It’s also shared by USA Shooting, which announced that the athletes who have qualified will stay qualified for the Tokyo Games.
That includes three local shooters who qualified earlier this month — two-time gold medalist Vincent Hancock of Fort Worth in men’s skeet; first-time Olympian Austen Smith of Keller in women’s skeet; and first-time Olympian Brian Burrows of Denton in men’s trap.
“I agree 100% with USA Shooting’s decision to honor the Olympic team selections that were just held for the Tokyo Games,” Hancock said. “The athletes rightly and fairly competed for their positions, and they deserve to keep those spots. I applaud USA Shooting for making this perfectly clear.”
Burrows echoed that sentiment. He also dismissed the notion that the qualifying athletes somehow wouldn’t be in peak form or shape with the delay.
After all, every athlete who has qualified is now dreaming of winning a medal.
“If you’re making the Olympic team, you’re uniquely qualified,” Burrows said. “You’re elite and at the top of your game. To have it pushed back a year, I don’t think you would fall out of your peak or prime in one year. If you’ve made the Olympic team, you’ve already proven that you’re qualified to be there.”
Burrows went on to say that already knowing who is shooting in some events for Team USA this far out is a benefit too.
“We can bond as an Olympic shooting team and dedicate resources toward the medal hunt,” Burrows said. “It’s a great and unique opportunity to come together as a team and compete against the world’s best.”
Let’s hope the other governing bodies who have athletes already qualified will follow suit.
Sure, it’s a good debate and talking point, but it’s hard to envision someone actually being stripped of being an Olympian over something out of their control such as a worldwide pandemic.
“The people who earned their spot for the 2020 Games have worked incredibly hard to make the Olympic team,” Burrows said. “To have it retracted from them, I don’t believe that’s reasonable. The athletes work and dedicate their lives to their sport and to making it to the Olympics and … to have that retracted when they’ve done nothing wrong? That would be terrible.”
This story was originally published March 25, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
