Bewildered by Willis’ absence
Athletics New Zealand is urging the IAAF to change its ‘‘appalling’’ selection process after the organisation was left blindsided by the unavailability of Nick Willis for the world championships.
Even though Willis failed to meet the automatic qualifying standard by 0.99 seconds, high performance director Scott Goodman was so sure the 36-yearold would gain entry into the men’s 1500m via a second chance process that travel arrangements had already been made for the two-time Olympic Games medallist to join the rest of the New Zealand squad in Doha.
‘‘We were good to go and expected to get the invite but it didn’t happen,’’ Goodman said.
In order to automatically qualify for the world championships, Willis was required to run a time of 3min 36sec before the September 6 deadline. However, after toying with a switch to the 5000m earlier in the season, he could only manage a time of 3min 36.99sec in his final hit-out on September 1.
But despite falling short of the automatic qualifier, Goodman said Athletics NZ was ‘‘pretty confident’’ that Willis would receive an invite via the IAAF’s roll down system, which effectively fills the field with the next highest ranked athletes in the scenario where 45 runners do not automatically qualify.
However, even though Willis was sitting at No 42 on the September 6 deadline, he was overtaken by four athletes who used a selection loophole that allows countries who have not qualified a single participant to nominate an athlete of each gender to compete. It just so happened to be that four of those nominated were 1500m runners.
‘‘For four of those guys to be added in the men’s 1500m is pretty unusual to be honest,’’ Goodman said.
‘‘Normally what they call the ‘universality athletes’ tend to be in the 100m because they’re reasonably close in terms of the distance and time. The further you go they’re more likely to get dropped off. So in a field of 45 to have four athletes who are probably going to be five to 10 seconds slower than the actual qualified athletes is pretty massive and I don’t think that’s a good look but we’ll just have to have those discussions.’’
Although you would assume this kind of information would have been publicly available, it was only when Athletics NZ followed up with the IAAF last week that it discovered he had missed out, and Goodman said that simply was not good enough.
‘‘It was only when we sought the information that it was provided. I’m pretty disappointed in how they’ve run the process.
‘‘It was like extracting teeth. It was very ordinary process.’’
Goodman said Athletics NZ had sent numerous emails to the IAAF urging it to publish the list of ‘‘universality athletes’’ in the hope of making the process more transparent moving forward.
‘‘We had to break the news [to Willis] and in fact the IAAF wouldn’t had even informed us had we not contacted them. We’ve had a number of emails suggesting they need to change their process because we’re not happy.’’