— Abhijit Deshmukh
The qualification process for the athletics discipline at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, is announced. Athletics event will take place from 2nd-11th August 2024 at National stadium, Paris. The qualification process will be centred on a dual pathway of qualification, with 50% of competitors qualifying through entrance standards and the other 50% qualifying through world rankings, same like it was for the Olympic Games in Tokyo and the World Athletics Championships in Oregon22.
The World Athletics Council gave its approval to the qualification system, which includes information on the qualification windows, the intended number of participants per discipline, and admission requirements.
The qualifying window for the 10,000 metres, combined events, race walks, and relays is from December 31, 2022, to June 30, 2024. The qualifying period for the marathon is from 1 November 2022 to 30 April 2024. The qualification period for all other events is from July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024.
Any athlete who on January 30, 2024, placed higher than 65th on the filtered Quota Place “Road to Paris” list will be deemed qualified for the marathon. Without replacing the athletes who qualified by January 30, 2024, the remaining 20% of the quota will be determined by the same dual pathway qualification standards. Any national Olympic committee may decide to reallocate a quota spot to an unqualified athlete as long as the athlete has produced at least a 2:11:30 (for men) or 2:29:30 (for women) performance during the qualification window.
World Athletics will publish the official qualification monitoring tool (Road to Paris) on the Stats Zone of the World Athletics website in the latter part of 2023.
The entry standards below have been approved by World athletics Council.
The schedule will feature two mixed events, the 4x400m mixed relay and the 35km mixed team race walk, in addition to 23 events for women and 23 events for men.
Indian Athletics performance in 2022:-
Since Tokyo 2020, performance of Indian athletes at world event has improved significantly. Neeraj Chopra was lone medalist for India winning silver at 2022 world athletics championship. Other Indian athletes who performed exceptionally well were Annu Rani (Women’s Javelin-7th), Avinash Sable(Steeplechase-11th), Murali Shreeshankar (Long Jump-7th), Eldhouse Paul (Triple Jump-9th). All these athletes carried momentum at the Birmingham CWG and finished on podium. In total, India won 8 medals in Athletics at 2022 CWG. Sprinter Amlan Borgohain may not have won a medal at International event but his timings in both 100m & 200m has been impressive. He made a new national record in the men’s 100m after clocking 10.25s at the inter-railway athletics championships 2022 in Rae Bareli, Uttar Pradesh. He also won Gold in both 100m & 200m at India’s national games held in Gujarat.
At Tokyo 2020, 26 (17 men & 9 women) Indian athletes qualified, with Neeraj Chopra winning the Gold medal. Kamalpreet Kaur was in the only other athlete who came close to podium, finishing sixth in the women’s discuss throw. It will be interesting to watch, how many Indian athletes qualifies for 2024 Paris Olympics and who will finish on podium.
