Masters News and Muse

In addition to the article, Running Times posted this audio clip -- in which Blake Boldon discusses his dealings with Dexter as a member of the two-person appeals committee he eventually reached.

In the clip, Blake doesn't say "Dexter McCloud" but notes that he's someone from a sprint background who might have confused rules on distance-race heat formations with sprint-race heat formations.

Blake also says Dexter promised to provide a written explanation for why Blake's appeal was rejected. Blake says in the clip he never received the written explanation. Also, Blake says Dexter wrongly said that Blake declared for the event only seven hours before the race.

Note the boldface sections of this story:

Trials and Stipulations
An in-depth look at the Olympic Trials start list controversy

By Scott Douglas
As featured in the Web Only issue of Running Times Magazine

The U.S. Olympic trials process is fair and straightforward--place in the top 3 and have the Olympic "A" standard, and you're on the team. Athletes and fans from other countries regularly praise the American system for removing politics and preferential treatment, cronyism and corruption from the mix. But what if the process for deciding who is on the start line isn't as clear-cut?

That question arose during an otherwise magnificent Olympic trials in June and July. In the distance events, there were several instances where decisions about who was let into the meet appeared more arbitrary and capricious than straightforward and easily comprehensible.

With the U.S. Olympic Committee threatening USATF with decertification as the national governing body of track and field, athletes' claims of a lack of fairness, transparency and accountability took on extra weight. That was especially true with the trials being held in Eugene, Ore., where Steve Prefontaine is revered, in part, for his battles with one of USATF's predecessors over athletes' rights.

Although certainly not yet of Prefontaine's caliber, Blake Boldon is a middle-distance runner who has placed in the top 10 at three recent national championships. At the outset of the trials, he was seeded 27th in the 5,000m field; USATF stipulated a minimum field size of 24. Because fields in the event had been expanded soon before races at other national championships, including the 2004 Olympic trials, Boldon spent $1,500 to be in Eugene to appeal to be added.

Appeals are heard by two-person committees. On the men's side, one member of the committee is named by John Chaplin, chair of USATF's Men's Track & Field Committee. The other is considered an athlete representative.

In Boldon's case, that was Dexter McCloud, a 47-year-old hurdler who told me, "I have been working as an athletes' representative for approximately the last 5 to 6 years. I was selected for the position because I am an athlete and my experiences on a number of committees."

When Boldon got to Eugene to appeal, "there was no protocol," he says. "There was no transparency to the process to say, 'This is what you need to do, this is the deadline, this is who you have to talk to or where you need to be.' Anything they told us, we tried to follow through. We were sent to the downtown Hilton; they told us to be there by 1:00 p.m. to meet with the Appeals Committee. When we got there, nobody in the hotel had even heard of an Appeals Committee."

On the day of the 5,000m heats, Boldon tried to follow up; he had crafted his formal appeal with input from "well-connected USATF officials," he says. "I got a call from the track essentially saying they were not even going to consider it, so I shouldn't pay [the] $100 [appeal fee]. I felt like, I want to at least pay $100 to make you read my appeal and explain why anyone isn't allowed to expand the field. They took my credit card and said, 'We'll meet and get back to you.' "

When Boldon heard from McCloud, "He told me that if he allowed me into the meet, they would have to add numbers 25 and 26 [on the 5,000m seed list], and then they would have to add a heat in the 5K. At that point I realized what I was up against and I asked him, 'Did you read my appeal?' He said, 'That information was not presented to me.'" Boldon wasn't allowed to race in Eugene.

Colleen Newhart also experienced what reads like a Kafka-Keystone Kops mash-up. After two women scratched from the 1500m field, Newhart was seeded 31st; the field size was set at 30. However, the agent of Julie Culley, who had made the final of the 5,000m, had contacted Stephanie Hightower, chair of the Women's Track & Field Committee, to say that Culley was to be dropped from the 1500m field. It looked as if Newhart would be added to the field.

But when she spoke with a USATF representative, Newhart says, "[she] told me no changes could be made within 48 hours of any race on any start list. I told [her] that was obviously not true, since they just notified [Jordan] Hasay and [Kerri] Bland Wednesday morning that they were in the race. Hasay and Bland were not on the original start lists posted on the USATF website.

"I told [the USATF official] I knew Culley would be a DNS and asked her to please follow up with Stephanie Hightower in regards to this so that I could get a chance to toe the line. At that point, she relayed to me that Ms. Hightower was very angry that she was even called the first time in regards to this issue, and that [the USATF official] refused to bother her again on my account."

Two weeks after the 5,000m heats, Boldon and McCloud still differed on what transpired in Eugene. McCloud wrote to me, "Mr. Boldon partly based his appeal to run in the meet because Adam Goucher, another distance runner, won his appeal for entry." In fact, Boldon's appeal didn't mention Goucher, and was filed before Goucher's entry into the 10,000m field was announced. Such incidents didn't occur for the first time at the 2008 trials.

After not being allowed to run the 10,000m in the 1996 trials, Shannon Butler took USATF to court in a case that was ultimately resolved to his satisfaction. In an affidavit for the case, Butler asserted that once his initial appeal to run was denied, "I then contacted John Chaplin, chairperson of the International Competition Committee of USATF, about my exclusion from the trial.

Chaplin also declined to offer an explanation for my exclusion, but suggested that I file an appeal, which I did. Approximately five minutes after I had handed Chaplin my written appeal, Chaplin informed me that the Appeals Committee had denied my appeal. Neither Chaplin nor the Appeals Committee offered any explanation for the denial of my appeal...I then asked Chaplin about whether I had any further appeal rights. Chaplin told me that there were no further appeals available to me, and that "[y]ou're not running and I don't care if there are three guys on the line, you are not getting in this race. You can just pack your bags go home and try again in four years."

Twelve years before Butler's no-go, Boston Marathon champion Greg Meyer had a similar experience. A provisional qualifier for the 1988 10,000m trials, Meyer followed the then-prescribed procedure of phoning in his declaration. Trouble was, the line was busy for two days straight. Meyer tried repeatedly while driving to the meet in Indianapolis.

When he got there, Meyer says, "They said I was declaring a day too late. John Chaplin and Brooks Johnson listened to me for a few minutes and just kept saying I was a day late. I was so angry I didn't even stay in town--just turned around and went home."

Besides the historical precedent of fields being expanded soon before races start, the other main basis of Boldon's appeal was that increasing the field size would add to the competitiveness of the races. The schedule in Eugene was constructed largely to mimic the Olympic schedule; for example, four rounds were run in the men's 200m, even though only two men didn't advance to the quarterfinals. In some of the distance races, however, the field sizes weren't close to what American Olympians will face in Beijing.

The men's 5,000m had two semifinal heats of 12 to create a final of 16. In the 2004 Olympics, each of the semifinals had 18 runners. In Eugene, the men's 1500m started with three rounds of 10; the field of 30 was then culled to two semifinals of 12 to produce a final of 12. In Athens in 2004, there were 12 or 13 men in each of the three first-round heats.

I asked John Chaplin about the field sizes. "Could we have 28 in the 5K? Yes," he said. "But we decided 24 was a rational number. So you can appeal, but the answer is going to be no--there's no rational reason to grant that appeal. The point is, we're taking 24 in the 5K."

When I asked what harm would have come from expanding the men's 1500m field from 30 to 36, part of Chaplin's response was, "The Olympic trials are not a goddamn all-comers' meet." For the record, the final man let on the start line, John Bolas, had a qualifying time of 3:41.21. The man who would have been the 36th in the field if it had been expanded, John Richardson, had a qualifying time of 3:41.70.

Another reason to stick with smaller fields, Chaplin says, is logistics. "I have limited space, and I want it that way," he says. "If I add six more people to the 1500, then that's six more athlete passes, and two more passes that go with each of them. So I don't really want 32 in the 5K or 36 in the 1500."

None of the above reasons were compelling enough to keep the men's 10,000m field in Eugene from being expanded from 24 to 25 to include Adam Goucher. Nor was a USATF competition rule that calls for running the 10,000m in heats if there are more than 24 men on the start line. That Goucher was 32nd on the qualifying list is irrelevant, Chaplin says. "Appeals are decided on an individual basis," he says. Certainly Goucher acquitted himself well, taking 7th in a PR of 27:59.31.

But once it became known that Goucher would run, the men on the list with faster qualifying times also wanted in. Jon Little, an attorney and 2:21 marathoner, threatened arbitration, but eventually dropped the matter the day before the 10,000m. The runners with faster qualifying times than Goucher wound up not running.

Robert Johnson, the men's distance coach at Cornell University and co-founder of LetsRun.com, says, "The Goucher case definitely felt like favoritism. Apparently his appeal was granted before the meet started, but was officially announced toward the end of meet. Why go out of your way to make it look like something bad is going on?"

While I was discussing Goucher's case with Chaplin, it became a little harder to believe every athlete is treated fairly, if not equally, and appreciated as among the nation's best. Referring to some of the slower men in the field, Chaplin said, "Those clowns in the bottom half of the 10,000 have no chance on God's green earth of making the Olympic team."

During another part of the conversation, he said, "I have no patience with distance runners any more."How are USATF committee members chosen? USATF president Bill Roe told me, "In a nutshell, people get into positions within USATF by moving up from local to national representation through their local association, or through a national sports organization member of USATF (NCAA, RRCA, etc.)

As with any non-profit, most people have their hearts and heads in the right places, but you do get a few who are in it for the wrong reasons. Fortunately, throughout my experience with USATF (over 30 years), those latter number very few."

USATF's communications director Jill Geer says, "There's no secrecy about the appeals process. There's no great conspiracy going on." Boldon's point, he says, is "when you do have a premier coach or agent or shoe company, you know the proper channels somehow, but when you're unrepresented and you run for a shoe company like Saucony, the proper channels aren't available to you." Johnson says, "I run one of the most popular running sites and I'm a college coach, and I don't know how this stuff works. So who does?"

In addition, you don't have to believe in conspiracy theories or be a cynic to think that having a paid consultant to Nike, as Chaplin is, in such powerful positions creates potential conflicts of interest. Johnson says, "When almost every runner who seems to get preferential treatment runs for Nike, that starts looking like more than a coincidence." The desire to remove any such suspicions is why, for example, judges often recuse themselves from cases in which they might be accused of favoritism.

As someone who reveled in being in Eugene for the trials, I have no interest in sullying what was a great event. But when the trials are held again in Eugene in 2012, I hope to be there cheering on runners in fields that were determined through a fair, open, easy-to-understand-and-navigate process that puts the athletes' interests first. To see that hope fulfilled will likely require a new system administered by different people.