Someone has pulled out of the Adelaide men’s 400m and Matt Lynch, winner of the Hunter TC race, has today been invited into the race. Needless to say, AA expect him to find his own way from Gosford to Adelaide and back and come good for the airfares, accommodation and meals. They’re not bad. I know Matt and like most student-athletes, he works part-time which can be onerous given the intensity and regularity of his training regime and he can ill afford the cost of interstate travel.
Yet, under the rules AA have created as guardians of the sport anyone who is accepted but declines to race in any of the three designated obligatory meets - Adelaide, Perth and Sydney - is automatically ruled ineligible for Olympic team selection.
It is, IMHO, nothing short of an outrage. The unmitigated arrogance of those who designed and/or approved of this aspect of the selection criteria is simply stunning. There apparently is no hardship clause. The only way out of this entrapment is for the incapacitated athlete to provide a medical certificate and go through the relative indignity of pleading their case to some faceless bureaucrat at AA who will suspect them of lying and, if they are, they’ll have been most likely forced into it as AA put promotion ahead of high performance. And they wonder why they had no individual track athletes in Daegu from 100 through to and including the 800m - men or women!