BRITAIN’S hopefuls for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo may have to win their places in the team at a televised, multi-sport trials event just a month before the Games.
First floated earlier this year, the GB Olympic trials concept is now the subject of advanced talks involving the British Olympic Association, government funding-agency UK Sport and several leading national governing bodies.
The BOA have even had preliminary negotiations with the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) about introducing a transatlantic, Ryder Cup-style element to the competition.
BOA chief executive Bill Sweeney said: “There are a number of good conversations going on at the moment and the idea is that it will take place in June 2020. It’s an idea backed by UK Sport and we’ve seen it work very successfully in the US.
“It would be a slightly different model [to the USOC trials], it wouldn’t be as brutal with their first-past-the-line idea, which might be because they’ve got more athletes to choose from.”
The US Olympic trials are notoriously difficult, with competition for places in some athletics and swimming events almost as fierce as the Olympics. This leads to good broadcast ratings, but also selection controversies. It has also been suggested it causes some athletes to peak too early.
That is why the BOA’s plan has met with some resistance in the past, particularly from sports such as boxing and cycling that like to leave selection up to the discretion of their coaches. However, Sweeney has been working hard to persuade a “critical mass” of governing bodies that GB Olympic trials could provide drama while retaining some “subjectivity” for the selectors.
Sweeney worked for Reebok when world decathlon champion Dan O’Brien failed to register a pole vault score and missed out on the 1992 Games. However, the BOA boss pointed to British Swimming’s Olympic trials in Glasgow as an example of an event that replicated, to a degree, the US model, and said gymnastics, rowing, taekwondo and triathlon were “very keen” on the new, larger event.
Sweeney also said that the USOC was very keen on a UK versus US trials and it could be done if “sports on both sides of the Atlantic” could get their “calendars to work out”.
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