>Rules being something like you must:
>1) Must make the finals at the trials
>2) Rank higher than the third place finisher in the world
>rankings
>3) Rank in the top 20 in the world
>
>Unless someone meets each of those criteria, the third place
>finisher goes to the Olympics
>
>I'd leave the slot open until a couple of weeks before the
>Olympics start. That way people can chase (or fend off) that
>slot at the Diamond Leagues prior to the games

Latitude for a bad day at trials, or even somebody who is working their way back from an early-season injury - but it's also transparent and harder to politicize, just a different mechanism for the third pick. This is really thoughtful. I like it a lot.

I'm pretty content with the current approach too, which as I said makes the trials fun to watch due to the stakes. But I like the way that your system kind of augments the discourse wiht the "chase (or fend off)" dynamic. Honestly, one of the frustrating things about loving this sport is that there's not a lot of fun MLB or NBA-style argumentation. Things tend to get settled on the track, which I suppose is the correct answer. But anything that gives fans a chance to seize on the liminal spaces between race results (that isn't about drugs or gender, which are too important to have a lot of fun with) strikes me as a very useful side-effect of a system like this.

Cool answer. I really enjoyed that.