I SAT DOWN to gather my thoughts for this screed with two words as my lede: Geordie Beamish.
This month World Athletics announced its qualifying scheme for next year’s World Championships in Beijing. You can read our report in this issue.
The headline is the global federation’s stated attempt to qualify 60% of athletes via the WA world rankings and just 40% via qualifying standards.
Standards in many events look like they’ve been torqued down with an impact wrench. Many guess less than 40% of the fields are going to make it to Worlds by that route.
So why did I have Beamish, the shock steeple gold medalist from Tokyo last fall, in mind? I wondered if the Kiwi talent would even have made it to the meet under the protocol laid out for ’27.
Beamish is gifted, an admirably bold competitor, fun to watch and the owner of a stinging kick, yet he was bit by the injury bug for much of ’24 and ’25. He had run just three steeples in the Q period: 7th in his Paris Olympic heat, 8:13.86 for 2nd at the Stockholm DL in June of ’25 and an 8:17.77 for 7th in the Turku CT meet two days later.
The Stockholm time bettered the 8:15.00 Tokyo Q standard though it didn’t very nearly approach his 8:09.64 PR from June of ’24. Or, for that matter, the 8:08.00 standard now stood up for Beijing.
What he had done was book his place on the Tokyo start line and thus afforded himself 3 months to train his way into razor-sharpness.
The plan worked to perfection and — even though he took a spike to his face in his WC heat — Beamish was more prepared than anybody when the final went tactical. His victory was a highlight in a championships full of them.
However, I wonder, would he have been able to bank that preparedness if had to spend much of the summer chasing 8:08.00 or better?
That’s not all he’d have been chasing either. With an increased weight given to rankings points, he’d have had to carefully pick meets in which to try earn them — certainly not in perfect alignment with an optimal training path.
Remember, too, that an athlete’s WA rankings score really only counts for WC qualifying purposes on one day: the day after the Q period closes.
So would the Kiwi world champ of ’25 have reached the start line under the ’27 protocol?
I still don’t know. The parameters of the rolling WA rankings are too complex to analyze fully in retrospect. Points for place vary among 10 defined meet categories and only 7 of those categories will pass muster for qualification by entry standard in ’27.
In the 36-man Tokyo field, Beamish was No. 28 among those who hit the ’25 standard. Nobody made the field via rankings points. No. 1 among the almost-made-it group was Uganda’s Leonard Chemutai with 1265 points. Beamish flew to Japan with 1229 points.
That’s a quality score. But good enough? Can’t say. Just 12 steeplechasers in the Tokyo Q period bettered 8:08.00. Thus 24, or more, including Beamish would have been vying to outscore each other.
Running comparative calculations now that the scores as of August 24, 2025, have vanished would be an errand only for fans with too much time on their hands. The research would need to include consulting WA charts for performance scores, the weighting of meets and point allocations for placings within each category of meet.
Here comes a line I’ve scribbled before:
Back in ’17 when WA first floated its rankings concept, head man Seb Coe proclaimed, “For the first time in the sport’s history, athletes, media and fans will have a clear understanding of the hierarchy of competitions from National through to Area and up to Global events, allowing them to follow a logical season-long path to the pinnacle of athletics’ top two competitions.”
I beg to differ. None of us will know who all has qualified until the day after the Beijing Q period ends.
Put me in the camp of Netherlands coach Laurent Meuwly, who recently wrote, “If standards disappear entirely, many fear athletics risks losing one of its most powerful cultural elements: the universal dream that a single great performance can take you to the World Championships or the Olympics.” ◻︎
