RFEA stresses that the pre-selection criteria for Paris 2024 are “objective” and “fair”

The Royal Spanish Athletics Federation (RFEA) has stressed that the preselection criteria for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games have been “objective” and “fair” in response to the letter received on June 28 signed by some athletes.

In a statement, the RFEA recalled that the athletes’ participation in the Games is not on an individual basis but on behalf of the Spanish Olympic Committee (COE), accepting the rules of the Spanish federation, and that the latter “will in no case renounce its delegated functions or establish a self-selection system.”

The RFEA noted that there was “some lack of understanding” regarding the system established by World Athletics, and clarified that the ‘Entry Standards’ and the World Ranking system set the minimum criteria for entry “not for pre-selection”.

“However, in no case do they represent the automatic classification of athletes, as established by World Athletics itself. The legitimate competence and power to establish the pre-selection or selection criteria falls on the National Federations. This circumstance is not exclusive to the new system; it has always been like this with previous systems,” he recalled.

In this regard, the RFEA recalled that an athlete’s compliance with the registration criteria established by World Athletics to participate in the Olympic Games “is an indispensable but not sufficient requirement to be included in the shortlist.” “In no case does compliance with this requirement grant the athlete direct preselection status,” it added.

He also reiterated that the existence of performance and competitiveness criteria or marks is not something new in athletics, but that it has historically established its own discretionary criteria, in addition to the so-called ‘minimum A’ and ‘minimum B’ marks.

At his discretion, among those athletes who met these criteria, the coach, supported by his Technical Committee, decided which athletes were in optimal physical condition to compete, and decided whether to select them or not.

On some occasions, so-called ‘RFEA minimums’ were also established, which did not necessarily coincide with the marks established by the IAAF or the European Athletics Association. Even in some cases, despite having achieved the minimum A for participation, some athletes were not selected for a championship due to the discretionary technical criteria of the coach.

“Therefore, it is nothing new or foreign to our sport that national federations, including the RFEA, establish their own performance criteria. Although there is currently a hidden interest in distorting reality, these have been, are and will continue to be the foundations of our sport,” he said.

Other national federations have established similar criteria, some of them with even stricter requirements than those of the RFEA, such as those of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy, among others. Additionally, others such as those of France, Norway, Canada, New Zealand and Australia also have their own criteria in addition to those of World Athletics.

He also stressed that the RFEA is based on a principle of “transparency”, “integrity” and “objectivity”, offering the same conditions to all athletes by publishing the pre-selection criteria well in advance, and that its objective is to “maximize” the sporting performance of the national team.

Likewise, the establishment of selection criteria does not seek “in any case” to restrict the participation of athletes but rather to ensure that those selected are at an optimal level of performance in accordance with the level of each championship and the participation quotas in each event.

He also stressed that participation has increased, as in the European Championships of 2018, 2022 and 2024, which have been the ones with the highest participation in history. In addition, the Paris Olympic Games are expected to have one of the largest participations of Spanish athletes in history.

Since 2016, the national team’s results in all modalities and championships have improved “significantly” as in the 2023 World Championships in Budapest, and to this end the RFEA has increased “by more than 250 percent” direct aid to athletes in recent years, going from 1.3 million in 2016 to 4.1 million in 2023.

For all these reasons, the RFEA considers that the Sports Department has established an “objective” and “fair” system, the result of “arduous” and “continuous” work in analyzing performance, the systems implemented in other sports federations, and the exchange of knowledge with top-level professionals from other countries.

Regarding the demands of the Athletes’ Commission, he reported that after the 2022 European Championships in Munich, at a meeting of the Governing Board, it was the commission that requested the establishment of clear, objective and transparent criteria that the athletes would be aware of in advance.

“For this reason, and in response to the athletes’ own demands for a more objective and less discretionary system, these specific performance criteria were implemented for all the competitions mentioned, in the same way as other leading national federations had already done,” he added.

Finally, he said that the pre-selection criteria for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games were published on 25 October 2023, 8 months before the end of the qualification period for the Games, giving athletes enough time to plan their competition programme and achieve their goals.

In addition, the RFEA convened a virtual meeting with all athletes and coaches with a real chance of participating in the Olympic Games to share and explain the rationale behind the specific pre-selection criteria. “Only one athlete attended this meeting, which, unfortunately, is not exceptional, but is normal in this type of call-up,” he lamented.

The RFEA concluded that it will continue to work to improve and refine its pre-selection criteria by maintaining an “open dialogue” to consider proposals and suggestions from both the Athletes’ Commission and individual athletes and coaches themselves.

“Many of the improvements in the system of support for athletes, in the conditions of preparation and competition, as well as in the pre-selection criteria themselves, have been implemented at the request of the athletes. The fact of not sharing some of the issues or demands raised, or not agreeing with all of them, should in no way be interpreted as a lack of consideration for their opinions,” he clarified.