The qualifying standards for the 2024 Paris Olympics are lightning fast

World Athletics (WA) announced the automatic qualifying standards on Tuesday for the 2024 Paris Olympics (to be held 2024 Aug. 2–11) and the times athletes must run to automatically qualify are fiery quick.

The standards are the most challenging ever for a global championship, and WA aims for 50 per cent of entrants to come via automatic qualification, with the remaining half is determined by world ranking. (The qualification system itself (confusing as it may seem) is largely the same as the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 World champs.)

The automatic qualifying standards for the Budapest 2023 World championships, published in August, were also wildly fast, and, for the most part, the new Olympic standards closely match them, with one notable exception–the marathon.

Men must break the 10-second barrier in the 100m to gain automatic qualification for Budapest 2023 and the 2024 Paris Olympics. The Olympic standards differ when it comes to the marathon, for both men and women, with WA substantially lowering the marathon entry standards.

The 2020 Tokyo Olympics had far more eligible runners than were planned for (WA set entry limits of 80 athletes for both men’s and women’s marathons) with 106 men and 88 women starting the last Olympic marathon.

On the men’s side, the 2024 standard is 2:08:10 (in 2020 it was 2:11:30). On the women’s side, the 2024 standard is 2:26:50–almost three minutes faster than in 2020, when it was 2:29:30). For reference, Canada’s Natasha Wodak holds the women’s national marathon record of 2:23:12, set at the 2022 Berlin Marathon.

The Canadian marathon record on the men’s side, set by Cam Levins at the 2022 World champs, is 2:07:10–Levins bested his own national record of 2:09:25. The challenging qual times may make it harder for athletes to gain entry to the 2024 Olympics, but they will certainly lead to some exciting races.

2024 Paris Marathon route has special history

Organizers have revealed the routes for the Olympic marathon, and the two races–a 42.195km course and a 10 km course–that will be open to the general public as part of a mass running event.

Paris 2024 drew inspiration from the Women’s March of 1789, when 7,000 Parisian women marched through Paris, Sèvres and St. Cloud before reaching Versailles and forcing the king back to the Tuileries Palace, World Athletics shared.

Beginning at the Hôtel de Ville and ending at the Esplanade des Invalides, the course will take in some of the most beautiful sights and monuments of Paris and its surroundings. “It will deliver 42.195 kilometres of drama with the Louvre Pyramid, Grand Palais, Château de Versailles and the Eiffel Tower as its backdrop,” WA says.

If you happen to be in Paris, check out the video below to map your run, and feel like an Olympian as you traverse the ground where history was made in the 1700s. A different type of history may be written in 2024 in the same place your footsteps fall, with the best in the sport looking to break records and inspire us all.