What will it take to qualify for the Canadian Olympic marathon team?

We are less than 10 weeks from the end of the Olympic marathon qualification window, and three Canadian runners have hit the standard, with two out of six positions secured on Canada’s marathon team for Paris 2024. With still three vacancies, what will it take from Canadian marathoners to fill the final spots? David Monti, a U.S.-based athletics journalist and creator of Race Results Weekly, helps us delve into the Canadian Olympic qualification picture.

Last weekend, Rory Linkletter became the third Canadian runner (and second male) to hit the standard, with his 13th-place finish in 2:08:01 in Sevilla, nine seconds under the men’s Olympic mark of 2:08:10. Malindi Elmore and Cam Levins have already been named to the Canadian Olympic team; both ran the standard before the Jan. 30 national team cutoff. Although Linkletter has met the standard, he isn’t guaranteed a spot; if two men were to run faster than 2:08:01 by May 5, he could be superseded (though that seems unlikely, at this point). 

As of Feb. 19, Linkletter is among the 66 international time qualifiers for the Olympic marathon, ensuring his spot in Paris, as long as Athletics Canada selects him. With Linkletter meeting the standard, the rest of the men’s picture becomes complicated. Monti says Ben Preisner, Trevor Hofbauer, Tristan Woodfine, or any other emerging marathoner will likely have to run faster to make it onto the Canadian team in Paris.

“With Levins already named to the team and Linkletter hitting the standard, there’s just one spot,” says Monti. “Ben Preisner is the only other Canadian in the ranked list based on points, and currently sits 86th, outside of the 80 spots available. That’s not good, with a bunch of spring marathons ahead–automatic qualifiers will likely take a few more quota spots.”

(Both the men’s and women’s fields for Paris have 80 guaranteed spots for athletes who hit the standard. When World Athletics came out with the Olympic standards, their goal was to fill at least 50 per cent of the athlete quota per event via qualifying standards, and the other 50 per cent via the points system.)

“On the women’s side, all 80 quota places have been filled (subject to the three-per-country limit), based on the qualifying standard of 2:26:50 or top 5 at a Platinum Label marathon,” says Monti. That means that zero athletes will get in on points, meaning Natasha Wodak, Andrea Seccafien, Leslie Sexton or any other Canadian women with aspirations of being on the team will need to run the 2:26:50 standard to be selected. The good news is that the quota of 80 is not a hard cap. Monti says as long as a country has room on the squad (three per country, max) World Athletics will allow full teams to be entered if three athletes from one country have made the Olympic standard. The number of entrants could go as high as 100.

Linkletter hitting the standard at the 2024 Sevilla Marathon, means that a total of 66 men have qualified (as of Feb. 19); in addition, one man (Tebello Ramakongoana of Lesotho) has a guaranteed spot on points, because he was within the first 64 ranked athletes by the Jan. 30 team cutoff. This means that Preisner, who is coming off a near-two-minute personal best of 2:08:58 at the Beppu-Ōita Marathon in Japan earlier this month, will likely need to run again and hit the standard to be selected for Paris. “Ben could up his ranking position to get into the top 80 by running an exceptional marathon or half-marathon,” says Monti. “But it’s more likely that he’d need to run another marathon and hit the mark of 2:08:10.”

Woodfine, on the other hand, is listed on the elite start list for the 2024 Boston Marathon in April. His only hope of getting to Paris would be placing in the top five at a Platinum Label road race (which could be Boston), which would likely earn him a spot on the Olympic team. (Even if Woodfine ran the standard but placed outside the top five, his time would not count, due to Boston’s course being ineligible for records and Olympic qualification, because it is a net-downhill course.) Fun fact: the fifth-place runner at the 2023 Boston Marathon came across the line in 2:08:35, which is close to the Olympic standard.

As the May 5 marathon qualification deadline for the Paris Olympics approaches, three spots remain vacant on the Canadian team–two on the women’s side and one on the men’s. The prospect of fielding a full Canadian marathon team in Paris, consisting of three men and three women, remains slim but anything could happen over the next 10 weeks.