Favorite Track and Field Event and Why

[Fryowa]

So of course my questions are:

Who exactly sets the DR minimums, and, do they change (throughout the years...lowered)?

It's a little weird how it works. Used to be the top X number of athletes by time throughout the season. They brought the standards into play in 2018. It's a mark that if you meet it you're automatically in. They use it as a marketing tool and encourage kids/schools to post to social media, etc. With the 16 and 32 as an example they take 21 entries total. There's never been 21 or more kids meet the standards in a given year, so to fill the remaining spots it's the next fastest entries.

For example, if 16 kids ran a 4:20 1600 or better, the remaining 5 spots would be filled by the next fastest runners entered. Times have to be at a meet in Iowa using FAT, no hand timing allowed. The standards are set by committee and they go based off the top 25% of the historical entries. It's not happened before where there were more auto qualifiers than spots, I'm assuming if that happened they'd increase the field to however many there were. Can't really call it a qualifier standard if you don't. I don't really see that happening though, because they make it tough enough that only a certain rough number are going to hit it.

 

[CP87]

So, how did the Drake Relays become a relatively big deal, which subsequently led to Drake stadium being hallowed grounds? How does an upper Midwest, lower tier school end up hosting an annual event that attracts elite talent? I suppose you could ask the same question about U Penn.