Divisive selection policy ‘will be the end of athletics in this country’, Team GB warned

Meet Jake Norris. He is 25, the British hammer-throwing champion and a former world Under-20 champion and European youth silver medallist. He qualified for a first Olympic Games through his world ranking and has thrown the distance that would have reached the 12-man final in Paris on eight different occasions in 2024.

Norris’s mother is Swiss and he could have breezed into their Olympic team but he was born in England and wanted to represent Great Britain. With no external funding, he combines training with working at the clothes store Superdry. He also spends two evenings a week coaching junior athletes at his local Windsor, Slough & Eton Club.

Norris, however, was denied the chance to compete at his first Olympic Games because he missed – by 13cm – an additional selection standard that UK Athletics (UKA) had imposed.

He was one of seven athletes across six events in which Team GB had no entrant at Stade de France as a result of UKA’s policy. However, five of those seven athletes – all deemed ‘qualified’ on their world rankings – would have reached their final in Paris on the basis of their best performance this year. Phil Norman would also have progressed with the time he ran at the national trials depending on the 3,000m steeplechase heat he was in while Amelia Campbell’s personal best would have made it into the shot put final.

‘Almost everyone I’ve spoken to is horrified’

Beneath the shine of the 10 returning Olympic medals – the most by a British athletics team since the 1984 Games – there is outrage at the situation and a concerted push to overhaul the policy ahead of next year’s World Championships in Tokyo. A petition has been signed by more than 10,000 people, Swedish athletes are trying to take a similar policy to the Court of Arbitration for Sport and British athletes themselves now feel forced to make their voices heard.

“I know I am risking loss of funding and future bias for speaking out about this issue; however, I would be doing myself, my fellow athletes, and future athletes a disservice if I didn’t try to make a change,” said Anna Purchase, a 24-year-old hammer thrower who was Olympic qualified via her world ranking but missed out because, despite throwing UKA’s standard last year, she was 54cm off this year. Her current personal best, which should still have vast scope for improvement, would have been only 1.25m short of a medal in Paris. Purchase is also second on Great Britain’s all-time list but has told Telegraph Sport that she is unsure whether to continue.

“My heart hurts a little each time I see a post about the Olympics on social media or watch the results,” she said. “It’s made my motivation to train and continue in the sport very confusing, and it has been a real mental battle to figure out what I want to do next. I truly believe I could have made the final.

“Almost everyone I’ve spoken to, including fellow athletes, members from other federations, and sports fans, has been horrified to hear what British Athletics has done to its own athletes. Why would young athletes be inspired to take up a sport when there is no British representation?

“Especially when those who have rightfully qualified are barred from competing by British Athletics. This is discouraging and makes young athletes hesitant to commit to the sacrifices needed to reach this level. If this continues, I truly believe it will be the end of athletics in our country – or at least for the field events.”

UKA says high standards drives performance – but athletes disagree

There is also a feeling that the policy has seen people in field events face disproportionately high standards. A time of 9.94sec was needed to reach the men’s 100m final in Paris, for example, and yet the UKA Olympic standard sits at 10.02sec. Similarly, the men’s 400m had a qualification standard of 45.00sec when 44.41sec was actually needed to reach the final. A significant proportion of track athletes did not reach individual finals but there was major success in the relay events, which accounted for half the medals, and much positive feedback for the work of head coach Paula Dunn.

UKA says that policy is designed to maximise top-eight finishes and medal chances. Numerous people inside British athletics fear that it is having the diametrically opposite effect, particularly when you consider the longer-term impact and the missed experience for younger athletes like Norris, Purchase and Kenneth Ikeji who, at 21, has already thrown a distance that is the third-best hammer result in British history and would have been tied for sixth in Paris.

“Surely Team GB should be taking the whole team that gets their Olympic invitation rather than destroying a number of athletes’ Olympic dreams,” said Darren Steer, a former thrower who acts as an agent for Norris on an unpaid basis. “Most other countries will take as many people as possible. Our kids are saying, ‘Where are the GB athletes?’ It’s a tragic injustice.

“People see what is happening and get disillusioned. People are stepping away from the sport.

“I love the sport – I really want it to succeed but it needs a sea change.”

Norris said that he was initially angered by the situation and, like every impacted athlete, would have found a way to self-fund his participation if cost was the issue. “All my family would have gone,” he said. “I love the sport – it is not a career choice.”

So is this a cost-cutting exercise?

In a column defending the policy, UKA chair Ian Beattie cited cost, a belief that tough standards drive up performances, and said he agreed with the argument that “an athlete getting to the Olympics with little chance of qualifying from their heat or pool, does not have a significant impact on inspiring the nation, and therefore does not merit public funding”.

Leaving aside how results in Paris suggest that the impacted athletes largely could potentially have reached their finals, Beattie’s description of what it might take to inspire has proved deeply controversial.

Norris, who coaches children at his local club, says that he received messages of support from five young people immediately after being left out of the Olympics. “How many people do you have to inspire to be worth public funding?” he said. “Getting to the Olympics would be a huge deal to my club and local community.”

Jade Lally, a discus thrower whose personal best would have placed her fifth in Paris, also believes that an additional UKA standard beyond the world rankings actually just worsens performance and potential because of the pressure all season of needing that one big throw. “It frees you up, knowing you will be selected, rather than trying to hit one ridiculous standard,” she said. Campbell said that it had been “devastating” to watch the Olympics and see other athletes who were lower on the world rankings competing. “This is sport and anything can happen on the day,” she said.

Jack Buckner, the UKA chief executive, warned last year that there would be a shift in Olympic and World Championships policy with likely smaller teams and a particular focus on what he called the “big hitters”. UKA announced a £3.7 million loss in their most recent accounts but have previously suggested that the policy is not linked to money. The Paris policy was first published in July 2023 and part of its rationale was to introduce measurable standards that eliminated more discretionary decisions. The standards were created and circulated by the UKA event group lead and aimed to reflect the expected requirement to progress within the event.

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