Valley hurdler denied Olympic spot by UK Athletics

PHOENIX — Imagine this. You are a track and field athlete and have been training for three years with the goal of qualifying for the Olympics. 

You have done what was asked of you by World Athletics, the governing body of international track and field, and are high enough in the world rankings in your event to earn an invitation to compete in the Paris Olympics. 

However, when the list of athletes headed to Paris is finalized and released by your nation, your name is not there and part of the reasoning you are given for the move is that you are incapable of “inspiring the nation.” 

That was exactly the case for British hurdler David King, who trains in Phoenix with Coach Tim O’Neil and Phoenix Track Club, the same club that trains former Brophy athlete Devon Allen and hurdler Freddie Crittenden, who will be running the 110-meter hurdles in Paris representing Team USA.  

King learned he would not be headed to Paris when UK Athletics released their list of athletes headed to Paris to represent Great Britain in early July.  

“The sad thing is, I saw this coming from a long way off,” King told 12News about the decision. 

He was able to see it coming as UK Athletics makes an already tough process even tougher. 

World Athletics allows for an athlete to qualify for the Olympics in two ways. Either run an “Entry Standard” time or be high enough in the World Rankings in your event.  

However, UK Athletics decided to only send athletes to Paris that ran the entry standard and who they believe have a chance of making the final in their event for track and field. 

The justification for that decision came through the fact that UK Athletics are funded through the UK’s national lottery. 

“Ever since lottery funding came into place, the philosophy underpinning all lottery funded UK elite sport has been about ‘World Class Performance’. Ultimately this means winning medals in world level competition, inspiring the nation in doing so,” UK Athletics Chair Ian Beattie wrote in a letter posted on AthleticsWeekly.com on July 5. “UK Sport’s view – and it is a view I agree with – is 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.” 

“I think the opinion that it doesn’t inspire the nation, that someone that’s not making the final doesn’t inspire the nation is unbelievable,” King said in response to Beattie’s comments. “I can’t believe anyone would say that, especially someone in that role.”   

This would have been King’s second trip to the Olympics. 

After many conversations with Allen and Crittenden, King moved to Arizona to train with Phoenix Track Club in 2019 after hitting a plateau with training in the UK and starting to “hate the sport.”   

The move re-energized King and led to him qualifying for the Tokyo Olympics in the men’s 110-meter hurdles and advancing to the semifinals. 

However, it was around the time of the Tokyo Olympics that King says UK Athletics changed how athletes from the nation would become Olympians moving forward. 

UKA adopted a two-tiered time standard. They took World Athletics’ “Entry Standard” as their “A Standard” and then added a secondary qualification time, called a “B Standard.” 

For the 2024 Paris Olympics, the A Standard for the men’s 110-meter hurdles was 13.27 seconds. The B Standard was 13.31 seconds.  

“I knew that I had to run 13.31 like a year and a half ago,” King said. “And at that time, athletes were talking about the policy, but no one else was. So we knew that this policy was crazy. And this was going to happen, like, we knew that this was going to happen to a lot of people. But the athlete mindset, a year and a half out from the (Olympics) is, ‘I’m just going to train as hard as I can and then try and get the time.'” 

However, King was not able to reach that time. In fact, only one British hurdler, Tade Ojora, was able to do that, as he ran the race in 13.27 seconds during the Olympic qualifying period.  

However, King was not far off. His best time this year, 13.45 seconds, is only .14 seconds off of UKA’s B Standard and was his second-fastest time ever.  He also is currently 49th in the World Rankings, ahead of six runners who will be competing in the 110-meter hurdles in Paris. 

King is not the only British athlete affected by this policy. At least seven others will also miss out on the 2024 Olympics, according to The Telegraph, including steeplechaser Phil Norman. 

Norman had the best performance by a British athlete in the men’s 3,000-meter steeplechase in more than 30 years when he won the race at the UK Athletics Championships earlier this month with a time of 8 minutes, 18.65 seconds. That time was a national record but left him .15 seconds short of qualifying for Paris. 

In the wake of the decision by UKA not to send the group of eight to Paris, Norman started a petition on Change.org, which has been signed by almost 10,000 people since it was started on July 7.     

King was one of those to sign the petition and says the aspect of this that makes him the most frustrated is the effect it could have on the next generation of British athletes. 

“You need a variety of people on the team to inspire more people,” King said. “And I think the message that only making finals, I think the message that that portrays, like, that’s the only thing that’s important is not healthy. While with these small teams, like as a young athlete in the sport, if I see that people like me now are not making the Olympics that’s not going to make me want to stay in the sport and that’s the big danger about all this.”   

King added that he doesn’t agree with UKA’s justification as he has seen firsthand what just qualifying for the Olympics can mean to a community. 

When King left to run in Tokyo, he says friends and neighbors, even ones he had never met, lined the streets in his hometown of Plymouth in southwest England, waiving British flags to send him off. 

“So, they have young kids. They’re seeing someone from their street go to the Olympics. Like that, in itself was huge,” King said. 

He also said that he has been able to visit at least 30 primary schools since Tokyo and saw kids at all of those visits get inspired, even though he didn’t win a medal. 

“I tell them that I’m from this area, this local area, I went to the local club that some of these athletes go to,” King said. “And I’ve just been, I’ve just got back from the Olympics. And they’re like, No way, and they don’t care. They didn’t really care how I got on. I think overall, I came 19th and like I had them guess how, like, what position I came and they were just like throwing out random, or they didn’t care whether it was 1, 2, 3. I was like 19, or like, wow, it’s like that’s crazy. So then, you do not need to make the final to inspire the next generation.”   

Ultimately, King admitted he does not believe what UKA said about the decision and instead believes this all revolves around money. 

“If you told the nation that there are 10 athletes who we can’t afford to take and set up a GoFundMe, or whatever it is, the money will come in,” King said. “As an athlete, I would pay for myself to go to the Olympics if I really had to. So the money should never be an issue. And I think they’re not admitting that that is the issue.”  

King added that he hopes UKA ultimately changes its qualification methods and allows anyone who qualifies to compete in the Olympics moving forward. 

And while he is frustrated that he will not be in Paris, King says he will still watch the Olympics for one specific reason, his Phoenix Track Club training mate, Freddie Crittenden.  

“I’ve got other friends in the sport as well, but Freddie is the one who I’m rooting for,” King said. “So obviously, it was disappointing not to make the team. Mentally I’ve set myself up to deal with if I didn’t, and it’s fine. But what makes these last three years really, really worth it was being a part of Freddie’s success. Freddie is someone who fully deserves this and he is going in there so, so ready.” 

Crittenden qualified for his first Olympics at the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Team Trials in Eugene, Oregon, last month. He will be seeded third in the 110-meter hurdles. Crittenden will take the track for the first round of competition on Aug. 4. The semifinals will be held on Aug. 7 and the final will be on Aug. 8.  

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