Running News Daily

Qualification System Published For Paris 2024 Olympic Games

The qualification system for athletics competition at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, to be held between 2-11 August 2024, has been published.

As was the case for the Olympic Games in Tokyo and the World Athletics Championships Oregon22, the qualification system will be based on a dual pathway of qualification, with 50% of athletes qualifying through entry standards and the remaining 50% qualifying through World Rankings.

The qualification system was approved by the World Athletics Council and includes details of the qualification windows, targeted number of athletes per discipline and entry standards.

The programme will include 23 women’s events and 23 men’s events as well as two mixed events – the 4x400m mixed relay and the 35km mixed team race walk.

For the 10,000m, combined events, race walks and relays, the qualification period runs from 31 December 2022 to 30 June 2024. 

For the marathon, the qualification window is from 1 November 2022 to 30 April 2024. For all other events, the qualification period runs from 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2024.

For the marathon, any athlete ranked higher than the 65th athlete on the filtered Quota Place “Road to Paris” list on 30 January 2024 will be considered qualified.

After 30 January 2024, the remaining 20% of the quota will be determined by the same dual pathway qualification criteria outlined above, without displacing the athletes qualified per 30 January 2024. 

Any national Olympic committee may choose to reallocate a quota place to an unqualified athlete, provided the athlete in the qualification window has achieved at least a 2:11:30 (men) or 2:29:30 (women) performance.World Athletics will publish the official qualification monitoring tool (Road to Paris) on the Stats Zone of the World Athletics website in the latter part of 2023.

Nassau in The Bahamas will host the World Athletics Relays, the main Olympic qualifying event for the relays, in April/May 2024 (dates to be confirmed).

The current sport-by-sport schedule for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, which outlines the start and finish times of each session, can be found on the Paris 2024 website. Olympic Games ticketing is also now open.

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