Please elaborate.
Olympic Dreams are not dead
- Thread starter MSUTKD
- Start date
Just a slight detour so I crave your indulgence, TKD is not my style or interest but it would be really cool if there was someone I know of from here competing in the London Olympics, I'd go and shout them on (hopefully they wouldn't be against a UK competitor though lol!).
- Thread Starter
- #23
The sports you name use very different selection criteria than we do. Although they have a race or fight off, to even be considered you have to achieve a minimum standard or time to receive an invite to their trials. This would be like the USAT saying that you had to have placed in the top 3 spots in 3 USAT sanctioned tourneys (US Open, Qualifier, Nationals) to even be considered. You cannot just show up at nationals, in these sports, and win then get a chance at team trials. They also have mandatory camps and competitions that all the athletes must attend.
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You have said nothing different. Yes you need to participate in qualifying meets. No one would expect you to just show up to a national event or even World event. This has never been the case. And no one is stating that the camps are not a necessity either. The problem is the coaches running the camps picking the team, regardless if you win in competition or not. USAT needs to be like every other sport and have a meet where the winners go period. It use to be this way. But since the coaches have been complaining when there fighters lose they don't want this anymore, and that is not fair, no matter how you try to spin it.
If the coaches think that the judging is the problem, (that is why they complained and want this new way) then USAT need to make sure that there are better refs. Maybe they need to start referee camps where refs have to spend money and time gaining the skills needed to ref these matches. They also need to make sure they pay the ref properly and also punish them when they make mistakes.
As it is now you have 16 and 17 year old refs judging the qualifying events not to mention refs that have never spent any time in the ring to even understand what it is they are seeing
TKD_Stops_Tilt
Yellow Belt
What the USAT is doing is applying this concept backwards. I don't disagree that establishing development camps would be good for sport TKD and would follow the lead of other Olympic sports. Development camps can identify quality athletes that can be fed into a standardized qualication process. In the end, a competition or fight-off would decide who makes the national team.
The USAT is not doing this. The USAT is conducting a qualification event first. From that point, the USAT plans to hold a camp to select the national team members from among the tier of the elite athletes that qualified. That does not follow the process you describe in this last post and does not reflect your overall point of view, if I understand your posts.
Do you think the USAT is following the process you describe? Also, you still have not addressed that fact that the other Olympic sports also establish an independent and (hopefully) unbiased pool of athletes, coaches, refs, etc. to select members of the National Team. The USAT has yet to present such a plan. Wouldn't you agree that a plan such as this is needed to fairly and successfully conduct the process that you describe?
