FROM THE EDITOR — A Logical Season-Long Path?

MY HEAD’S ALL ASWIRL. Decades ago a U.S. Olympic coach spoke those words to me — caught off guard because it was January, he had a college program to run and I was cold-calling him with questions about a Games 6 months in the future. His turn of phrase stuck in my brain.

What’s got my noggin swirling is an Olympic Games about to start and a dazzling Trials concluded less than a month ago. It’s hard to point in a quadrennial cycle to any other 2-month stretch, give or take, that’s quite as electric as the 1-2 punch of these meets. I say that even as an inveterate track & field guy, who mildly resents all those other Olympic sports watering down our moment in the sun. For fewer distractions, tighter focus, give me a World Championships every two years — and starting in 2026 WA’s planned Ultimate Champs to send to the showers the buzz kill of “off years.”

I love, though, that in an Olympic summer our sport gets a touch more love and attention. This summer the track & field t-shirts and hats I wear elicit comments. e.g., grocery store checker to wife and self as he eyed my Trials tee: “You gonna watch the Olympics?” It was fun, if self-congratulatory, to answer, “We’re gonna be there!”

This is a brief window in time where one even learns casual acquaintances follow our sport with more enthusiasm than you’d guess.

Exhibit A for me this summer: A couple, call them Jess and Joe, I chat with occasionally over a beverage at my local. On last meeting they were praising Sprint: The World’s Fastest Humans, the Netflix series that’s enjoying a heartening run. Sure, Jess & Joe confessed they were binge-watching Sprint in a dash to reach the finish before the release of Receiver, a Netflix NFL offering of the same type. Nonetheless, warms my heart to see track delighting general sports watchers, gives one hope crossover appeal can grow.

For me, August 2, in-stadium day 1 of the Paris party cannot get here soon enough. I’m one fired-up track nut.

Yet I also carry the gimlet-eyed bone-to-pick track nut gene. Why, for crying out loud, did World Athletics find need to make its standards-plus-rankings “Road To Paris” qualifying scheme so impenetrably hard to understand?

Back in 2017 when WA first floated its rankings concept, head man Seb Coe proclaimed, “For the first time in the sport’s history, athletes, media and fans will have a clear understanding of the hierarchy of competitions from National through to Area and up…