When in July 2022 World Athletics president Sebastian Coe first announced the introduction of the new repechage round for selected running events at the Paris Olympics, he hardly concealed one part of the motivation: more Olympic broadcasting hours (and more money for World Athletics).
“After consulting with our athletes and broadcasters,” Coe said, “we believe this is an innovation which will make progression in these events more straightforward for athletes, and will build anticipation for fans and broadcasters The repechage rounds will give more exposure to our sport during the peak Olympic period.”
None of the Irish athletes I spoke to before Paris had been consulted on the repechage or indeed knew much about how it might work, for better or for worse.
It was agreed the repechage round would apply to all individual track events from 200m to 1,500m in distance, including the hurdles events; the 100m already has a preliminary round. All Olympic rowing events already had a repechage, although the demands on the track are a lot different than in a boat.
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So how has it worked?
All athletes who didn’t qualify by place in the round one heats got a second chance to qualify for the semi-finals by participating in repechage. This replaced the former system of athletes advancing through fastest times (the small ‘q’) in addition to the top placings in the first round heats (the big ‘Q’).
It meant each of those events now have four rounds – heats, repechage round, semi-finals and the final, with schedules varying according to the specific nature of the event. Depending on the race, anywhere from two to six athletes from each repechage round also advance into the semi-final.
Are there any benefits?
The new format means that every athlete competing in the events with a repechage round will have at least two races at the Olympics. Before, if anything went wrong in the heats, it was Games over.
Over the opening week of athletics seven Irish athletes missed out on qualifying in their heats and so went into the repechage; Cathal Doyle, Andew Coscoran and Luke McCann in the men’s 1,500m, Sharlene Mawdsley and Sophie Becker in the women’s 400m, and Sophie O’Sullivan and Sarah Healy in the women’s 1,500m
Of those seven only Doyle came through his repechage, winning his second “chance” in the 1,500m, before exiting in the semi-final 24 hours late – his third race in three days.
Under the old format Mawdsley would have gone straight in the 400m semi-final, as would O’Sullivan and Healy, who both missed out by one place when trying to qualify automatically in their heats; they also both lost out in the repechage, finishing fourth, when the top three progressed.
What do the athletes think about it now?
Doyle was certainly agreeable to getting the second chance, admitting he got his tactics wrong first time, and ran a far better race in the repechage, a personal best. The problem was the automatic semi-finalists had one less race in their legs, and in the men’s 1,500m no athlete who came through the repechage made the final.
Mawdsley wasn’t so sure, glad of the second race too but under the old format she would have been an Olympic semi-finalist, not a repechage-ist (if that’s even a word).
World Athletics has yet to decide if the repechage will remain for the LA Olympics in 2028, but it won’t feature at next year’s World Championships in Tokyo. It seems most athletes (and reporters) in Paris will be glad to see the back of it.
