Jeroen Heijmans:

> Well, yeah, but your remark was that "speed skating is hurting itself by
limiting its participation (...) to pursuit a dream of live TV coverage", which
is may be true for the other competitions, but since the ISU allows more
competitors into the Olympics than the WSD, that's a rather odd statement to
make, right?

It was a general comment on ISU politics, aimed at the comment to the post about
Olympic time limits; not at the post about the limits itself.

> However, qualifying times may not be the best way to pick a maximum number of
competitors. Why not, if the quotum for a distance is 40, pick the 40 fastest
skaters, rather than all skaters that have met some limit that will probably be
met by some 40 skaters?

Without national quotas, that would mean that the bulk of the participants would
come from a few countries, and that there would be no participants from
'smaller' countries. Which would be very bad and stregthen the usual argument,
that speed skating is a small and indignificant sport.

With national quotas, it might lead to the participation of a few skaters that
would not meat the strict criteria the ISU want to be met. Which is OK for me,
but bad in the eyes of the ISU.

Anyway, the idea of a ranking -- being it based on times or on World Cup
achievements --- deciding the participation of a one-time event, violates my
ideas of a one-time event.

I simply want such an event to allow the start of the athletes that's the best
at the moment of the event -- not those who peaked two or three months before to
meet the qaulification criteria.


-------------
T.B.Hansen

(whith a slight fever that might make his English a little strange.)