JAAF Executive Asaba on Mishandling of Ushiro's World Championships Team Nomination: "We Were Naive. The Level of Our Organization is Low"

At a Tokyo-area press conference on Sept 18, JAAF executive Kazunori Asaba explained the circumstances surrounding decathlon champion Keisuke Ushiro (Kokushikan Club) having his place on the Doha World Championships team cut. Ushiro had not cleared the World Championships qualification standard of 8200 points, but in April he won the gold medal at the Asian Championships. It was assumed that as area champion he would be qualified to participate in the World Championships, and when he won June's National Championships the JAAF told him he would be on the Worlds team.

Regarding the area champion's qualification for the World Championships, the IAAF states, "Area champions in individual events held at the World Championships automatically qualify regardless of whether they have achieved the qualification standard. This is not applicable to the 10000 m, 3000 m steeplechase, combined events, field events or road events, in which their participation subject to the approval of the Technical Delegates."

According to Asaba, the JAAF was aware of this regulation, but, he said, "Ushiro competed in the Rio Olympics, and to be honest we didn't expect an athlete of his caliber to be eliminated via this clause. To put it simply, we were naive."

At this World Championships, the number of participants in the decathlon has been cut from 36 to 24.  Another aspect of the problem is that the JAAF did not inform Ushiro of the option to pursue breaking the qualification standard at high-level international competitions during the summer. Asaba was harshly critical of the JAAF, the group he helps lead, commenting, "The level of our organization is low. We have to rebuild it so that it operates a little more effectively. We have to have a better system so that this kind of thing never happens again."

source article:
https://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20190918-00000098-sph-spo
translated by Brett Larner