Qualification process OG (English)

Earlier this year I qualified for the Olympic Games and I am super excited to be representing The Netherlands in Tokyo in July 2020! 

I got a lot of questions about our qualification process for the Olympic Games. Mostly because Lena qualified the country spot at the worlds but I’m nominated to represent The Netherlands at the Games. Well to start here is the low down.

1) First of all to qualify a ‘country spot’ we had to meet the requirements of the International Federation and be within the top 18 nations at the World Championships. 

2) Secondly we needed to meet the extra national performance criteria set by the Dutch Olympic Committee NOC*NSF.

Performance requirements NOC*NSF:
1 time top 10 countries at the World Championship ’19, or 1 time top 8 countries at World Cup 2,3,4,5 2019 / (Europeans 2020)
                         or
2 times top 12 countries at Worlds ’19, WC 2,3,4,5 2019 / (Europeans 2020)

 3)Internal selection

i. If after the World Champs exactly 1 athlete meets the NOC*NSF qualification requirements, this athlete will be the winner of the Internal selection.

ii. If more than 1 atlete meets the NOC*NSF requirements, the “winner of the Internal Selection” ( 2 best results of the season) will be nominated to the NOC*NSF. 

How this applied to our season?
I had a good start of the season and made the criteria in the first 3 races, with a 15th, 6th and 17th place finish.  

The other dutch K1 woman athletes didn’t meet the national criteria after the 4 selected World Cups. Therefore their last change was to make a top 10 countries finish at the World Championships. 

At the Worlds both Lena and I finished within the top 18 nations. Lena in 27th and I in 31st. 

The highest finished at the Worlds automatically qualifies the sport for the country, but this doesn’t go by name it only goes by country. Every national federation has their own selection policy’s for their internal selection. 

As Lena hadn’t met the national criteria the NOC*NSF would not sent her. (this happend with Maarten Hermans 4 year ago, where he qualified a spot for The Netherlands at the Europeans in 2016, but the NOC*NSF didn’t sent him to Rio 2016 because he didn’t met the extra performance requirement!).  

After the Worlds I was the only athlete which met the national requirements which meant (see 3)i.) I was the winner of the internal selection and nominated by the NOC*NSF.

Different scenario. 

If Lena and/or Claudia would have made the national performance criteria our selection policy would have continued until the Europeans in May 2020.

It then would have come down to the two best results of the season. Which in that case meant that Claudia had a change by finishing within the top 3 at the Europeans to be on equal point with me. But then again I had a change to improve my 15th place.
Lena was out of the running because her best result of the season was 22nd, which was higher than my 2 races both added up. Even when Lena would win the Europeans, according to the rules set prior, I would have won the intern selection.  I’m not 100% sure if there was a clause in our policy if winning a medal at the Worlds or Europeans would prioritise things.