School teacher's grapple with harsh Olympic reality
Refreshing with a beer in Hamburg, resting his destroyed legs in London and taking the long flight back to Melbourne, Australian distance runner Andy Buchanan has had a few days to chew over his latest marathon.
The high school teacher from Bendigo is mulling over a harsh reality: the fact that although he smashed his personal best by 82 seconds, became the seventh-fastest Australian marathon runner in history, and ran a time that would have easily qualified him for every Olympic Games held so far, he won’t be going to the Paris Games.
“You start with all the hope and finish with nothing,” Buchanan, grappling with a mix of pride and disappointment, tells Wide World of Sports.
Attempting to qualify for his Olympic debut two days out from the marathon qualification deadline, Buchanan clocked two hours, eight minutes and 58 seconds (2:08:58) in Germany’s Hamburg Marathon on Sunday.
The 33-year-old estimates that until about the 35-kilometre mark, he was on track to nail the 2:08:10 entry standard.
“It wasn’t really a slow death because I didn’t really blow up, but it was a bit of a slow burn to the finish line,” he says.
“That’s what makes the marathon so hard; you can’t have any bad patches.”
The men’s marathon entry standard for the Rio 2016 Olympics was 2:19:00. It plummeted to 2:11:30 for the Tokyo 2021 Olympics. When World Athletics revealed the Paris 2024 benchmark was 2:08:10, the reaction among athletes, coaches and fans was mixed, but many were stunned.
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