For field events - at Area, Olympic and World Championship level - UK Athletics should stop applying a discretionary filter on top of the WA / EA qualification mechanism.
Any athlete who holds a Road-to-[championship] Qualifying Position - by entry standard or by ranking - and passes a basic eligibility check should be selected. No further selection criteria should apply.
Most other European federations already select this way (Analysis Group D).
Field events are in decline, and the UK Athletics selection approach is not helping:
If UK Athletices believes that its discretionary selection identifies future success in field events better than the 'Road to ...' qualification mechanism, it should prove that with numbers - published and open to scrutiny.
If UK Athletics disagrees, it should be able to answer two simple questions, with published evidence:
If the answer is 'yes' to either, UK Athletics should publish the evidence. If not, UK Athletics is overriding an objective qualification system with a second test whose value hasn't been demonstrated.
The Athletics Unified strategy, co-authored by UK Athletics defining its 2020-2032 goals, states that the first guiding principle will be to "Put the Athlete First". To that end, UK Athletics should be more transparent, truly collaborative and open to challenge and scrutiny in the defining of its selection philosophy and policies (Analysis Group D).
This work builds on England Athletics' own Field Events Review (May 2025), which identified the same decline (Analysis Group A) but stopped short of reviewing senior selection. This analysis takes up that question independently (see "What this is" below).
The share of a country's medals that came from field events, by four-year period - GB & NI against the European average (full detail, more country groups and an entrant-share view on track vs field split - that detailed chart shows that GB & NI is bottom of comparable country groups in Europe for the % of medals earned that are field events).
If the recommendation above isn't adopted, these six narrower asks would still meaningfully improve transparency. None of them changes the standard required for selection - they concern what is visible, what has been tested, and what evidence supports the decision-making process.
1. UK Athletics should publicly state what their 2032 goal is, and publish progress against it. In 2020, UK Athletics and the four Home Country Athletics Federations jointly published Athletics Unified, a 12-year strategy that explicitly moved away from "a focus on winning medals at all costs" and committed to GB & NI having a representative in every discipline at all senior international events by 2032, with an annual public report promised to track progress. That commitment has not been publicly withdrawn - England Athletics' own strategy page, current as of November 2025, still names it as the current UK-wide strategy - but it does not appear anywhere in UK Athletics' own 2025 Strategic Report, and no progress report against it could be found. UK Athletics should state plainly what the 2032 goal is and where the sport currently stands against it, event by event. If it has been superseded, that should be stated plainly too, rather than left to infer from its absence.
Sources: UK Athletics et al., "Athletics Unified" (2020); England Athletics, "Our Strategy" (accessed/current November 2025); UK Athletics Limited, 2025 Strategic Report.
2. Publish the tools before the qualification window opens. An athlete should be able to see what they will be measured against. Most federations that use a numeric standard publish it months ahead.
3. Where a projected qualifying mark informs a selection decision, publish the basis and the error attached to it. Our analysis shows that the choice of method matters a great deal: one common approach over-predicted in every edition tested, by nearly two and a half metres on average, while a simple average of recent editions was close to unbiased. Even the better method is typically out by more than a metre, which is larger than the year-on-year improvement most senior throwers make. A projection stated without that error range reads as more certain than the evidence supports, and the size of the error is material to any judgement about whether an athlete is within reach of a mark.
4. Publish the funnel's discriminating power, event by event. We have run this test for javelin and the method is documented on the funnel page. Position and trajectory combined separates medallists from other finalists at roughly two to one; a single season below the line separates them barely at all. Which version is in use matters, and the difference is measurable. The same test can be run for any event from the same public data.
5. Name one test in the policy and use it consistently. Capability, likelihood, ability and potential appear in different rounds of the same document. They are not the same question, and an athlete cannot know which applies to them.
6. Independently validate the predictive value of the selection process. If UK Athletics believes discretionary selection identifies future championship success more accurately than qualification itself, that claim should be tested independently and published. An athlete-led review, supported by independent statistical scrutiny, would provide a mechanism for doing so.
Three analyses test whether the decline is real, whether it is a field-specific pattern rather than a general one, and whether the path ahead gets easier or harder.
Does the UK send fewer entrants to Olympics/Worlds than other European countries, and does that show up in fewer medals?
GB & NI's Olympic/World medal-conversion rate (medals as a share of entrants) has matched or exceeded the European average in 4 of the last 7 four-year periods since 2000. But that headline number hides a shift underneath it: while GB & NI does well on medals overall, field events have become a shrinking share of both its entrants and its medals - from 31% of entrants in 2000-2003 to 22% in 2024-2027.
Does the UK send proportionally fewer field-event entrants than other European countries, and win proportionally fewer field medals?
Field events (including the combined events, which count as field) have been 45-53% of Europe's senior entrants at European/Olympic/World Championships in every period since 2000, but only 22-31% of GB & NI's - a gap that has widened, not narrowed, and is already visible at U20 level too. Europe also wins the majority of its own Olympic/World medals from field events (62-79%), while GB & NI's Olympic/World field-medal share fell to 13% (2020-2023) and 20% (2024-2027).
World Athletics now requires entry-standard marks to come from Category C competitions or better - how many does the UK actually host?
UK Athletics' own selection policy states it prioritises athletes with the European Athletics Entry Standard over those relying on a ranking position - but Beijing 2027 requires that standard to be set at a Category C competition or better, and the UK hosts few of these. The UK hosted just 4 such meets in 2026, ranking 22 of 46 European countries with at least one - despite being one of the better-funded federations in Europe.
Three analyses test what a successful field-event career actually looks like on the way up, not just at the point of a medal.
At Olympic/World level, are field-event medals won at an older age than track medals?
At Olympic/World level, field-event medallists average 27.5 years old at the point of a medal, against 26.1 for track - a gap of 1.4 years, across 1,145 field and 1,247 track medals since 1999. The per-event, per-gender breakdown is on the full page.
Is prior championship experience - at area, Olympic or World level - a precursor to global medals?
Field-event medallists had 4.5 senior championships (area, Olympic or World) on average before their first global medal, against 3.2 for track medallists. 40% of all 530 medallists in this dataset did not reach the final the first time they showed up at a senior championship, whatever event it was in. The per-event, per-gender breakdown is on the full page.
Did medallists actually stay within the funnel throughout their development?
Six in ten had at least one season below the line, so one season says little. Quite a few medallists had a fair bit of their career below the P25 funnel, sometimes half or more of their comparable seasons, before they won their first international medal.
Two analyses directly test the two tools that could justify a more selective approach - and find neither one beats the alternative of just trusting who has already qualified.
Does the mark it takes to reach a final move around by the same amount from one championships to the next in every event, or are some events much harder to predict than others?
The mark it takes to reach a final swings by an average of 2.2% of its typical level between championships for field events, against 1.2% for track - field events are about 1.9 times as volatile. Women's hammer is the single most volatile event tested (4.2%), men's 110m hurdles the steadiest (0.8%).
How accurately can the mark needed to make a final be forecast?
A form-based method over-predicted in 10 editions out of 10, by 2.30m on average. A simple historical average was nearly unbiased, with a typical error of 1.27m.
Three analyses look at how other federations actually select, and whether UK Athletics' own selection and appeals process gives an athlete any way to test a panel's judgement.
Do other European federations select athletes who hold a world ranking quota place?
Of 28 federations, two state expressly that they need not fill an event place. Of the ten publishing a national standard, nine set it below the European Athletics standard so it can only affect ranking-route athletes, and nine of ten can and did waive it.
Where a Selection Policy is built around the panel's own judgement, does the Appeals Procedure give an athlete any way to test that judgement?
The Fast Appeals Procedure's four grounds of appeal expressly exclude the panel's judgement and discretion from challenge, while the Selection Policy hands most non-automatic decisions to open, unweighted, undisclosed-priority criteria - so the ground built to catch a bad process has very little to bite on once the Policy itself is written this openly. The Policy also describes no route for an athlete to put their own evidence to the panel in advance, and uses two different evidentiary thresholds - "capability" in its general objectives, "likelihood" in the round that decides most ranking-route selections - for what sounds like the same test.
What does governance require of UK Athletics on athlete engagement, and what is actually published?
The Code for Sports Governance requires Tier 3 organisations to publish a stakeholder engagement strategy covering elite athletes, reviewed annually by the Board. This page compares what is required with what is published, and with what other federations publish.
Has UK Athletics' selection-policy tightening since 2023 actually shown up in GB & NI's field-event results and pipeline?
The share of GB & NI field entrants getting their first-ever senior cap fell to 0.0% at Budapest 2023 and stayed under 10% through the next three editions (9.1%, 0.0%, 9.1%), before jumping to 57.9% at a home Birmingham 2026. Track's equivalent rate over those same four non-home editions (13.8%, 40.5%, 8.6%, 20.0%) kept swinging in both directions, with no comparable sustained floor - evidence the policy, not a general decline, hit field specifically.
There are real, non-statistical reasons a federation might still choose to filter: a panel can see things no dataset here captures - an injury history, a technical fix a coach has just made, form on the day - and a smaller, more targeted squad is a legitimate use of a fixed travel/coaching/physio budget, a resource-allocation judgement no results dataset can settle either way. But the counter-argument that is a statistical claim - that judgement produces a more accurate read of who is genuinely competitive than the alternatives - does not hold up well against Analysis Groups B and C above. A companion analysis of GB & NI's own results against its own selection-policy timeline found field's first-cap rate fell to 0.0% at Budapest 2023 and stayed under 10% through the next three editions, before jumping to 57.9% at a home Birmingham 2026 - with no comparable step-change on the track side over the same span - evidence the policy, not a general decline, hit field specifically, though every figure there carries its own small-sample caveats.
Field events in Britain are in decline. That is not a contested claim.
A note on how this project started: it began with my son Michael Allison's own selection case for these championships - he held a qualifying position and was not selected. Everything on this site is drawn from public World Athletics data or published governing-body documents, documented and sourced on each page, and every figure here can be checked independently of that starting point.
England Athletics commissioned a Field Events Review in late 2024, prompted by "concerns over the depth of grassroots participation in field events and the transition of talented athletes from junior to senior level, alongside reflections on selections and performances at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games". Its situational analysis puts it plainly: field and combined events are 43% of the medals available in athletics at the Olympic Games, yet since 2000 the UK has won 6 medals in the jumps, 6 in the heptathlon, and 2 in the throws. Steve Backley described the same decline in Athletics Weekly in April 2024, as something structural rather than individual.
The England Athletics review stopped short of senior selection, deliberately. Its Terms of Reference state it "will not focus on World Class Performance responsibilities that fall under the direct remit and control of UKA", and refer those matters to a parallel UK Athletics review of "Field event development and leadership in the World Class space". England Athletics invited further input into the ongoing work.
This project looks at the area that was referred onward. It measures the decline in entrants and medals, asks what a field-event medallist's development actually looks like, asks whether UK Athletics' selection policy accommodates that, and asks what happens to an athlete who thinks it has not.
Everything is drawn from World Athletics data or published governing-body documents. Each page documents its own method and sources. Two of the twelve use javelin as a worked example, because it is the event where the underlying data in this website is most complete; both are marked accordingly.
Two other accounts of British field-event decline are worth reading alongside this one. Both approach it from development and coaching rather than from selection policy, and both reach the same broad conclusion from that direction.
England Athletics' Field Events Review (May 2025) was prompted partly by "concerns over the depth of grassroots participation in field events and the transition of talented athletes from junior to senior level, alongside reflections on selections and performances at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games".
Steve Backley, interviewed by Athletics Weekly in April 2024, framed the problem as structural rather than individual. He compares the state of British throws now to British middle-distance running in the late 1990s and early 2000s - "we were so good in the 80s and 90s" - and points to the current generation of British middle-distance athletes as evidence of what changes it, describing their successes as "more manufactured in that they seem to come from a well-structured, supportive system of development", and adding "there are some clues there in how to go about this". He also names individual coaches currently producing results in the throws as reason to think the position is recoverable.
The two pieces of work are complementary rather than overlapping, and it is worth being explicit about which is which.
What this project has that the Review does not: a country-by-country, period-by-period quantification of field-event entrant and medal share against the rest of Europe, extended to U20 level (pages 1-2); a systematic test, across every event rather than javelin alone, of how long athletes typically take to develop (pages 4-5); a direct statistical test of the two tools that inform UK Athletics' own selection judgement (pages 6 and 8); and an analysis of the Selection Policy and Fast Appeals Procedure themselves - whether an athlete can actually challenge a judgement-based decision (page 10) - which sits entirely outside the Review's scope. The Review does not attempt an international comparison, a quantitative test of any selection tool, or an examination of the senior selection or appeals process.
What the Review has that this project does not: club-level participation numbers, coaching workforce figures and facility investment trends that are not public; first-hand evidence from interviews and a two-part webinar series with coaches, officials, clubs and facility providers; and the standing, as an official Task and Finish Group reporting to the England Athletics Board, to propose - and for UK Athletics to actually implement - changes to coaching, facilities, competition structure and schools provision. This project has none of that: no participation data below international-championship level, no interviews, and no ability to act on any of it beyond publishing the analysis.
In short: the Review is mainly about why fewer people end up capable of being field athletes in the first place. This project is mainly about what happens to the ones who do, at senior selection, and whether the international results pattern is consistent with that story. Neither the Review nor the Backley interview examines senior or age-group selection policy, the appeals process, or the statistical tools behind selection judgements - which is the gap this project addresses.
This page and the twelve analyses it links to add up to a lot of reading, and several pages let you filter or change what's shown. If you'd rather have it all in one document, open the printable version and use your browser's Print » Save as PDF option to download it. The PDF shows each page's default view only, not every possible filter combination.
The underlying data updates every few days as World Athletics publishes new tournament results and performances, so the tables, charts and figures throughout this series - and the PDF - can change between visits.
Pages 1, 2, 4-8 and 12 query World Athletics data directly and live, so their numbers move as new results are loaded; methods are documented on each page. Page 9 draws on our own database of federations' published selection-policy documents, not World Athletics data. Page 10 is sourced entirely to two named, linked, public UK Athletics documents - the Selection Policy and the Fast Appeals Procedure - quoted and paragraph-cited directly; it does not draw on any confidential material. Page 3's category-count table queries World Athletics calendar data live from a database table refreshed by a scheduled loader; its per-event meet-programme table is a dated manual snapshot rather than a live query (noted on that page). Page 11 documents published governance and policy sources, cited inline. Corrections welcome.