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.

In most running events, including the 100m dash and the marathon, the Olympic entry standards for the Paris Games dropped.

The men’s and women’s marathon qualification times were slashed significantly, which was a move made by World Athletics largely in response to the super shoe boom.

Buchanan had been training for December’s Fukuoka Marathon, but a stress reaction in his femur ruined that plan.

He chose to run the Hamburg Marathon because he needed to pick a race at the end of the qualification window, buying as much time as possible to regain fitness after dealing with his injury.

“Straight afterwards [the Hamburg Marathon] I was a bit disappointed because I knew I was on that 2:08:10 pace for a lot of the race, and it’s really frustrating knowing you’re slowing and seeing a group in front of you that are probably on pace and every part of you wants to be with that group but you just can’t do it. So it was pretty frustrating when I finished knowing that it was just there. I’ve dreamed of going to the Olympics for a while now,” Buchanan says.

“But knowing I ran an 80-second PB [personal best], knowing it’s only my fourth marathon, it has me excited for the future.”

In a telling indication of just how strict World Athletics has become with the Olympic marathon entry standards, Buchanan’s coach, Scott Westcott, qualified for the Rio 2016 Games by running the Berlin Marathon in 2:15:30.

Some eight years on, Buchanan’s 2:08:58 doesn’t cut the mustard.

“It’s just crazy to think about,” he says.

“It’s funny going to these races and you see 30 or 40 Kenyans that are probably nowhere near the top-level Kenyans or Ugandans or Ethiopians for their country. There are just so many of them.

“[Australian distance runner] Ryan Gregson said this to me — when he was at his prime he was in the top 10 in the world for the 1500m, and he was like, ‘With the marathon, if you’re in the top 10 you’re running 2:03’. Our top guys are running 2:07-2:08. It’s such a different world.

“It is frustrating, but I do understand why they’ve done it [cut the entry standards significantly].”

Australia’s Brett Robinson and Patrick Tiernan have qualified for the Paris Games by meeting the entry standard, while Liam Adams will round out a team of three through world rankings.

Pondering his future in the sport now the Paris Games are out of the picture, Buchanan’s eyes are locked on the world’s leading marathons, such as Berlin, Chicago and Valencia.

He admits it’s unlikely that he’ll qualify for the 2025 World Athletics Championships in Tokyo or the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics, given the marathon entry standards will only continue to fall.

Regardless of what his future holds, he will always cherish two green and gold singlets, having represented Australia at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games and the 2023 World Cross Country Championships in Bathurst.

“I’m really keen to just do some different marathons,” Buchanan says.

“That’s the good thing about marathon running; if you don’t make those [Australian] teams, there’s still plenty of really big races you can do.”

He received a text from a legend of Australian marathon running, Ballarat local Steve Moneghetti, after crossing the finish line in Hamburg in 2:08:58.

“I got a message from Mona saying, ‘Welcome to the 2:08 club’, and I said, ‘Ah, I only just scraped in!'” Buchanan says.

“To get that kind of message from him was really special.”

Robinson (2:07:31), Tiernan (2:07:45), Robert de Castella (2:07:51), Moneghetti (2:08:16), Derek Clayton (2:08:34), Adams (2:08:39) and Buchanan (2:08:58) are the only Australians who’ve cracked the 2:09 barrier.

“I saw my watch at about 200 [metres] to go and I was like, ‘Ah, 2:08 something sounds so much better than 2:09’,” Buchanan says with a laugh.

So he broke into a sprint, getting his cadence, knee lift and arm swing really going, and took up his place in the 2:08 club.