The hottest new word in the Olympics is repechage. It is pronounced rep-eh-shazh and it loosely translates in French to “to fish out” or “second chance.” I tried to say it at a brewery and I think the bartender was concerned I lost the ability to speak after a single beer.
From Wikipedia: allows participants who failed to meet qualifying standards by a small margin to continue to the next round. The Wild Card system in MLB playoffs is a repechage system even though it’s not called that. It’s already been part of Olympic rowing and other sports for years and now track and field is jumping on the bandwagon.
I like it in theory. If you end up with 4 amazing athletes in a prelim race but only the top 3 advance it gives that 4th person a second chance to win an additional race to advance to the next round. It seems like a good compromise because they are penalized for not outright qualifying by having to do that extra race. They won’t be as fresh for the eventual next round while the people who immediately qualified get some time to recover.
But now we have the Freddie Crittenden approach. He is making headlines for jogging his preliminary round in the 110M Hurdles because everyone makes it to the repechage round. He aggravated a muscle in practice and said I’m going to give it a rest for a day and go hard in the repechage.
He did nothing wrong but I think it’s just dramatically different from what we are used to seeing in the prelim rounds that I’m personally having trouble not judging him. And I know I’m a hypocrite because I’m excited for weightlifting to begin where they can skip a weight to give themselves a rest and whenever I see that I think they are being strategic and even mysterious.
But I do think Track should adjust the rules a smidge here in the future. This isn’t 2nd grade gym class where everyone is a winner. This is the Olympics with the motto faster, higher, stronger so I think you should have to earn your second chance. Maybe just two people from each heat make it to the repechage round? And again, not saying Freddie did anything wrong, he made a smart choice within the rules for his situation. But let’s keep at least 1 sport simple and not reinvent the wheel…looking at you 3×3 Basketball.
And adding this that I just saw online and it’s perfect
Royer's Olympic Blog 