Paxton Bennett

🇺🇸 THE TOO-EARLY 2028 U.S. OLYMPIC MARATHON TRIALS POWER RANKINGS ARE BACK! 📈📉 The fall marathon season has delivered some BIG shakeups. New faces have emerged, veterans have reminded us they’re not going anywhere and the race for just three spots on the U.S. Olympic team is looking more competitive than ever. With the World Marathon Majors in the books, we’re updating our rankings of the top 15 American men heading toward the 2028 Olympic Trials in St. Louis. 👀 Some of the biggest storylines: 📈 Zouhair Talbi takes over the No. 1 spot after a remarkable year that included a Houston victory and top American honors in Boston and New York. 🔥 Clayton Young climbs to No. 2 after running 2:05:23 in Chicago, while Conner Mantz slides to No. 3 following an injury-disrupted season. 👴 Galen Rupp is BACK in the conversation after clocking 2:06:55 in Chicago at 40 years old. 🚀 Vincent Mauri, Ahmed Muhumed and Aidan Troutner are among the newcomers shaking up the rankings. For this edition, we teamed up with Rory Linkletter of the Out & Back Podcast for a special crossover episode to debate the rankings, make our cases and try to figure out who has the best shot at making the team in 2028. We had a hard enough time agreeing on 15. Good luck picking three. 🎧 Hear the full breakdown on The CITIUS MAG Podcast, available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, with the video version on the CITIUS MAG YouTube channel. APPLE PODCASTS: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas… SPOTIFY: open.spotify.com/episode/33h… YOUTUBE: youtu.be/z29mx_ZcThs?si=17yF… 💬 Who's ranked too high? Who's too low? And who's your early pick to make the Olympic team? 💻 Read it here: thelapcount.substack.com/i/2…

2028 LOS ANGELES OLYMPIC QUALIFYING STANDARDS HAVE ARRIVED! 🇺🇸 World Athletics has announced the qualification system for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games. The framework features the same anticipated qualification split of 40% of athletes by standard and 60% by world rankings that we’ll see for next year’s World Championships in Beijing. The qualification windows are as follows: - Marathon: Nov. 1, 2026 - Apr. 30, 2028 - 10,000m, Combined Events, Race Walk and Relays: Dec. 19, 2026 - June 18, 2028 - All other events: June 19, 2027 - June 18, 2028 Two important qualification caveats for the marathon specifically: - Finishing inside the Top 5 at a Platinum Label race counts as a qualifying performance, regardless of time. - Federations can reallocate a position in the quota to an unqualified athlete of their choosing that has run faster than 2:11:00 for men or 2:29:00 for women. Qualifying spots in the relays will largely be determined by the 2028 World Relays, held in The Bahamas that April. For the Olympics, there are no pathways to qualification through wild cards in the same way there are for World Championships.

The LA28 Olympic standards are out, and making the Games has never been harder. But it’s not because of the times 👀

FINALISTS NAMED FOR WORLD ATHLETE OF THE YEAR 🌎 World Athletics has announced its three finalists for Male Athlete of the Year, selected from a list of ten nominees using a combination of fan, athlete, and media voting. 🇧🇷 Alison dos Santos: 400m hurdles world record, World Ultimate champion, and Diamond League final winner. 🇸🇪 Mondo Duplantis: pole vault world record, World Indoor, and World Ultimate champion. 🇰🇪 Sabastian Sawe: London Marathon champion in a world-record 1:59:30, the first record-eligible sub-two-hour marathon in history. The winner will be announced on November 29th at World Athletics’s annual award ceremony in Monaco. Who’s your pick?? 🤔