Indonesian sprinter Lalu Muhammad Zohri at the Olympic Games in Tokyo (© AFP / Getty Images)
The Olympic Games will always be the stage on which the world’s greatest sportspeople battle it out for the highest honour. But it’s also a worldwide sporting celebration in which nations big and small come together to compete alongside one another.
Athletes from far-flung countries, many of whom will line up in lanes adjacent to some of the legends of the sport, often provide the enduring images of every Olympics. But not everyone watching in the stadium or at home will understand how those athletes managed to qualify for the Games.
It’s thanks to universality places, which are designed to increase the diversity and gender balance of participating nations across the sports programme of the Olympic Games, and they’re available for national Olympic committees with traditionally small delegations.
For the Paris 2024 Games, the places have been offered to national Olympic committees who participated with an average of eight athletes or fewer in individual sports at the Olympic Games in 2016 and 2021. That constitutes 93 nations in total; 35 from Africa, 18 from the Americas, 17 from Asia, 14 from Oceania, and nine from Europe.
The athletics qualifying system for the Games states:
A national Olympic committee (NOC) with no male or female qualified athlete or relay team will be allowed to enter their best ranked male athlete or their best ranked female athlete in either the 100m, 800m or marathon. This applies equally to unqualified female entries from an NOC with qualified males, and vice versa.
Up until the 2016 Olympics in Rio, NOCs were permitted to enter up to two athletes (one man and one woman) as universality entries, but due to a reduction in the overall quota of athletics places at the Games from 2020 onwards, this was amended to one universality entrant per NOC. The International Olympic Committee can, however, request that World Athletics accepts a second universality entrant for gender balance.
While many of the athletes entered for the Paris Games on a universality place will be lacking in international experience or hail from countries with little or no athletics tradition, other universality entrants are highly accomplished athletes.
They include the likes of 2019 world marathon bronze medallist and 2018 Commonwealth champion Helalia Johannes of Namibia, 2018 world U20 100m champion Lalu Muhammad Zohri of Indonesia, and Mongolian marathon runner Ser-Od Bat-Ochir, who’ll be competing in his sixth Olympic Games.
Helalia Johannes in Doha (© AFP / Getty Images)
When Bat-ochir competed at his first two Olympics in 2004 and 2008, he was entered thanks to universality places. But for the Games in 2012, 2016 and 2021, Bat-ochir achieved the entry standards and qualified by right.
The 42-year-old, who holds the Mongolian record of 2:08:50 and has a season’s best of 2:10:10, will be looking to improve on his 51st-place finish from 2012, his highest placing at an Olympic Games. His best result at a global championships was his 19th-place finish at the 2011 World Championships.
