New Haven 20K doubled as US 2027 World Roads selection
Jonathan Gault says the winners get team spots for Yangzhou, at a championship nobody could follow in real time.
The USATF 20K championship in New Haven was more than a title race. Jonathan Gault says it was the US half marathon selection event for the 2027 World Road Running Championships, and that winners Charles Hicks and Rachael Rudel will be offered spots on next year's World Roads team.
Winners Charles Hicks and Rachael Rudel will be offered spots on next year's World Roads team.
That is the piece missing from Monday's result. Rudel won her first USATF title in 1≤04≤58 for 20K, 29 seconds off the course record, and Hicks took the men's title despite finishing 3 seconds behind Oregon Track Club teammate Kieran Tuntivate, who represents Thailand and won the race outright in 58≤03 (earlier).
Two World Roads in seven months
Gault says that after a three year gap without a World Road Running Champs, there will be two of them in the next seven months. The 2026 edition is next weekend in Copenhagen. The 2027 edition is in Yangzhou, China. It is meant to be an annual event from here, though Gault notes the 2025 champs in San Diego were cancelled.
So a Labor Day road race in Connecticut just picked part of the US team for the second one.
Nobody could watch it
The other thing people noticed is that a national championship with team selection on the line had no live coverage of the results. McKirdy Trained called it comical, saying local 5Ks deliver faster instant results. David M put it more simply, asking whether anyone really ran if a 20K takes place in Connecticut but no one is around to see it.
David Monti's wrap adds one more oddity. His post says the race winner got no prize money, but second place did. No source explains why.
What it actually means. The result itself was not new, but the stakes were. Hicks and Rudel did not just collect national titles, they earned an offer to run for the US at Yangzhou in 2027, and the sport found out a day later because there was no tracker to tell anyone at the time.
Not having tracker or live results… in this day and age… at a @usatf championship… is comical.
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