More like completely impossible for a 36 year old that doesn't have decades of previous cross country skiing or athletic experience. It is a hugely demanding physical sport and the difference between a top athlete and a proficient amateur is gigantic. He would be better off trying to get bobsled team in a tropical country off the ground and practice sprinting with a sled for a couple of years. You still won't stand a chance at winning but you might qualify.
OK, so let's break this down. How does a person get to the Olympics?
First they have to get a spot on an Olympic team. Since you asked about track and field, let's consider that.
First you have to go through the "trials" for your country. When you run a sanctioned race (i.e., a real competitive race with timekeeping, not a 5K beer run or whatever) if you run it fast enough you might post a qualifying time.
The A time is the "A"utomatic, "you're allowed to come to the trials" time. The B is the "B"ackup - we'll invite you to the trials if you are consistently hitting B times and there aren't enough A people.
If you post an A time (or enough B times), you'll be able to attend the US Olympics track and field trials. You go there and run like a mad man or woman against the best athletes in the country. If you are fast enough, congrats - you're going to the Olympics!
But how fast is "fast enough"?
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A 5K is a pretty common race, right? How fast can you do it? I'm lucky if I can do it in 30 minutes, but I'm a big blubbery programmer.
The B time for a 5K is 13:50.
Let's look at some times for 5Ks. Here's a big one with lots of finishers:
The top 15 are already almost falling outside the qualifying. Do you think any of your friends can finish in the top 15 of the Boston Marathon? I know a guy who has been running all his life, who trained his ass off and ran the Boston Marathon in 2:50 a few years ago - he finished in the top one percent for the race, but that is nowhere near Olympic trial times.
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What about a nice sprint? The 800M A time is 1:46.50, and the B time is 1:48.30. Not too long, or so it seems...
The best college athletes in the country aren't even automatically qualifying. But hey, ~a man and a dream~, right?
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This entire idea is beyond ludicrous. No one's going to "hack their way to the Olympics", especially a 36 year old that is nowhere near their peak physical condition & has limited experience in the sport.
Ah, so it is! I guess my mind saw 'sprint' and went to what was familiar to me.
That said, there is use in comparing something that (I'd wager!) many people know (running) to something far fewer people know(skiing times). Frankly I didn't know how hard 'finishing within 10 minutes' would be; but now I've got something to compare with.
And what that illustrates is that coming anywhere near a qualifying time is extremely difficult.
He isn't trying to qualify for the US team, there will be a minimum standard that he will have to achieve but he isn't competing for a place with anyone else from the same country.
I know several people who have competed at the Winter Olympics in Alpine Skiing for countries that don't have a tradition in the sport.
I believe the season doesn't start until 29 November[1]
The method of calculating scoring is available at [2]. It doesn't make much sense to me though - it appears the second place competitor only gets 0.53 points?
(Now I know way more about cross country skiing than I did this morning)
