Different rules for different sports: [QUOTE] A broken bone in his right hand will keep Paul Hamm, the reigning all-around Olympic gymnastics champion, out of the U.S. trials next month, but not necessarily out of the Beijing Games. If the same injury happened to Michael Phelps, imperial master of the pool, he'd have to find a waterproof cast and swim through the pain. Injury petitions don't exist in his sport or in track and field. Their Olympic trials are merciless. It doesn't matter if you're Dan O'Brien, the best decathlete in the world. Make a silly mistake at the wrong moment, and you're done. Your Olympic dream is on hold for four more years. But certain athletes don't have to show up. Michelle Kwan used a medical waiver as her ticket to the Turin Games two years ago. Nancy Kerrigan, receiving the most defensible injury exemption of the bunch, pushed a 13-year-old Kwan aside in 1994. [/QUOTE] Also, some sports have the minimum age requirements for competing in the Olympics like in ice skating and gymnastics and some like swimming and diving don't. [QUOTE] A phone call from Steve Penny, president of USA Gymnastics, further clarified the differences. Olympic gymnastics is primarily a team event, he said, and just as in basketball or the eight-man boat in crew, rankings from individual competition can't establish a proper roster. "It's like if you put together a baseball team full of first basemen," Penny said Wednesday, the day after Hamm's surgery. "You wouldn't go very far." So the six-man squad, he said, is never automatically chosen off the trials. Only the top two finishers win Olympic berths, and even they can't go if they lack the range of skills needed for the United States to win a medal in the all-around team event. [/QUOTE] They say top 2 is guaranteed I think, and then they make the team around them. Swimming Olympic Trials: [QUOTE] People in the timed sports occasionally find themselves envying the subjective approach. At the 2004 Australian swimming trials, megastar Ian Thorpe, the world-record holder in the 400-meter freestyle, fell into the pool before the horn. He was called for a false start and disqualified. The nation went into apoplexy. Because Thorpe had made the team in other events, he was eligible to swim the 400 in Athens if one of the true qualifiers gave up his spot. Craig Stevens, under enormous pressure, ultimately accepted a hefty fee from a television station, where he announced that he would yield to Thorpe. Later, Australian lawyers held a seminar to explore the possibility of reforming the selection process in a way that might have allowed Thorpe into the 400 without the tawdry payoff. The conclusion? In a sport governed by the clock, any deviation from the strict order of finish could provoke a compelling lawsuit. These athletes, unlike those judged by humans, do not take kindly to gray areas. The Olympic trials are the selection process, no excuses or exceptions allowed. In other words, Phelps has to stay healthy. [/QUOTE] "Olympic trials imbalance precarious, but is it fair?" http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/29/SPLD10URSE.DTL