Rewarded for Qualifying

The majority of individual sprinting events have Preliminaries to give everyone a fair chance in winning the race. Preliminaries usually start in the beginning of the meet so that each race can be evaluated as soon as possible so the meet can continue. Remember a Meet is the entire Track event itself. Sometimes the heats are ‘seated’, which means that they by times, the times must be a certain length like 12.7 seconds—which is fast. The cut off for times is usually nothing over 13 seconds because that means you aren’t fast enough to be involved in the race. (time given is usually for a 100 meter dash). The next races are called Semi-finals because it explains itself, they’re before the finals. These races slim the runners down to about 7-8 runners at the most depending on the race. Some track meets are out to the get the runners because there are semi-semi-finals which makes the chances for runners that qualify even slimmer. But that normally does not happen. Finals are the main event that shows who is the best at that event specifically, and its overall in the entire meet out of all the teams. A runner feels amazing at the end if they win overall because that means they are the best at the moment.  

Field events also have qualifying flights. Flights are which bracket the jumper or thrower is in. Again each flight is set up with where individuals are in the same range of height, length, or distance. The field event work the same way only there is usually just preliminaries and finals because not often does it take much to beat others with more than one throw or jump.

*This is from a elementary to high school level perspective, at the college level things become more complex.