Teenage marathon sensation Alana Hadley will not be age eligible for the 2016 Olympic Team. A Facebook post by Alana's father and coach Mark Hadley states:



“I wanted to inform you that we have learned in the last 24 hours that Alana's name has been taken off the USATF list of athletes who have qualified because of a new age requirement for the event that we only recently became aware of. Evidently the IAAF.…puts out the eligibility requirements for competing in the Olympics sometime in the year before the event. For the 2012 Olympics they added a rule that states you must reach 20 yrs of age before the end of the Olympic year in order to compete in the marathon. The USOC/USATF expects the rule to be the same for the 2016 Olympics when it is released sometime later this year. With a January 8th birthday, Alana falls 8 days short of meeting this requirement....Frankly it is hard for us to fathom why a 19-yr-old (at that time) would not be deemed old enough for the Olympic Marathon if she had met the time and all other requirements and made her country's team."





Hadley became the youngest runner in 30 years to hit the qualifying time as a 16-year-old in 2013, with her 2:41.56 fourth-place finish at the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon. She returned to the course this past November and won the race outright, breaking Colleen De Reuck's course record with an 2:38.34 effort. She is the second-fastest high school marathoner in history.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://polldaddy.com/poll/8676525/"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;If she qualifies, should teenager Alana Hadley be allowed to race the marathon in the Olympic Games?&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Below, the teenager reacts to the news:











