outrageous. 29 oly mdeals & NO sponsor ????
Santa Monica braces club.
Is there a list of the 29 medals, WR, AR ?
Guessing you might be the person who posts how great Southern California/LA is every now and then.
Why can’t a storied club like SMTC get sponsorship? Why have the other clubs in the area died? Why have all the meets from the 60s, 70s and 80s vanished?
Why have the UCLA and USC programs fallen on hard times?
I really don’t want an answer to any of the questions but please stop bragging, commenting and criticizing other locations when Southern Cal can’t/won’t take care of its own.
Oh, and I do hope there is a revival there because I love the sport.
i've long been a fan since the days of lewis, et al. i'd like to get one of their track club tshirts. can anyone tell me how i might do that? (besides running sub 10 100m) do they sell them?
if you click on the link to the article, there is an extremely outdated website link at the bottom. i'm pretty sure the contact info under "contact us" is current, though it sounds like he is understaffed and may or may not get back to you.
i'd give you one of mine, but i'm down to my last two...
I still have several of the racing singlets, from the good ol early/mid 1980's. Still fit, too :)
Hey OLD SMTC SOB
I venture to guess that you'd love to go back and do those
old workouts! I ran with Merle I still get nightmares over
timed quarters! When he told us "spike shoes" I would want
to vomit!
The four tops (SMTC, WCE, HSI, and MTC) might be the main WC/Oly medal winning clubs in America but I'm always suprised with the dozens of unknown L.A. coaches who carry guys to medals like Demus, Clay, etc. That kind of depth in T&F can only be found in Los Angeles.
SMTC has an incredible history. Wow.
Hahaha indeed.........I still try to do them, older, and MUCH slower however.
Yes in the late 70's, early to mid 80's when I was running for SMTC, LA was THE place. Even up into the 90's early 2000's, SMTC was still a powerhouse. Sad state of affairs these days it seems. I believe the club lost its Nike sponsorship which is why the dire financial straights, Also, back in the day the club had a foundation, administered by Ed Stotsenberg (also executor of the Mary Pickford estate). When he died I suspect the foundation dried up as well.
Do you remember that dirt track.It was 440 yards and
i swear it had hills!Remember the drainage ditches on
the inside.I recall seeing maybe 40-50 runners on the track
all running quite fast.You Had Joe's group,Merle's,and
Pat Cady's group-nothing but fast runners trying to kill
one another.In those days,we ran 14-17 mile track workouts
on Monday,Tuesday,and Thursday.One of THE TOUGHEST runners
out their,a fellow by the name of Clyde would push the
recovery.We would do 16x330 with a 110 yard recovery and
Clyde would time the whole four miles.Many times we'd run
it in 21:00.On Saturday's,after three TOUGH track workouts,
Merle would give us either 10 "fresh" or 10x880 with a
880 jog.I remember a couple of "bad" fresh runs in 56:00.
None of the other runners ran slower than 7:00 on the easy
days.Thirty years later,I can't even run 6:30 pace
Hey yes I remember the old dirt track, tough on the legs we used to run on the inside grass unless we were doing timed stuff. They put in a new tartan track for the 84 olympics, as the location was identified as an "olymipc training site". That track was as hard as the dirt, I ended up with a stress fracture in early 84 from doing hard intervals on it in spikes.I used to run on occasion with Clyde, he loved to train hard......I was a half/mile runner and he a marathoner so I just ran with him for strength training.
I presume you guys are refering to the track at Santa Monica CC. Which other tracks in the vicinity has SMTC used in the past ?
Indeed...........thats the only one we officially used, every now and then I'd go over to the UCLA track, lots of nice eye candy there :)
J.Gray would never had run as fast if it wasn't for you
and Sonny and some of the others killing themselves to
finish the workouts.I drank a LOT OF BEER in those days
just to forget the pain!I could drink a six-pack and still
maintain my weight(6'0 133lbs). Remember Ruben famous line.....shiitte,even Lloyd's thin"
got to ask wrote:
Guessing you might be the person who posts how great Southern California/LA is every now and then.
Why can’t a storied club like SMTC get sponsorship? Why have the other clubs in the area died? Why have all the meets from the 60s, 70s and 80s vanished?
Why have the UCLA and USC programs fallen on hard times?
I really don’t want an answer to any of the questions but please stop bragging, commenting and criticizing other locations when Southern Cal can’t/won’t take care of its own.
Oh, and I do hope there is a revival there because I love the sport.
I agree. SMTC has a storied past, but that's just it- past. The UCLA men have been irrelevant at the national level since the late 80s. Except for the alternate years when the UCLA-USC dual meet is held at UCLA very few people show up for any meets. UCLA loves recruiting 2nd and 3rd tier athletes who can barely score at the conference meet, let alone at the NCAAs. At least USC tries to recruit quality athletes and score some points at the NCAAs, but with scholarship limitations and the cost of tuition, etc., it makes it virtually impossible to be a championship contender like in the old days.
USC-UCLA are awesome medal machines. Still racking up the medals. Withness Jesse Williams, Allyson Felix, Felix Sanchez, Dawn Harper, Joanna Hayes, John Godina, Ginnie Crawford, etc.