Letsrun community,
As you all know the Olympic Trials are only a few short days away. Over the last year a lot of Track and Field fans and athletes have discussed promoting our sport beyond just the Olympics. The trials is a great place to start. It has high stakes, both an Olympic berth and U.S. title, and all the best U.S. Track and Field athletes will be there.
One thing it does not have is a lot of main stream media coverage. It has always been my personal opinion that ESPN dictates what sports are popular in the United States. Fortunately for us, the consumer, ESPN has newly dedicated itself to consumer input, becoming newly responsive to twitter especially.
The idea. We, as a community that is passionate about Track and Field, need to lobby ESPN via social networking, twitter specifically, to cover the Olympic Trials. It is my belief that if enough fans start tweeting about the meet before it happens to generate some hype (or at the very least knowledge that it is occurring) and then tweet about athletes, stories, or exciting races, it would help to promote our sport and our athletes to people outside the immediate track and field community.
What we would need is for everyone to get on twitter and tweet at ESPN, Sports Center and PTI particularly, using #OlympicTrials or including our favorite athletes twitter names (@NickSymmonds, @BernardLagat, etc…) We need to ask them about their coverage or express our own excitement “Cant wait for the #OlympicTrials in Eugene, whats the best storyline? @SportsCenter” "Who will win the 1500 at the #OlympicTrials in 7 days? @Sportscenter" or something to that effect. I really do think this can work. If the Egyptians can use twitter to depose Hosni Mubarak I think a bunch of running nerds can get some video of Galen Rupp on SportsCenter. I am personally still angry the 2008 Olympic Trials Men’s 800 meter final was not a SportsCenter top play.
Looking forward, we just need support. Tweet this thread to fellow friends AND CELEBRITIES (running related or not, maybe we can get Lady Gaga or Edward Norton on board). I know Letsrun trolls will tear this down, and really cannot be deterred (that’s why they are the best trolls) but if we don’t try we will never know. I think its time to back up all our talk about getting this sport a wider audience. All it might take is a few tweets.
Sincerely,
A fan of Track and Field