Are we witnessing the death of the marathon?

One of my 7th graders picked Kimetto to win, and missed his winning time by 20 seconds. So, yeah, today was a total surprise.

99% of marathoners couldn't name the winner. This isn't new issue. Most people would refer to the winner as a Kenyan. They might help the sport in terms of setting the bar high for other runners to break but the Kenyan runner does nothing for the sport in the spectator/popularity sense. This is something only Geb has been able to do. They know him well in Europe and Japan.

You'd be amazed how much having some personality/charisma could do to your career. I barely understood what the Chicago winner was saying in his interview. The agents find these guys raw from some place in Kenya and ship them off to a race without proper training in media relations. If anything, it's the agents that are ruining the marathon.

I liked the good old days when all those cookie cutter americans use to win marathons

Could anybody really tell the difference between Shorter, Rodgers, Meyer, Richardson, Coppess, Fleming, Salazar?

Or, maybe, others of us find it all the more compelling to watch. What the east Africans are doing is hard to fathom. I am more interested now than ever before to see how fast these guys get.

Instead of being bitter and beaten, why not appreciate watching times run that weren't even imaginable a few years ago?

Ryan Hall, god love him, has no personality and no charisma. But he is white. If you're suggesting that more people would be interested in the big marathons if they were won by white people, I can't disagree. Look at how popular Michael Phelps, Lance Armstrong, et. al. are.

And since you brought him up, Geb is no more popular than any of the Mutais or Bekele or any of the others. No one other than us letsrunners knows who Geb is.

I'm not going to sit around and wait for middle America to start rooting for and following the sporting exploits of East Africans. It's not going to happen. All we can do is follow the sport and support its best athletes, and the rest of the chips will fall where they may.

Only if you are nationalistic with a ethnicisstic twitch or even care about what the heck a RUNNER says, but I only care about the performance so it doesn't matter who does it I just see the 2:06,2:05,2:04,2:03,2:02 here we come and say awesome that's one giant leap for mankind. I've been living in the most exciting time in that regard compared to your miserable life I guess.

yep. wrote:

You'd be amazed how much having some personality/charisma could do to your career. I barely understood what the Chicago winner was saying in his interview. The agents find these guys raw from some place in Kenya and ship them off to a race without proper training in media relations. If anything, it's the agents that are ruining the marathon.

Sure... they could use football as the model...

Kevin52 wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=BerJdS2VJhA#t=68

Pretty sure that's why they make them keep their helmets on.

Is there any way we could change the rules to allow quarterbacks to be essential to winning the marathon?

I think the current crop of 2:03 - 2:05 runners makes the marathon spectacular. Love the fact the japanese are knocking on the door too.

Michael Phelps and Lance were famous because they won, not cause they're white. No one would know who Phelps is if he didn't have that amazing Olympics in 2008. I don't think anyone knew him before all his gold medals.

It's about like S. Korean lady golfers. Robots.

Being white didn't hurt them. Being a black African does. And thats the realities of life.

Very, very few people in middle class America has any understanding or appreciation of where the Africans come from and how hard they work to make it to the levels they do.

Do you really think Kimmeto walked off his farm and jogged a few miles and won Chicago? You think he didn't train as hard as Mosop or Kitwara or Hall or Ritz? Then whats the problem?

I'm thrilled he won, because hes a fantastic runner. Period.

No.

We'll look back on this time and ask whatever happened to fast marathons.

That may be the death.

maybe the press was wrong, they stated he just started running three years ago, if true, basically he did walked off this farm and won chicago...in comparsion of most elite marathoners!

I may be romanticizing the past, but didn't wanjiru stand out among the anonymous Kenyans?

Assumign he did, why was that? Most importantly, he kept showing up to races so you remembered him from year to year.

(Also, his appearance was unusual, he was the OG champ, there was something very aggressive about his running...and there was no 'kip' in his name I suppose. )

What gets people interested is seeing the same guy year after year - Grete Waits and Tegla loroupe are still beloved in NYC because they kept showing up year after year.

If Dennis keeps showing up year after year then he might become loved. But most likely...he will run 1 or 2 more marathons and then disappear. That's terrible for the sport.

I follow the sport and I couldn't pick out the winner of NYC, Chicago, or Boston in a line up.

To deny that "The Kenyans" are terrible for the marketing of the sport is to deny reality.

The sport is dying in the US. When yet another unknown Kenyan wins a major marathon it does nothing to inspire those or interest Americans. If anything it does the opposite. When a Frank Shorter or Bill Rodgers wins it makes you want to go out and run a 20 mile tempo because in the back of your mind your thinking, "maybe, just maybe, I can do this too". When a Kenyan wins you think, "well what the hell's the point, I'm from the wrong country. I could run 150 miles a week for years and year and still not come within a mile of elites".

ho hum wrote:

The sport is dying in the US. When yet another unknown Kenyan wins a major marathon it does nothing to inspire those or interest Americans. If anything it does the opposite. When a Frank Shorter or Bill Rodgers wins it makes you want to go out and run a 20 mile tempo because in the back of your mind your thinking, "maybe, just maybe, I can do this too". When a Kenyan wins you think, "well what the hell's the point, I'm from the wrong country. I could run 150 miles a week for years and year and still not come within a mile of elites".

"America #1! Wait, America not #1? I give up, who gives a sh!t?"