... would pretty much end the sport for me.
... would pretty much end the sport for me.
Discus!
I have been to 7 Olympics and 5 World Championships. Berlin was my last Track and Field World Championship. The IOC, USOC and the big shoe companies have ruined the sport .
It is all about money and drugs now and has become far to expensive. A lot of the longer races have become nothing but tome trials. I no longer go nor do I donate to the USOC.,
Orville Atkins, seven Olympics and five World Champs is impressive and I am envious. Let's hope they IOC will not actually do this. Unfortunately, reading some of the press it seems almost a done deal. The IAAF has been corrupt and authoritarian forever, but I would have thought they could at least protect the sport's historical events. It's one thing to have failed to reintroduce cross country, or perhaps add the half-marathon, but to actually LOSE events? Unthinkable.Track and field is the centerpiece of the Olympic Games, and it is hard to believe the sport is now in such a position of weakness. Just speaking of the 10,000 alone--it is a gut punch to think of removing an event where Nurmi, Zatopek, Mills, Viren, Gebreselassie, Bekele have created such glorious memories. And as recently as 1992 we had progress in adding the event for women ... now going backwards? For myself, it would pretty much be the end of the sport--absolutely.
The olympics has been a throttle on athletics ever since its inception. Professional athletics died and has yet to fully recover.
All those glorious histories and memories of past olympics are crowded together. You don't have to wait four years to remember them. But the athletes had to wait four years for them to happen, living in poverty and obscurity, running in meets nobody much cared about. The vast majority of olympic athletes were one and done, a few years of that self-abuse was all they could stand. A championship means little in that context because the competitive field is restricted.
There are two kinds of olympic sports: sports dominated by the IOC, and independent sports that dabble in olympic competition. IOC-dominated sports are almost invariably minor and get very little coverage anywhere else, like badminton, water polo, synchronized swimming, rhythmic gymnastics. Independent sports get huge coverage and involve large sums of money, even the ones with a lot of olympic history. Boxing, skiing, basketball and ice hockey are big in the olympics but even bigger the rest of the time. Marathons are a big olympic deal but that's nothing compared to the majors. Unfortunately track has utterly failed to develop itself outside the olympic contest, and as a result it is and always has been a fringe sport. A school sport with no truly professional level.
"Losing" its olympic presence is just what athletics needs in order to reinvent itself and become popular.
As is often said ...... as goes the USA, so goes the world.
And in the realm of track & field, it is obvious the sport in the USA began to die when the switch was made from imperial distances to metric distances.
Of course, correlation does not necessarily equal causation, so I'll just leave it at that, and you all can believe what you want to believe.
But we can make a legitimate argument that if we could revive the sport in the USA, it would also be revived worldwide. Agreed?
Sean Norton wrote:
And as recently as 1992 we had progress in adding the event for women ...
But you see, that's part of why: more women's participation (in athletics and other sports) means a too-crowded schedule, too-crowded athletes' village, too-expensive production.
I'm not a critic of women's participation--I started the women's t&f/xc programs at three major universities--but I acknowledge the reality.
Does anyone else remember the first World Championship? (Well, apart from the OG, which technically were designated the world championships for athletics.) More countries participated than had ever been in a single Olympics; there was extensive TV coverage every night...it was a beautiful thing.
While it is obviously correct that adding more women's competitions has made the track and field portion of the Olympics more expensive, I find it difficult to believe that this is is an insolvable problem. In fact, it should be an asset. If the IAAF were a merely capable organization and not mired in cronyism and paternalistic modes of thinking, they could grow this sport and use the huge growth of women's sports as a draw for corporate partnerships. Many of the most ardent and knowledgeable track fans I know are women--they are a huge part of our fan base today. Look at the ads in running magazines ...
Regarding the first World Champs in 1983--yes, I remember it very well. It was possibly the best track meet in history, and yes the television coverage was extensive in the USA. I even remember watching the 10,000 meters, one of the only times it was carried on major networks. I also recall reading that the Finns ran that meet with an army of ... volunteers. It was well organized but also grass roots. So, perhaps track could thrive without the Olympics, but the it will not do well if it is only half in the Olympics, and I don't see any good suggestions out there on what the specific model would be as an alternative.