Alan Abrahamson takes a shot at LRC thread on "Fire Dennis Mitchell Now"

Abrahmson is a no-talent shill.

totorious wrote:

Abrahmson is a no-talent shill.

I won't say he isn't talented. But he is a shill for USATF. He clearly is paid to write for USATF. I may bump that old thead he ignored.

Mundus Vult Decipi wrote:

totorious wrote:

Abrahmson is a no-talent shill.

I won't say he isn't talented. But he is a shill for USATF. He clearly is paid to write for USATF. I may bump that old thead he ignored.

Based on the long, rambling and diversionary nature of this article, USATF must pay him by the word. He talked about everything but the actual subject of the article - the ability to simply get the stick around the track.

Just read the article, as fans of the sport we have a right to be disappointed. And many of us might know more than Abrahamson gives us credit for. I for one went through the usatf school taking their courses and usatfccca's sprint course. I'm sure many here who didn't still know more than I.

We're not getting the results at major meets, big deal we won 5/6 at the Penn meet. We still screw up. Hire Vince Anderson or another proven relay coach.

Abahamson hangs off the USATF jock like Ken Goe does off Nike's. "Toady" is the word that comes to mind.

Mitchell is a huge middle finger raised against all that is integrity in sport.

Don't have time to read the article at the moment, but dropped batons is not Mitchell's fault. The USA has been dropping the baton for decades under many different coaches. As even a high school coach can tell you, relay runners need to know how each other reacts under actual race situations. At the elite level you are never going to get in enough practice with the same athletes to understand each other's instincts and instincts are what athletics resort to when under pressure.

Well, I'm not a track coach, but I do believe that coaching has a LOT do with it. The only way to know how your teammates react is to practice, practice, practice. And you coach when to take off from your mark, how to pass the baton, and how to receive the baton. Just dissecting the last SNAFU at Penn, it looks to me like Young took off too early, stuck his left hand back, and when the baton was not there he started waving his left arm back and forth trying to "find" the baton - leaving Gay to try and hit a moving target. That comes down to coaching - put your hand back and let the guy passing the baton find your hand - and isn't Mitchell Young's full-time coach ? Sure, isolated incidents will occur, but when its continuous among teams with different individuals that comes down to coaching IMO.

Abrahamson is as incompetent and crooked as Siegel, Hightower and Mitchell. Plus, a shill for Nike's corrupt 23 year stranglehold on sponsorship.

If you make it to the end of the article, he blames the handoff snafu on Adidas and New Balance. Now that's classy.

TrackCoach wrote:

Don't have time to read the article at the moment, but dropped batons is not Mitchell's fault. The USA has been dropping the baton for decades under many different coaches. As even a high school coach can tell you, relay runners need to know how each other reacts under actual race situations. At the elite level you are never going to get in enough practice with the same athletes to understand each other's instincts and instincts are what athletics resort to when under pressure.

The article is drivel. Yes the 4 x100 is a tough event. Yes, the team changes a lot for various reasons. That said, pick any 4 of the top 10 100 M US guys and they should be able to run 38 low cleanly any day, any combination, any order, anywhere.

Outside of the Olympic and WC Final the only real goal is to get the stick around. If they get beat by Jamaica or the Bahamas in April by a couple hundredths because the team is conservative in their handoffs, who cares? But dropping the baton/ missing the exchange zone is just embarrassing and indicates a lack of professionalism. Mitchell's job should be to standardize handoffs rather than tailor some some perfect fit that is prone to failure at the slightest hiccup.

I'd have to think that a three day camp in March in Florida or maybe even the Caribbean would go a long way to building familiarity/ coordination, etc. If USATF can't scrounge up the 30-50 grand or so it would cost for travel/lodging reimbursement then maybe that big Nike contract is going to the wrong areas.

Abrahmson acts as if coaching the national 4x100 team is some U13 club soccer position where everyone should be nice and complimentary of the coach just for helping out. The 4x100 is a huge deal for both track and non-track fans. People care and take pride in our U.S. relay teams.

For me, I don't think anyone can objectively justify putting DM in charge of the sprint relays. He's got several black marks on his personal record and had no relay coaching experience prior to being named the national coach. His position as a personal coach to several athletes on the relay squad is an obvious conflict of interest that would by rule disqualify similarly situated coaches not named Dennis Mitchell. Sitting here today, DM's record at the World Relays , World Champs, and now Penn is disappointing to mediocre at best.

As many others have said, a sprint relay coach from Arkansas, Florida, Texas A&M, etc would probably be the best choice on purely technical grounds. If a college coach is too "amateur" for USATF 's taste, then go the US Mens Soccer team route, and hire a slick foreigner like Frankie Fredericks or Ato Boldon. Or shoot really high and go for someone like Michael Johnson, clean record, background in sports training, articulate and smart. MJ 's BBC gig makes this unrealistic and I get the feeling that he never really got along with the USATF management/ sprinting clique.

But sine DM is the coach, I genuinely wish him and the team the best. I just hope they realize that those botched handoffs happened for a reason and that something has to change.

shill wrote:

If you make it to the end of the article, he blames the handoff snafu on Adidas and New Balance. Now that's classy.

Why do you hate America and USATF brought to you by NIKE?

They are giving a whole $10,000 when an athlete qualifies for the Olympic team. $10,000!!! It's like winning the lottery.

Abrahamson couldn't drop the race card right either. It reads like unsolicited email that was offensive.

It's like reading North Korean propaganda.

An idiotic column. Abrahamson should go to work for the North Korean news service if he can't restrain himself from putting out such obvious propaganda.

First, Dennis Mitchell is a convicted doper. Convicted dopers shouldn't be chosen by USATF to be coaches. Period. It's bad enough that 3 of the 4 members of the 4x100 team served doping suspensions without adding Mitchell to that. With so many convicted cheaters involved, how does USATF expect to sell the sport to a rightly cynical public? And yet another dropped baton under Mitchell's coaching shows that USATF compromised its values without getting a coach who can get the baton around.

Second, the Nike money that he says gave USATF stability is coming at the cost of driving away non-Nike sponsorship, as the problems with non-Nike sprinters shows. The USATF's no-bid contract with Nike effectively gives Nike the ability to drive down the income of non-Nike athletes who are worth less because they can't wear their sponsors' gear. Effectively, the USATF took that money in its contract with Nike and is forcing other sponsors and sponsorship opportunities for athletes out of the sport.

The Nike contract is front loaded. When the contract came out a number of people pointed out that as inflation eats away the real time buying power of todays dollar the contract puts fewer and fewer of those diminished vale dollars in USATFs hand. By the end of the contract Nikes sponsorship might cover the CEOs salary and nothing else.

There were a number of good internet threads and articles in the main stream press pointing out some of the failings of the Nike sponsor contract structure (along with the contracts strengths).

Prize money awarded after attaining excellence does not make the struggle to fund the training costs associated with obtaining that excellence one bit easier.

The self-serving circle of only Nike athletes would be earning the USATF award money because only Nike funded athletes are afforded access to the training level needed to win the prizes that trigger the awards seems to be inherent to the process.

baconheart wrote:

Prize money awarded after attaining excellence does not make the struggle to fund the training costs associated with obtaining that excellence one bit easier.

A whole $10,000-$30,000.

A track athlete has to be careful. The ESPN-8 (the ocho) bio video: "Yeah I remember when I was at the Motel 5 in Vegas and was blowing $5 in the dime slots. Oh, man where did the money go?"

Meanwhile USATF has a $30 million annual budget.

"not even the NHL"

Facts:

In 1998, Dennis Mitchell (DM) was banned by IAAF for two years after a test showed high levels of testosterone.

Damu Cherry-Mitchell his current wife and USATF Women's Sprint Coach for the 2016 World Indoor Team: She was banned for two years by the IAAF for failing an out-of-competition drugs test in 2003. She tested positive for norandrosterone, a metabolite of an anabolic steroid.

On May 1, 2008, it was announced that the U.S. government, in its trial against Trevor Graham, would have Mitchell, as well as Antonio Pettigrew as witnesses, with Mitchell to testify that Graham injected him with human growth hormone.

Coached by Dennis recently: Femi Ogunode served a two-year ban lasting from January 2012 until January 2014 for the use of the prohibited substance. Can Denis prove that during this period he did not work with Ogunode.

Alan has his own facts. Mitchell was a good guy doing usatf a favor. Addidas is to blame for not getting the stick around the track.

North Korea needs to hire Alan. Maybe the Taliban or issul or whatever the enemy of the month is could hire him. Good stuff.

TrackCoach wrote:

Don't have time to read the article at the moment, but dropped batons is not Mitchell's fault. The USA has been dropping the baton for decades under many different coaches. As even a high school coach can tell you, relay runners need to know how each other reacts under actual race situations. At the elite level you are never going to get in enough practice with the same athletes to understand each other's instincts and instincts are what athletics resort to when under pressure.

The buck stops SOMEWHERE. The USA relay has been made up of different runners over the years...the common denominator? USATF. And what is Mitchell if not a USATF toadie?