I tried to watch the LA Marathon this morning on the local channel and had to turn it off because the coverage was so terrible. One human interest story after another none of the actual race.
As someone who ran the trials last year and has had interactions with the LA elite group in the past I don't have much positive to say about them. In fact I thought the trials last year was pretty much a middle finger to the athletes on their part. I saw a thread here with a link to the Guiness world record page on the races website,
https://www.lamarathon.com/event-info/guinness-world-records
, worth a laugh. As a whole LA goes pretty far out of it way not to celebrate the competitive side of the sport but I know there are other that are worse.
What races have done the most to undermine the elite side of the sport, and please don't go with things like color or light runs, everyone knows those are a joke.
A couple off the top of the head:
Surfin Madonna - If anyone hasn't read the tread from a year back where they tried to reclaim prize money from the runners saying they accidentally doubled the intended prize money its a gem. Now they've gone completely to age group prize as a middle finger to the elites after that fiasco and I'm pretty sure the costume contest winner this year won more money than any of the runners.
Anything competitor group - for destroying some of America's most competitive races.