Excellent piece by Michael Crawley for the Guardian. Bravo.
Excellent piece by Michael Crawley for the Guardian. Bravo.
Why bother getting to know them?
One or two become established names, the rest just load up on the good stuff and win enough money in a couple of years before any meaningful testing starts and they have to stop.
They're boring and a big part of the demise of the sport.
You mean "demise of the sport" in Britain? We don't care because they're crap runners anyway. Won't be missed.
I don't think the lack of connection is due to the reasons in the article.
There is no Flotrack of Kenya. No Dyestat/Milesplit to help every athlete get to know every competitor at age 14. So media and information sharing is one obvious part.
Another is that there is No Club/College system (as structured as the US) to see where an athlete came from and how they emerged. This familiarity is a big part of the US's attachment to its runners.
Not to mention that it is a totally different country and culture. We can't substitute our own experiences or intuitions about East Africans' motivations, natural talent, distractions, and conflicts.
Of course, these three pieces tie into each other. We cannot learn the athletic context of Kenya without more media, but the media needs to focus on the right topics (a non-example being Flotrack's "Inside Kenya" that focused on the Robertsons...). Or Gebrselassie's "run to 10k to school" becoming such a running-media trope, making everyone think every African ran that far every day. Most laugh and say the walked a short distance.
Let me ask you this. Given that you can see how badly we slam and troll our best, do you want more attention paid to your runners?
El Keniano wrote:
You mean "demise of the sport" in Britain? We don't care because they're crap runners anyway. Won't be missed.
You posted a British article written from British point of view.
El Keniano wrote:
You mean "demise of the sport" in Britain? We don't care because they're crap runners anyway. Won't be missed.
?
London 2017 was the most attended world champs ever? By a land slide...
Thanks for the post.
We should know more about EA runners -
1. Are they taking PEDs?
2. What are they taking?
3. How much?
4. How often?
Guardian readers can keep the rest.
How often are they tested positive, but the results disappear
Semenyagoat wrote:
How often are they tested positive, but the results disappear
How? As in testing positive then blaming beef and kissing?
They need to be seen for the individuals they are with their own unique personalities and stories. The tendency to refer to them all as "the Kenyans" gives an impression of a faceless horde making it easier to collectively villainise them whenever a Rita Jeptoo or a Jemima Sumgong occurs.
That Tim Cheruiyot trains in such proximity to lions, hyenas and buffalo is, in itself, at least almost as compelling as hearing about Matt Centrowitz's dad or Laura Muir's veterinary studies.
Granted, a European audience is never going to be as interested in African athletes as in Athletes from nearby, and granted, it's not easy to get to know athletes who don't all speak English and who are based a long ways away.
But that's still no excuse for the utter lack of professionalism displayed by the western media. If you are being paid to provide commentary on a track meet or road race, the it is your freaking job to know something about the competitors. The bar at present is so low it's ridiculous.
Agents could certainly help. If I represented an athlete and I wanted him or her to get some media exposure, I would have a dossier prepared that I could send to the media. It would have a bio, photos, anecdotes, interviews--enough material that no broadcaster could say "it's too hard" to learn anything about the athletes.
El Keniano wrote:
They need to be seen for the individuals they are with their own unique personalities and stories. The tendency to refer to them all as "the Kenyans" gives an impression of a faceless horde making it easier to collectively villainise them whenever a Rita Jeptoo or a Jemima Sumgong occurs.
That Tim Cheruiyot trains in such proximity to lions, hyenas and buffalo is, in itself, at least almost as compelling as hearing about Matt Centrowitz's dad or Laura Muir's veterinary studies.
But no sooner do we learn about what one Kenyan guy has for breakfast, he's disappeared into thin air and there are 3 new '17 year old' superstars to get to know.
And always hiding behind a Canova/Hermens so we never actually get to know them anyway.
The reason why we hardly ever got any interviews out of these guys is not always language, it's because their Canova/Hermens need to be very careful what their idiot athlete might actually say in an interview.
800 dude wrote:
Agents could certainly help. If I represented an athlete and I wanted him or her to get some media exposure, I would have a dossier prepared that I could send to the media. It would have a bio, photos, anecdotes, interviews--enough material that no broadcaster could say "it's too hard" to learn anything about the athletes.
This is a damn good idea.
Karl Hungus wrote:
800 dude wrote:Agents could certainly help. If I represented an athlete and I wanted him or her to get some media exposure, I would have a dossier prepared that I could send to the media. It would have a bio, photos, anecdotes, interviews--enough material that no broadcaster could say "it's too hard" to learn anything about the athletes.
This is a damn good idea.
Pretty sure they already do this.
It's also nice to know they're not the type to blow their winnings on a Ferrari.
Thanks for the article. I'm an American, and am
fascinated by learning about all these East African guys. I'm tempted to get a twitter and instagram even to get little tidbits here or there. I wish there was much more articles and interviews. Would be cool to have a Kamworor jersey to run in...
I enjoy your insight posts El Keniano
El Keniano wrote:
It's also nice to know they're not the type to blow their winnings on a Ferrari.
I think the Nissan GTR is in vogue at the moment.
Clerk wrote:
I don't think the lack of connection is due to the reasons in the article.
There is no Flotrack of Kenya. No Dyestat/Milesplit to help every athlete get to know every competitor at age 14. So media and information sharing is one obvious part.
Another is that there is No Club/College system (as structured as the US) to see where an athlete came from and how they emerged. This familiarity is a big part of the US's attachment to its runners.
Not to mention that it is a totally different country and culture. We can't substitute our own experiences or intuitions about East Africans' motivations, natural talent, distractions, and conflicts.
Of course, these three pieces tie into each other. We cannot learn the athletic context of Kenya without more media, but the media needs to focus on the right topics (a non-example being Flotrack's "Inside Kenya" that focused on the Robertsons...). Or Gebrselassie's "run to 10k to school" becoming such a running-media trope, making everyone think every African ran that far every day. Most laugh and say the walked a short distance.
Let me ask you this. Given that you can see how badly we slam and troll our best, do you want more attention paid to your runners?
Good to see you again Clerk. Correct, it is really a case of substituting mass media stereotypes with micro-journalistic intrusions.
At the very least, despite the ridiculous stories that you refer to, the testing is so precise in the United States that it nails athletes for infinitesimal quantities of illegal substances, the level you might get from incidental contact, whereas the testing is so rare and corrupt in Kenya and Ethiopia (and South Africa where the lab was de-accredited this year) that large quantities pass by unflagged.
El Keniano wrote:
Semenyagoat wrote:How often are they tested positive, but the results disappear
How? As in testing positive then blaming beef and kissing?