VERY COOL: Rupp RACED Chicago without a watch on?

zxcvzxcv wrote:

Last American-born male to win Boston, Greg Meyer, 1983

Last American-born male to win New York, Al Salazar, 1982

Last American-born male to win Chicago before yesterday, Greg Meyer, 1982

Last American-born male to win London, Dick Beardsley, 1981

Whatever you think of Rupp and Salazar (as a coach), you'd think there'd be more news about this victory. Even if you include Khannouchi and Meb in the usual American winners, there is just Meb at Boston three years ago, at New York eight years ago, and then you get wins from Khannouchi in 2002 at Chicago, 2001 in London, some others, and then I think no one until 1983.

The obsession with Galen being "American born" on letsrun.com treads dangerously close to white pride. America is a nation of immigrants. Meb is just as American as Galen -- he's been in America basically as long as Galen Rupp has been alive.

I don't mean to call you out in particular -- I've seen this sentiment on various posts around LR in the last 36 hours (including in the LR summary/results articles). It's just been bugging me and I wanted to call it out.

I get the distaste for possible grey-area stuff, but this "he's not Nick Symmonds or Pre" slamming of Rupp has always seemed weird to me.

watch thang wrote:

"VERY COOL" and "pretty baller". Yep, that's Galen Rupp

I love Meb (same for Lagat) and was far more excited about his Boston victory (and his New York victory and his Olympic medal) than Rupp's victory, and Meb came to the United States and lived here and trained here and was developed here, whereas Khannouchi came here as an adult and of course has to be suspected as doping given his origins in the pre-EPO testing era, but if American-born didn't mean anything, why were our only winners since the early 1980s born in Africa? It is no distinction for this country to take pride in its winners when it did little or nothing to develop them. That's Qatar or Bahrain or Turkey, buying its fully developed winners from Kenya, Morocco, and Ethiopia. Even, as I said, if you just say that the U.S. hasn't won Chicago since 2002 and hasn't won a major since 2014 and 2009 before that, this still merits more than two sentences in the paper, does it not?

Alberto Salazar was born in Cuba.

Ummmm... you don't need to be white to be American-born.

Anyways, what's wrong with being excited to see a white athlete winning major marathons? It's noteworthy because athletes like Rupp are somewhat of an anomaly at the top end of their sport. Do you think that Tiger Woods was the highest-payed athlete in the World solely because of his golfing prowess, or do you think that his skin color played a role in his popularity? Do you equate getting excited over Woods' success in an overwhelmingly white dominated sport with black pride? Ditto for the attention that Simone Manuel received at the Rio Olympics for winning a swimming gold medal as a black athlete in a sport where black athletes have not traditionally had a lot of success.

Ummmm, except Alberto Salazar is NOT American born. He was born in Cuba. Pretty sure it is not in America. Are you thinking maybe he was Puerto Rican?

Tiger Woods is not a good example, he was the highest paid athlete because he was incredibly good.

Oh, come on, you don't have to be a bigot to like seeing someone of a certain race or other group do something that people of that group almost never do. Rupp and LeMaitre get attention for the same reason that Lawrence Johnson got attention in Sydney and that Yoshihide Kiryu and Julius Yego do now, and that Arthur Ashe and Althea Gibson did, and that Masanori Murakami and Jason Collins did in MLB and the NBA. People like new things, and they like status-quo-defying things more, and they like totally unprecedented things even more. They don't have to care what minority the odds-overcoming person represents; the group can even be a majority in almost every other respect. Are you an anti-male sexist if you liked seeing Ann Trason win an ultra outright or Lynne Cox break a man's channel-swimming record? Are you anti-white-Australian if you liked seeing Cathy Freeman win? I don't like Rupp any more for being white than I liked Tegla for being black when she became the first African woman to win a major. I just like seeing unusual, unexpected stuff happen. It's a big reason why people like sports. And more often than not it represents some kind of progress.

zxcvzxcv wrote:

In contrast to Meb's wins in New York and Boston, Rupp's win merited two brief sentences in a tiny sidebar wire news item in the New York Times.

How about that? First American born male winner of a marathon major in decades and essentially nothing? I'm guessing that the non-news character was not at all about his association with Salazar, which probably the sports editors did not know about anyway.

This would have been like a US sprinter who was running an 11.4 100 meter, racing against Usain Bolt four years after Bolt stopped racing, and this US sprinter running 11.52 and winning the race.

Sure, the media could say US sprinter won some 100 meter race nobody really cares about, but they might have to, or might have to mention that the time was pretty pathetic so take it with a grain of salt.