Breaking: Reigning world indoor champ Matthew Centrowitz will NOT defend his crown - will race in Australia instead

Not that anyone asked but this development is a little disappointing for me as a fan.

I said it two years ago and I'll say it again. It's not good for the sport for Americans to only get excited for World Indoors when it's in the US. If everyone took World Indoor seriously, 2018 wouldn't be a non championship year.

Now it's possible that Centrowitz wanted to defend his crown but was a little behind schedule. Yes, I know his dad says he is healthy but I had heard there were a few hiccups in the fall.

Here is a crazy idea. Why don't they hold World indoors in the summer of 2018? Yes, I'd rather them just have a Worlds every year but (it makes no sense that we have a global championship outdoors 3 out of 4 years) but if they aren't going to do that, then this would be better than what we currently have. People certainly wouldn't be skipping out on USAs.

I also think we should start a list of shame for people who skip 2018 USA Outdoors.

Since I'm on a monologue about my "What about the sports?" ideas, I'll keep going. I saw a truly great idea on Tim Hutchings twitter. Get rid of the marathon at Worlds - Commonwealths, etc and run a half marathon instead. Way more studs would do it. Of course, that might water down the 10k.

https://twitter.com/TimHutchings1/status/953514616423817216

rojo wrote:

Not that anyone asked but this development is a little disappointing for me as a fan.

I said it two years ago and I'll say it again. It's not good for the sport for Americans to only get excited for World Indoors when it's in the US. If everyone took World Indoor seriously, 2018 wouldn't be a non championship year.

Nobody gets “excited” for world indoors, ever.

It’s a watered-down, entirely worse version of an already niche sport.

Make track better by having fewer and better premier meets, not by emphasizing all the boring, marginal meets.

Shows you seriously track is taken as a "sport", especially with these multiplicities of "world indoor champ" (at some distance) and the like.

About like Anna Muzychuk not defending her women's blitz/rapid chess titles in Riyadh, because she didn't want to go to Saudi Arabia. I.e., who cares, outside of select circles?

Not having Centro in this race opens up a spot for an up and coming athlete. I like these second tier world events (Pan Am, Commonwealth) because we get to see a new crop of runners. It let's a top American race at the world level and possibly medal. And it's not like we're scrimping to find Americans to qualify/race well anymore...

Save Centro, Kiplagat, MacD, Iggy, etc for the Diamond League.

This good for the sport, and follows the model of other elite Nike athletes. Travel , and use your success around the world . Promote the brand . Follow Maria Sharapova, Tiger, Roger Fed , ..... Plus , if he doesn't do well in 2020 , people will just say he wasted his winters on a 200m track.

He's not 100 percent healthy. Maybe not injured but not 100%. Senior/Alberto are just buying time to nurse him to recovery without having media blowing it up.

Listen to Craig E's interview at Washington Indoor meet last week. "All of my training is with Clayton and sometimes Galen." No mention of Matthew. Wonder why? Maybe because he's no longer training in OR? The guy has made multiple post on IG making it about as apparent that he is no longer in OR without making a dedicated post mentioning such

A different thread called out "Centro leaves NOP" and I'm shocked it didn't get as much attention as I thought it would. World Indoors would be a lot during a big transition if Matthew has transitioned to Maryland to reset.

Maryland is good if his dad can keep him focused on training so he doesn't become the next Sammy Wanjiru.

Otherwise, saying this as a Maryland resident, this is just about the worst place you could train. Winters are tough, summers are humid, there's no altitude, and I doubt he has many people to train with.

I can buy that he's doing stints at altitude and with training partners, but I can't buy that he's set up a main training base on the mid-Atlantic.

You could look also at it the other way around. Every year half the world is in summer when North America is having its indoor season. And every year nearly all America and Europe's 'global stars' skip that summer season. So Australia, New Zealand, large parts of Africa, South America never get to see those global stars. Those continents and countries struggle to get world class fields for their top athletes to compete against.

I think it is exciting that Centrowitz is travelling somewhere new and sharing the sport with a different audience. Perhaps you could think of it as a small donation from the USA to thank South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil etc for all they have given to the sport?

Qwerti wrote:

Nobody gets “excited” for world indoors, ever.

It’s a watered-down, entirely worse version of an already niche sport.

Make track better by having fewer and better premier meets, not by emphasizing all the boring, marginal meets.

I do.

I think indoor track is much more exciting than outdoor track for the following reasons.

1) It's louder. Put 4,000 fans in an outdoor stadium and it seems empty. Put it indoors and it seems raucous.

2) There is more randomness to it. The #1 thing track lacks as compared to other sports is randomness. There are no fumbles/interceptions/own goals etc in our sport that give the underdog a chance. In indoors, tactics play a bigger role and falls are more common.

3) It wouldn't be a boring/marginal meet if everyone showed up. It's only not important because you say it's not.

Think of it this way. Why is Pre a big meet? Because Nike makes all of their athletes show up and tells them it's a big meet. If they did the same thing with World Indoors, it would be a big meet.

Not surprising at all, his time has come and gone. Centrowitz is nothing more than a has been at this point in his life.

rojo wrote:

3) It wouldn't be a boring/marginal meet if everyone showed up. It's only not important because you say it's not.

It's not unimportant because we say it's not important. It is unimportant because the people who run the sport haven't figured out how to get everyone to show up.

Tennis figured it out. They have four events every year that every healthy player wants to attend. Wimbledon isn't important because fans say it is. It is important because the people who run Tennis are competent and they made it important. IAAF needs to do the same.

It's worked for Rudisha!!!

Centro is worried that there might be fast races in Australia in March/ April.

Matthew CENTROWITZ

Country: United States

Born: 18.10.1989

1 x Olympic champion

1 x World Championships Silver medallist

1 x World Indoor champion

1 x World Championships Bronze medallist

1 x In Top 8 at Olympic Games

1 x In Top 8 at World Championships

1 x In Top 8 at World Indoor Championships

1 x NCAA champion

4 x National champion

2 x National Indoor champion

Let's just hold World Indoors in Australia during our summer. Centro can kill two birds with one stone.

Who wants to race outside when it's 106F anyway!!

Fact King wrote:

A different thread called out "Centro leaves NOP" and I'm shocked it didn't get as much attention as I thought it would. World Indoors would be a lot during a big transition if Matthew has transitioned to Maryland to reset.

The thread didn't get that much attention because there was no proof he was leaving NOP. There's proof he was in Oregon, but the OP didn't present any facts that he was leaving -just the baseless "you heard it here first" that everyone posts here with their predictions.

post checks out wrote:

Fact King wrote:

A different thread called out "Centro leaves NOP" and I'm shocked it didn't get as much attention as I thought it would. World Indoors would be a lot during a big transition if Matthew has transitioned to Maryland to reset.

The thread didn't get that much attention because there was no proof he was leaving NOP. There's proof he was in Oregon, but the OP didn't present any facts that he was leaving -just the baseless "you heard it here first" that everyone posts here with their predictions.

Should say *wasn’t in Oregon

LetsRun.com wrote:

http://www.letsrun.com/news/2018/01/reigning-olympic-world-indoor-champion-matthew-centrowitz-will-skip-2018-indoor-season-race-australia-instead/

I really thought this was an early April Fools LRun Joke.

just a wanderer wrote:

Not surprising at all, his time has come and gone. Centrowitz is nothing more than a has been at this point in his life.

He's running the Australian Excuse Tour where all pathetic excuses are accepted. Go to school then go to Australia? There is a problem here.