That was Alexi Pappas

Why?

That's where I'm at. I have always liked her but these antics are a little strange.

The mods don't like it when you criticize "The Bravey One" too harshly. Not sure why?

She represents so much of what's wrong with society today. Her excessive narcissism and self-promotion on social media has no relationship with her actual talent and accomplishments. Although she is in not in the same league with the Kardashians, she uses much the same techniques to acquire money by selling herself and her persona as a product to be consumed for numbers of clueless followers.

I still find it appalling that she was able to con Greek Athletics into accepting her onto their Olympic team because she did not have enough talent to make it on the U.S.A. team. A traitorous and monetarily motivated action and with little motivation for athletic excellence.

Year's ago there is a video of her rooting for Jordan Hasay in UO college meet where the attention was more about herself than Jordan's effort. She has morphed these early "look at me" stunts into playing most of the victim cards to secure sympathy and more followers.

It is possible she may not be such a bad person in real life, but her social media creation is unlikeable on many levels.

It’s fine if you find Alexi personally annoying, but she didn’t con her way to the olympics. Pretty sure she placed higher there than American team runner #3, Marielle Hall, who is also a great athlete. Yes, it was surely helpful for Alexi not to peak for the trials before the olympics but her Greek national record is not a joke. Also her connection to Greece is legit and I believe she has spent a fair amount of time training there.

JFC what a drama queen.

The last time I thought of her was last year during NYC when it looked like she was having a blast out there.

I've seen 0 of her social media, because i don't follow her.

Now today we have a thread ripping her for something?

She's out there living her best life, having fun. Good for her! I doubt I'll think of her again until the next time a thread pops up on here ripping her for enjoying life or something similarly ridiculous

The Greek NR that she broke was 32:18 and had stood for 15years. Thats how low the bar of competition was for her. Infact, after her NR, the next three quickest times EVER by a Greek woman are 32:18, 32:46 & 33:11 (per World Athletics). The National Road Record is 34:33.

Secondly she lives in LA but previously was based in Bolder for training (not Greece) and also I've never seen her do anything to give back to the Hellenic Athletics Association (the Greek athletics body) nor to support the sport in the country she supposedly represents.

You're missing an important point. Plenty of people do follow her on social media and similar persons. She has quite a few sponsors who pay her money. What is this money buying? It certainly is not buying excellence in the sport of running. It is buying an acceptance of her persona which is highly narcissistic and perpetuates the idea this form of using social media is legitimate way to make money. Influencers are nothing more than tools of an advertising method to sell products.

Alexi placed 17th at the 2016 Rio olympics in the 10k. For reference, Emily infeld placed 11th and Marielle Hall placed 33rd.

The point here is that she very well could have made the US team for the 10k that year.

Alexi was training in Greece with a Greek coach and team at the start of the pandemic, and was effectively stuck living and training there for months when borders were shut down.

Also, 2016 was a long time ago. It’s pretty normal for an athlete to compete at one olympic games and not compete seriously again.

Personally I have competed at no olympic games, so I’ll give her that.

I think what pisses everyone here off is that she clearly has elite ability but is more interested in other things.

I don’t like any runner who hobby jogs races and expects to be sponsored and paid. It takes money away from elite athletes who advance the sport and treats the sport like a joke. I didn’t like what Alexi did. If she was an unsponsored runner she can do what she wants but this just feels like a gimmick.

Pro runners are paid to be competitive. I do believe alexi joined the Greek team because she didn’t want to compete with Americans for spots on teams and she said so. In her book she constantly mentioned she was an Olympian, but didn’t really get into the shortcut she took to get there. And yes, it was a short cut. I also agree that her motivation to be competitive has been lost and it doesn’t look like she wants to put in the work to further her running career.

Alexi is being paid to run professionally but she’s not contributing any more to the sport than any of the thousands of marathon runners out there. Why does she get paid and they don’t?

Mastercard will be interested in publicity, marketing and engagement. So if she has a big social media presence and a lot of people see her posts they're probably more interested in that than a quiet faster runner who finishes in a better position. Sad but true.

She's an influencer...lol! Good grief. Sad and pathetic. These people refuse to work and do anything meaningful. What a waste of talent.

The butthurt about her representing Greece is so funny. Like any of you wouldn't have done the same thing if you had the option. IMO, if you can speak the language at least semi-fluently and meet the existing requirements for citizenship, have at it. Pretty sure the language piece is more than can be said for a couple of our recent male allegiance-switchers. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Seems like you should at least be able to do a translator-free media interview with your "home"country's press after your race.

In the Olympic Final (and it was a final only format) that Pappas ran in she was lapped by anyone in contention for a medal and lost by over two minutes.

Fine that she found a loophole to compete as an Olympic tourist, and to her credit, she proved a more worthy competitor that many who take similar routes.

other than the the Olympics thing, I think her contributions to the sport are positive, and that she is a very interesting and all-around talented individual. We could use more like her in track and field and road running.

We haven't had of these Alexi hate threads in a while! Let's see if this thing hits 100+ posts before the end of the day. A lot of frustrated men that couldn't make a D3 travel squad in their prime just got to work in the Western half of the country. They have to get coffee, wrangle some Excel docs to look productive, and read e-mails from their bosses before they can jump on this train.

Just have 1 thing to say WTF??????

In order to do something like this, it would mean one of their parents would have to be an immigrant, and we all know how cranky letsrun posters feel about immigrants...

She is an Olympian, an essayist, a writer, a college graduate, national record holder, actor, filmmaker, wife, friend, has a Master's degree, has many friends, a poet, a chronicalist, has a great sense of humor, can be mischevious, loves to smile and have a good time, and again, just a great friend to so many. And you losers, tell us all of your achievements and posting on LetsRun is NOT an achievement.