The current group of American marathoners need to be forcibly retired. They just have not cut it.

emile cairess; trains in kenya with canova.

two insummountable red flags, sadly.

just another dirty brit in the making.

OP why stop at forcible retirement? Why not publicly flog them? Chemically castrate them so that no more failures can be produced?

it's not just experience, it's genetics. you only need to look at their legs to see how much thinner they are compared to white guys. their running economy is much more efficient as a result. you don't just need to produce an athlete aerobically on a par with the africans, you need to produce a better athlete by some margin. and at the very top level that just isn't possible. the africans will always win at the marathon distance.

Not being rude, but there's no point engaging in the discussion about genetics. The scientific evidence shows that East Africans do not have a genetic advantage. Scientists have gone looking for this "East African gene", have checked several potential candidate genes, and found nothing. Zero. It doesn't exist, to the best of our current knowledge. There are genes that make people more likely to be successful endurance athletes, but they are not unique to East Africans, they are found all over the world - yes, in white people, as well. Falling back on "genetics" is just another way to excuse sub-par performance and poor decision-making.

Just grant a dozen Kenyans and Ethiopians citizenship like other white countries do. Yah! That’ll be good for tv ratings.

Source: I made it the f*ck up

have you guys never raced with kenyans or ethiopians? just look at the difference between your legs and theirs.

you don't need to go looking for a gene under a microscope, just open your eyes.

They should only move up if they are strength based/mile isn't their best event. I can name many sub 4 milers who haven't even run sub 2:16, meanwhile I can name many 2:12 or better who only have around a 4:10 PR give or take a few seconds. Just because you're a sub 4 miler doesn't mean you're going to run a good marathon.

The best East African athletes go into distance running, while the best American athletes tend to gravitate toward football and basketball. Same for Europeans and association football. Our distance runners are already the B-teamers in terms of general athletic ability.

Who knows, maybe Tyreek Hill would be a 2:03 marathoner now if he had joined the cross country team in high school instead of the football team.

Lol i promise that the NBA and NFL are not taking away marathon talent.

I agree with the above poster that the "move up to the marathon to prolong my career" attitude is detrimental, and hopefully Mantz will be the first of many to start training for the 'thon right after college rather than at age 30. I also have to think there's something about the way American marathoners are training that just isn't cutting it, though i don't know what that would be.

Re: the East African advantage, we're not even talking about being remotely on par with Kenyans or Ethiopians. We're talking about how Americans aren't running times within 5 minutes of the world's best, whereas other athletes from other non-African countries are. It really is striking how super shoes maybe have increased the concentration of 210-212 guys in the US, but at the peak it's still a rarity to see anyone go faster than 208-209.

And yet, Rupp manages to have Olympic hardware and so many sub 2:06 guys don't.

Couldn't agree more. The issue with "slow American marathoners" is mostly because Americans really don't want to run the marathon and only do it if they're not fast enough to do well in the 5 and 10, which is where our best guys go at least until they're old. If we were like Japan, where they love the marathon and nearly every young runner with potential aims for fast marathons right away, we'd get faster times. If we were like Japan, and I'm not saying we should be, Fisher, Kincaid, Klecker, etc., would already have run marathons.

This reminds me of the parent who tells me, a high school coach, that I should get so and so to run because he/she is skinny, they'd probably be real good!!!

Tell that to Rob DeCastella or Toshihiko Seko.

We were in better shape just going into our chosen sport.

When I coached high school we rarely had a 7th/8th grader capable of running 1 mile the first day of practice. We used to have a parent meeting in June and tell them that they could do a little summer running to be prepared to finish 1 mile the first day and most struggled. We were typical.

We DO eat too much- too much junk and processed food. I look at high school kids where I teach (sub because I'm retired) and even some of the kids on cross-country and track have a little extra weight on them and eat junk food and drink soda and those energy drinks.

Add to that their parents who slog through a 2 hour 1/2 marathon on their 15 mpw and think they're rock stars and it makes it tough to develop real talent.

We should get back to the support system that we had to help produce Hall, Meb, Kastor and their acolytes like Sell and Linden. The well organized groups with superb coaching and professional focus that recruited high level talent out of college to get them well trained for the marathon sooner. There's a lot of mediocre coaching in the marathon right now, Hansons excepted and they just aren't getting diamonds-in-the-rough anymore. It's a lot of hasbeen pros and others, with middling coaching qualifications. We're sadly getting back to a 1990s level in the sport, overall.

I agree!! The reason we suck at the marathon is we only have a few people full time sponsored in the event.

I’d argue that these other countries with socialized health care get a huge advantage on that alone. Think of all the 28:30 guys and below we have in the NCAA that have to get jobs right away for health insurance and student loans.

Right, and the sponsorship system plays a role here. Americans are paid good money just to get to the Olympics, they don't have to be competitive to earn well. Kenyans and Ethiopians don't have that, they earn money by racing and track races don't pay well. Prize money for the roads is so much better. They can earn $10,000 for coming third in some third tier marathon in China or the Middle East, or winning a half marathon in northern Europe. You don't even get that for winning DL races on the track, and that's if you can get a lane in the first place.

Americans and Europeans aren't cursed to be slow, look at the European all-time list. 43 guys have run sub-2:08 (around a dozen have East African heritage) but most did it before the supershoe era. Steve Jones and Carlos Lopes were running 2:07-low in the 80s. It's not just that marathoning in Europe and America is stagnating, it's going backwards

Agree, it's misplaces support and incentives.

Right. You can rarely find a 7th/8th grader that can run a mile but meanwhile the number of fast HS runners has increased significantly over the years. What do rock star parents have to do with HS runners?

My apologies if your post was satire.