American marathon runner Michael Andropolis sets his heart on representing his country at the Olympic games. Meanwhile his marriage has fallen apart and his ...
Looking forward to the sprint series. I think athletes like Lyles, Holloway, Shacarri, the Jamaican women et al will bring good energy and story lines.
I can only image the distance one going something like:
*5:30 wake up call somewhere just outside of Boulder. Camera pans to Woody Kincaid, still shaking sleep out of his eyes. He quickly closes his bedroom door, as if he were hiding away a lover from the night before.*
Woody: "Aw gee, sorry guys, I forgot we were doing this today"
his eyes continue to flit back towards the door. He intentionally clears his throat two times. There is a redwing blackbird call in response.
Documentarian: So, uh, Woody. What's on the plan today?
Woody: (looking more relaxed). Well, you just caught me going downstairs to make my organic, non-GMO, fair trade, native raised light roasted coffee. After that I'll probably roll out for a few hours, take a nap, and then I'll go for a nice and easy 10-miler.
All of a sudden, a crash is heard from outside Woody's room. The audience can't be sure, but it sounds like someone may have broken some glass. At this point, the documentarian is running frantically down the stairs to the back door.
Woody: "Matt! Stop him!"
Centro: "Dammit, Woody, not again!"
Documentarian stiff arms Matthew Centrowitz onto a pile of lacrosse balls where he comically rolls around and can't catch his balance. The camera pans to a man running across the lawn in the dim morning light. He can't be sure, but it seems the camera may have hit a reflective patch- what was that logo? A....skull? With an olympic laurel?
The cameraman takes a step forward and his feet skid from underneath him-he has stepped in a pile of goo, a slimy substance
Documentarian: What the-
Woody: "Now, Matt!"
Centro throws his gold medal like a shuriken, striking the camerman in the back of the head, knocking him unconscious.
Matt and Woody are standing over the camera man. Matt, shooting a glare at Woody-
Matt: "I told you, you two need to be more careful. For Crissakes, there's still a needle hanging out of your arm!"
Woody (rubbing his arm where Matt has pulled out the needle): "Yeah, that was a close one...I promise it won't happen again. Good thing this doofus Netflix guy just happened to fall, huh?"
Shelby Houlihan emerges from the shadows, replete in a full BTC Warmup.
Shelbo: "Psh, rookies. Shouldn't you know by now that when cameras come around that you need to Androgen slick the back doors?"
It's already been done. I've seen every season and every episode of Team Ingebrigtsen. It's the interesting and compelling series I've ever seen. It would be great if that was professionally redubbed for english, maybe reedited for Netflix. One thing is you get to understand Jakob and there is no difference from a 10 year old Jakob and a 22 year old. He was super confident as a child and kind of cocky and he is the same way now.
Those are all coaches though. The athletes they coach are almost never cooperating in competition. In most races it’s every athlete for themselves. Sure, in training different athletes may work together, but they are ultimately chasing individual goals. Commercially successful sports are either more team based, or have a more centralized competition, usually both. For running to become more successful commercially there is a need for both centralization and a greater focus on teams in competitions.
If you're going to make a series of the world's best runners, you're not going to focus on unemployed American Hobbyists like Tiinman Elite. You're going to focus almost exclusively on East African training teams from Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, possibly Tanzania and Eritrea, and perhaps a few other countries in the region. If you want some more geographic diversity with a focus on large, high-quality teams, throw in some Japanese teams. These are generally interesting people who really understand the nuances of this beautiful and elegant sport. Focusing on the current crop of American teams would be like focusing on lounge singers and pianists instead of the truly great musicians who have devoted theirs lives to music at the highest levels. You can learn so much more from the best.
“These are generally interesting people”
I know there are sometimes cultural gaps that make it hard to understand eachother, but in my experience, these are not interesting people. Don’t get me wrong, Americans can be boring too, but at the risk of having my ip banned for life, the most boring part of Breaking 2 was the personalities of the runners. Their efforts and the challenge made it incredible, but too much kipchoge is like too much Dalai Lama.
Since a Netflix team is developing a series following the world’s best sprinters (will be released in 2024) it got me thinking, what if they made a series about the world’s best distance runners.
Male Distance Runners
On the Men’s side there are multiple different teams and individuals that could be followed, but here are a couple of ideas ⬇️
- The Ingebrigtsen Family (Mainly Jakob)
- Bowerman Track Club
- OnRunning Track Club
- Tinman Elite
Female Distance Runners
The female side could be more individual focused, but with a small team aspect mixed in.
- Bowerman Track Club
- OnRunning Track Club
- Sifan Hassan
- Faith Kipyegon
Kenenisa Bekele's coping with no longer being a world record holder and training for the marathon in his 40s.
boring to the general public. distance races are boring and the people that run them are boring. the only people that would watch it are the people in the series and the people involved in the individual runners life. and that does not pay the bills or attract big viewer numbers.
If you're going to make a series of the world's best runners, you're not going to focus on unemployed American Hobbyists like Tiinman Elite. You're going to focus almost exclusively on East African training teams from Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, possibly Tanzania and Eritrea, and perhaps a few other countries in the region. If you want some more geographic diversity with a focus on large, high-quality teams, throw in some Japanese teams. These are generally interesting people who really understand the nuances of this beautiful and elegant sport. Focusing on the current crop of American teams would be like focusing on lounge singers and pianists instead of the truly great musicians who have devoted theirs lives to music at the highest levels. You can learn so much more from the best.
+100, because nobody is interested in the lounge singers!
Sorry USA, the results show the best distance runners come from Norway, Africa and Japan. But a series on an NCAA XC season - I’d watch that!
These shows aren't about following the "world's best" - they're typically about (made up) drama and stuffs. Focus on the personality, not the sport.
Agree 100%. I'd watch a documentary that follows a small HS team trying to make the state meet for the 1st time - from soring meeting, summer runs, camp, workouts, races, school issues, juggling personal and athletic, etc. Kind of like Friday Night Lights for XC. Make heroes out of 16:30 kids.
I'd watch that any day over some Rupp fanboy creation.
These shows aren't about following the "world's best" - they're typically about (made up) drama and stuffs. Focus on the personality, not the sport.
Agree 100%. I'd watch a documentary that follows a small HS team trying to make the state meet for the 1st time - from soring meeting, summer runs, camp, workouts, races, school issues, juggling personal and athletic, etc. Kind of like Friday Night Lights for XC. Make heroes out of 16:30 kids.
I'd watch that any day over some Rupp fanboy creation.
Most people would not care about HS kids. More would care about the worlds best
Agree 100%. I'd watch a documentary that follows a small HS team trying to make the state meet for the 1st time - from soring meeting, summer runs, camp, workouts, races, school issues, juggling personal and athletic, etc. Kind of like Friday Night Lights for XC. Make heroes out of 16:30 kids.
I'd watch that any day over some Rupp fanboy creation.
Most people would not care about HS kids. More would care about the worlds best
Disagree. Ever see the numbers of viewers for the Little League World Series? In the end, if the human interest story angle is there, people will watch. And I know of many who watched "The Long Green Line", the documentary about York HS XC and Joe Newton.
Coach Joe Newton has used the sport of Cross Country Running to teach simple but important lessons to high school boys for the last 50 years. "Always do your...
Agree 100%. I'd watch a documentary that follows a small HS team trying to make the state meet for the 1st time - from soring meeting, summer runs, camp, workouts, races, school issues, juggling personal and athletic, etc. Kind of like Friday Night Lights for XC. Make heroes out of 16:30 kids.
I'd watch that any day over some Rupp fanboy creation.
Most people would not care about HS kids. More would care about the worlds best
Disagree. In golf, I remember watching a documentary about the up/down struggles would-be pro's battling through Q-school. Life directions were on the line. It was totally compelling, with far more drama than watching the elite. Most kids are inherently more entertaining as people.
What drives up viewership for the F1 series, is that being an F1 driver is f'ing awesome. The speed, travel, fame, groupies, money. A lot of casual Netflix viewers would give up everything else in life to be an F1 driver for a short time. Without that being a realistic option, they will settle on having a view into their world at the price of subscribing to netflix. Most people would not give up what they have in life to be pro distance runners, once they see what the life is. Especially that of some of the training groups you have mentioned. They live a below average lifestyle and spend a lot of time doing a boring activity. There are no photo shoots on a yacht off the coast of France, dont have 300,000 fans showing up weekly at exotic locations around the world, and dont have some of the worlds richest people spending billions for them to drive around in some of the worlds most innovative technology in the worlds most exotic locations, with the chance of a spectacular death. It's excess at its most excess. Distance running is practically the opposite. Maybe the safest and most boring sport cinematically.
I have hope for the sprinting doc though. People like speed. People like ripped athletes. People like viewing pressure filled events. If the series makes people like Noah Lyles or Gabby Thomas a name casual sports fans recognize before the olympics next year, thats a huge win. If it gets casual sports fans to care who wins the olympic 100m final, thats a huge win. If it makes the 100m "cool" for local high schoolers and makes more of them want to compete it in, thats a huge win. If it makes the silence after the starter says "set" one of the most suspenseful moments in sports for the casual viewer, thats a huge win. If done right, I think there is some real potential in growing the sport of the 100m sprint. Bring it back to being the most premier/elite/important moment in the most premier/elite/important sporting event in the world. As RG3 said, track athletes are the real athletes, everyone else is playing games. And that applies most to the 100m.
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