Not a great championships for US men’s distance, but the future looks decent. Nuguse and Hocker are very young and can mix it up in the 1500m. Fisher is still young, and only 12m removed from being a serious medal contender at 5k/10k in Eugene. And there’s a deeper pool of studs coming through the HS/early NCAA ranks than we’ve ever seen, I’m assuming a few of them can come good.
If what you predict, or perhaps wish for, comes to fruition, Letsrun may not exist as a forum or website.
After all, Letsrun is a website driven by distance running enthusiasts. USA distance running enthusiasts that has benefited distance, sprints, jumps, throws events and track fans from all countries of the world.
LRC is driven by skinny arm bitter old leftist men. And that’s a fact.
It's official, US is now all sprints and no distance.
Gave it a good go until last year, but the disease (courtesy of USATF, spread in the 2010s) was far too advanced.
Will be dearly missed.
Admittedly, this was a bad year for U.S. distance runners. But as I look backwards over the last decade or so, the U.S. is right there in terms of medal counts.
Our medal count since 2012 looks something like: Centro 3x, Manzano, Rupp 2x, Jager 3x, Coburn 3x, Frierchs 2x, Brazier, Murphy, Mu 3x, Rodgers 2x, Wilson 3x, Simpson 3x, Chelimo 3x, Infeld, Symmonds, Seidel, Cragg, who am I forgetting?? Maybe Ethiopia and Kenya can match that, maybe. But that's it.
As others have alluded to, the US went a good 15 years where you only had one guy (Bob Kennedy) that could get anywhere near a distance final.
Poor Bob, ran during the EPO era, I don't think anyone thought he was on it? If everyone was clean, he may have been competing for gold.
This is not an accusation by any means. I don't know how Bob Kennedy used his spare time but there were definitely people who thought he was on anything. Again, don't read this post as an accusation.
Eh, I haven't cared about a track race longer than 200 m in two decades. Once you get past that distance running as a fun participation sport but you couldn't pay me to actually watch other people do it.