I think the lack of prize money for the elite accomplishments also plays a part. The NY and Chicago winners each received $100,000. $50,000 for the course record. Boston pays $150,000 and is at the 'top' of the prize money list. When you compare those numbers to the tens or hundreds of millions that professional athletes make, it makes this amount seem so insignificant.
This issue will solve itself. Like in cycling, where the very best riders decide which 6 events they really want to race each other: the 5 ‘monuments’; one day races with a long history (San Remo, Flanders, Roubaix, Liege and Lombardia) and the World Championship. Not even the Olympics, although it is growing in stature - also Strade Bianche. All these races happen to be in Europe. Multiple attempts have been made in the past to expand this through world tour, super prestige series etcetera but the Monuments still stand, because these are the most prestigious victories. The same principle applies for Marathons: the best runners ‘know’ which races matter most. The 6 Majors and the Olympics, maybe the Worlds and Valencia, are the races they want on their palmares.
This post was edited 14 minutes after it was posted.
Not all of the top pro runners were at the pre-race press conference on Thursday, but a sign-language interpreter was, even though none of the media was deaf.
How dare they make the press conference accessible to deaf people.
Also, just look at the criteria Sydney had to meet to become a Major. It had NOTHING to do with putting on an event for elites and everything to do with appealing to and accommodating the masses. Not saying that's good or bad but it certainly isn't about promoting elite racing.
I basically agree with RoJo on this. For those that say the races are about the masses, there is a truth to that. But the television revenue comes from the elite racers. Importantly, as much as they get in appearance fees and prize money, it pales in comparison to what the broadcasters pay. That TV revenue helps to keep entry fees down and encourages city councils to support the races.
I basically agree with RoJo on this. For those that say the races are about the masses, there is a truth to that. But the television revenue comes from the elite racers. Importantly, as much as they get in appearance fees and prize money, it pales in comparison to what the broadcasters pay. That TV revenue helps to keep entry fees down and encourages city councils to support the races.
LOL. Show me where anyone pays anything to broadcast the marathons. Or that these mystery broadcast fees have any effect on runner entry fees or…city councils?! Half of the Majors are on Flotrack; the others use their morning news crews. You’re just making this up. You have no idea what you’re talking about.
If any marathon should have been the 7th Major, it should have been Fukuoka. The formation of WMM essentially destroyed what was one of the most important and historic races on the calender.
In a day and age when the women’s world record in the marathon in 2:09:56, how in the world can Cape Town – which only 4 times ever has featured a men’s winning time under 2:10 (course record 2:08:15) – even be in the running? Only three times has the women’s winning time in Cape Town been under 2:25 and the course record is 2:22:22. How do you expect fans to seriously consider it to be a major? Yet Valencia with 25,000+ finishers and 2:01:58 and 2:14:58 course records isn’t?
Of course they haven't had a sub 2:08, and Sydney doesn't have a sub 2:06 either. The whole point of getting to Major status (as someone involved at Sydney), is to get huge numbers, big revenue for tourism and enticing the top flight to come.
Cape Town is a faster course than NY, Boston, London, Sydney , not sure about Tokyo...and if they moved a minor part of it slighly it would be the flattest of the lot. It is not called the 'Cape Flats' for nothing. No one looks at the 'Iconic' features during race anyway and Cape Town has a running supporter base bar none----if anyone has run Two Oceans or cycled the Cape Tour they would know.
No one decent will go out there to race on a gash course.
The major series already have zero relevance, you can only watch london in the UK so no-one really cares. these additional races should be listed as B-category races with the majors being the traditional 5 or 6.
Until they stop inviting juiced up africans and ditch the pacemakers to have more proper races with top local runners, then the crowds/TV audience etc will not care
I’m very impressed with the thoughts of Rojo. He makes a very compelling and sensible case about the dilution of elite sport. Not sure why Sydney is chosen or Cape Town and Shanghai. Chasing money blindly will usually reap short term gains but forfeit long term stability.
Hey rojo, maybe let's not call inclusion of sign language interpreters performative virtue signaling? Inclusion of a sign language interpreter is most definitely not just about the media, but about any deaf person that could be watching. I'm willing to criticize virtue signaling when I see it, but let's not criticize something that only makes running more accessible to others, not less.
The best runners ‘know’ which races matter most. The 6 Majors and the Olympics, maybe the Worlds and Valencia, are the races they want on their palmares.
I agree with that. And for the athletes, I don't think this changes anything. Maybe the fields are watered down so that makes it easier to win a major? But the prize money might drop at some point, so that is a bummer for the elites. In the end, I don't think the guys and gals in the top ten at one of these races is suffering because the series has 7 majors instead of 6.
But there still is the problem of "growing the sport" which is code for making it more popular among viewers. If that is the case, then it is the wrong move. There are too many events and races for a non-insider to keep track of what "matters."
Niche sports get four events. That is it. More than that and you've lost all the people who are not die-hards and insiders.
Tennis has four Grand Slams.
Golf can have as many championships as they want, but non-golfers only care about three: Masters, PGA championship, and the US Open. I can't even
Horse racing has three main events - Preakness, Belmont, and the Kentucky Derby
Boxing has about one event a year that is "Heavyweight Championship" (and they are allowed only one star boxer per era; we can't know or care about more than that)
Swimming gets one event EVERY FOUR YEARS
Triathlon gets two - the Olympics (every four years) and the Hawaii Ironman. Don't try to explain to me about how the long-course worlds matters. Nobody outside the sport even knows what you are talking about.
Baseball gets three events a year (NL championships, AL championships, and the World Series) that appeal to non-baseball people. The regular season is not interesting to most of us.
College basketball gets one month (March Madness), that's it.
Wrestling gets zero events (and was almost cut from the Olympics)
Cycling gets three (Giro, Tour, Vuelta) but only one that people really care about (the Tour)
Sailing gets one - the Americas Cup - but they ruined it by expanding the series to include a million races. You have to track the points to determine the "winner." There is no single race you can just watch.
Rugby and cricket probably have millions of fans but nobody in America knows when those "big games" are even held, so we can't watch them unless we stumble across them on ESPN2 or Peacock.
Old-fashioned sports like field hockey, archery or rowing get zero.
Nobody gets seven. They aren't Majors if you can win the event without really being one of the greatest in the sport.
But looking at this list, I think it is really hard (I am not saying it is impossible) to get people to care about your sport if they don't already care about your sport. But do you really want to try to coerce viewers into liking running? Why? Why do we need more viewers?
This post was edited 15 minutes after it was posted.
Hey rojo, maybe let's not call inclusion of sign language interpreters performative virtue signaling? Inclusion of a sign language interpreter is most definitely not just about the media, but about any deaf person that could be watching. I'm willing to criticize virtue signaling when I see it, but let's not criticize something that only makes running more accessible to others, not less.
We don't need those people anymore because everything has captions and deaf people can read.
I think captioning can be done by AI in zero seconds with zero effort.
If any marathon should have been the 7th Major, it should have been Fukuoka. The formation of WMM essentially destroyed what was one of the most important and historic races on the calendar.
Valencia, Fukuoka, Boston, Dubai, London, Tokyo, Chicago, New York, Berlin, etc. The question is which ones can I watch (is it televised) and which ones will have the actual top three of four runners in the world racing head-to-head? If they can't tell us that, then these races aren't really all they are cracked up to be for the viewers. For the runners, these races are still all super important!
This post was edited 1 minute after it was posted.
Hey rojo, maybe let's not call inclusion of sign language interpreters performative virtue signaling? Inclusion of a sign language interpreter is most definitely not just about the media, but about any deaf person that could be watching. I'm willing to criticize virtue signaling when I see it, but let's not criticize something that only makes running more accessible to others, not less.
We don't need those people anymore because everything has captions and deaf people can read.
I think captioning can be done by AI in zero seconds with zero effort.
I don't think you realize that ASL and English are two different languages... Many (not all) deaf people prefer communicating in ASL over English. That mostly would contain those who were born deaf, rather than becoming deaf later in life. ASL is used in countries that don't speak English as a lingua franca. The sign language interpreters aren't going away for awhile.
The best runners ‘know’ which races matter most. The 6 Majors and the Olympics, maybe the Worlds and Valencia, are the races they want on their palmares.
I agree with that. And for the athletes, I don't think this changes anything. Maybe the fields are watered down so that makes it easier to win a major? But the prize money might drop at some point, so that is a bummer for the elites. In the end, I don't think the guys and gals in the top ten at one of these races is suffering because the series has 7 majors instead of 6.
But there still is the problem of "growing the sport" which is code for making it more popular among viewers. If that is the case, then it is the wrong move. There are too many events and races for a non-insider to keep track of what "matters."
Niche sports get four events. That is it. More than that and you've lost all the people who are not die-hards and insiders.
Tennis has four Grand Slams.
Golf can have as many championships as they want, but non-golfers only care about three: Masters, PGA championship, and the US Open. I can't even
Horse racing has three main events - Preakness, Belmont, and the Kentucky Derby
Boxing has about one event a year that is "Heavyweight Championship" (and they are allowed only one star boxer per era; we can't know or care about more than that)
Swimming gets one event EVERY FOUR YEARS
Triathlon gets two - the Olympics (every four years) and the Hawaii Ironman. Don't try to explain to me about how the long-course worlds matters. Nobody outside the sport even knows what you are talking about.
Baseball gets three events a year (NL championships, AL championships, and the World Series) that appeal to non-baseball people. The regular season is not interesting to most of us.
College basketball gets one month (March Madness), that's it.
Wrestling gets zero events (and was almost cut from the Olympics)
Cycling gets three (Giro, Tour, Vuelta) but only one that people really care about (the Tour)
Sailing gets one - the Americas Cup - but they ruined it by expanding the series to include a million races. You have to track the points to determine the "winner." There is no single race you can just watch.
Rugby and cricket probably have millions of fans but nobody in America knows when those "big games" are even held, so we can't watch them unless we stumble across them on ESPN2 or Peacock.
Old-fashioned sports like field hockey, archery or rowing get zero.
Nobody gets seven. They aren't Majors if you can win the event without really being one of the greatest in the sport.
But looking at this list, I think it is really hard (I am not saying it is impossible) to get people to care about your sport if they don't already care about your sport. But do you really want to try to coerce viewers into liking running? Why? Why do we need more viewers?
Sounds like "I'm American, and I dont care about the rest ofvthe world" to me
If any marathon should have been the 7th Major, it should have been Fukuoka. The formation of WMM essentially destroyed what was one of the most important and historic races on the calendar.
Valencia, Fukuoka, Boston, Dubai, London, Tokyo, Chicago, New York, Berlin, etc. The question is which ones can I watch (is it televised) and which ones will have the actual top three of four runners in the world racing head-to-head? If they can't tell us that, then these races aren't really all they are cracked up to be for the viewers. For the runners, these races are still all super important!
They realise that there are many people in the east and in the southern hemisphere too, and every continent should be represented if possible.
One for Europe: Berlin. London as a bonus
One for USA, you decide, probably Chicago
Japan, Oceania, Africa , southern if possible, one extra in Asia.
So the only thing necessary really is to remove the two surplus ones in USA