It's pathetic I say, on this IAAF World Cross day, letsrun.com forums are more interested in Allison Stokke's appearance at CSU Sacramento than in what happened in Edinburgh. We have to fix IAAF World Cross or fix the athletes, I don't want to blame the hard work and sacrifice, of the best athletes.
1nut wrote:
Mostly that is all you see anyway. Diababa running a solo WR attempt. This because the agents are running the the IAAF. Rather than limit the number of Africans in a field we will allow them to switch allegiance and run for every country. Only the IAAf can stop this by making a rule that you can only represent the country of your Birth. This would limit the number of mercenary africans that dominate every world final. Europeans had a chance at one time, but now most of Belgium is Morrocan, France is Algerian, Holland, Denmark and the US are Kenyan. Then bring in Quatar, Uganda, and Emerits. The agents love it because their african athletes are overwhelming. A white guy cant even get a slot.
I'm going to go through and pick your post apart:
1) Is it Dibaba's fault that she's that much better than everyone else?
2) Which agents are pumping fields full of Africans? Agents and meet promoters have an interest in making their products popular. There are disagreements on how to do this, but they understand the need to generate interest in a fanbase and develop it. The NYRR do a good job of this by having a balanced field where the Americans will be competitive. Other races, not so much.
3) There are so many exceptions to your idea of limiting national representation to the country of your birth. Meb was born in Ethiopia, but his portion of Ethiopia is now a different country. Marina Muncan and Blanka Vlasic were born in a country that no longer exists. Lopez Lomong fled war torn Sudan, but you'd basically force him out of ever winning an Olympic medal because he was born in a war zone. And then there are people like Lagat and Kipketer that fall in love with a new homeland. It happens. We all agree that what Qatar and Bahrain are doing isn't good, but a single sweeping act like that isn't the solution. If you limit changes of allegiance by requiring a three year prohibition on international representation, regardless of the last time the individual represented their previous country, then you will significantly limit the number of Kenyans defecting to Gulf states, but still allows those who make legitimate naturalizations (and allow for exceptions to made in special circumstances, such as with Lomong).
4) List all the Kenyan-born Americans currently competing for the US. I count one. That may go to two by the time the Trials arrive.
5) Please detail the agents who love the aforementioned situation.
6) Dominance by itself is not suffocating. I read little on this board about how American sprinters are killing the sprints in Europe. Of course, America has more to put into the sport than the whole of Africa.
7) This is about white guys? I thought that this was about Americans/Europeans. But I guess that guys like Krummenacker, Motchebon fit into your ideas of "American", huh?
The problems with track in a nuteshell:
-For westerners, it's not a very lucrative sport. There are many other sports where a talented athlete can make a lot more money. In Kenya, Ethiopia, etc, there is no more lucrative sport.
-The US doesn't give one shit about international competition. The most popular sports are intranational pro leagues (made up of increasingly foreign players). Is Big Papí any less popular in Boston because he's from the DR and not Dorcester? He's just seen as Boston. What makes those sports popular in the US is the local rivalry mentality (Boston vs. NY, LA vs. Boston, Dallas vs. Houston, etc). To the average American, very little that happens outside of the US matters. The US loses the World Baseball Classic to Cuba, and loses the World Basketball Champs to Spain, but there's no national outrage that America is failing to win at sports that were made popular in the US. Because it doesn't matter to them. The US could drop some bombs on any of those "loser" countries. No USSR = no real rivals on the international stage. I doubt Americans are looking forward to Allyson Felix taking it to some Iraqi or Afghan sprinter. Outside the US, this is less true. Every country would go nuts if they won the World Cup, or in other cases, their national sport (Sweden or Canada in hockey, for ex.) on an international stage. They care about being the best. Not the US.
-People have a hard time relating to performances in track (I'd say that this is less true in Europe, but it's getting there). Fat Americans can still toss a ball around and have some appreciation for Kobe or Tom Brady. But you need to run (and likely race) to really appreciate a 3:45 mile. Past participation isn't a must (I never jumped, but I can appreciate 18.29m because I'm a fan and student of the sport), but the high level of media exposure in other sports (football, basketball, baseball in the US and soccer everywhere else) ingrain that appreciation in the culture. This is why Jamaicans (by and large) love track. They've always had good sprinters, and it's an area in which they perform well.
Your endless ramblings about WXC just made me more interested in Allison Stokke than in Turinesh Dibaba.
Tobias Fünke wrote:
The problems with track in a nuteshell:
-For westerners, it's not a very lucrative sport. There are many other sports where a talented athlete can make a lot more money. In Kenya, Ethiopia, etc, there is no more lucrative sport.
.
Incorrect. In Kenya, the biggest sport, by far, is soccer (like it is in most countries on this planet). Running is only dominant in a few tribes on the Kenyan highland.
curious! wrote:
Tobias Fünke wrote:The problems with track in a nuteshell:
-For westerners, it's not a very lucrative sport. There are many other sports where a talented athlete can make a lot more money. In Kenya, Ethiopia, etc, there is no more lucrative sport.
.
Incorrect. In Kenya, the biggest sport, by far, is soccer (like it is in most countries on this planet). Running is only dominant in a few tribes on the Kenyan highland.
You can point to some data that your average Kenyan soccer player (or their top soccer players) make more money than their top distance runners? How many Kenyans are in the Premier League? Are their more world ranked Kenyan footballers than Kenyan middle and long distance runners?
I think it has more to do with the countries who are competing at the top. No one cares to see 3rd world countries duking it out for the top spot in a sport. They want to see the powerful, elite nations duking it out for title of best in the world at something.
Similar to watching USA v. Russia or USA v. the World. People want to see the powerful nations competing. It's as close to war as they can get in a peaceful world and the powerful countries get the bragging rights.
Watching Ethiopia v. Kenya has no consequence. Sadly no one cares about either country and therefore no one watches a competition of teams based on which country they're from.
peeps is dumb wrote:
Watching Ethiopia v. Kenya has no consequence. Sadly no one cares about either country and therefore no one watches a competition of teams based on which country they're from.
Although Ethiopians and Kenyans might take umbrage at your remarks, I agree with your basic point. But cross-country as a team sport is a tough sell, anyway. I still don't know what the team results were in this year's race, and I really don't care. Because of the scoring system, the team competition usually depends much more on who finished 30th or 40th than it does on who finished first or second. It's difficult to think of another sport in which the performances of the lesser athletes on the team are almost always much more important than the performances of the best. Although I realize that NCAA cross-country has managed to sustain interest in the team aspect of the competition, at least at the national championships, cross-country is still a very awkward fit for team competition in what is essentially an individual sport.
As an individual sport, however, there is at least some chance to market the best performers -- the real stars, like Bekele, Tergat, and Ngugi. It's still a very tough sell to the U.S. and European markets, but not entirely out of the question. Boxing on HBO, for example, has been pretty successful in marketing matches between fighters from third-world countries, largely by showing how those fighters have overcome difficult conditions and are now idolized within their own countries, and by showing the unique personalities, strengths, and weaknesses of the individual competitors.
Of course, none of that may increase participation from countries that simply don't care to compete in sports that they aren't any good at. If people aren't inspired by the chance to line up with the best in the world in the most competitive race in the world, I don't know what anyone else can reasonably do to entice them.
Qatar and Bahrain should be banned. ITS A JOKE.
peeps is dumb wrote:
I think it has more to do with the countries who are competing at the top. No one cares to see 3rd world countries duking it out for the top spot in a sport. They want to see the powerful, elite nations duking it out for title of best in the world at something.
Similar to watching USA v. Russia or USA v. the World. People want to see the powerful nations competing. It's as close to war as they can get in a peaceful world and the powerful countries get the bragging rights.
Watching Ethiopia v. Kenya has no consequence. Sadly no one cares about either country and therefore no one watches a competition of teams based on which country they're from.
I disagree.
I think that's a small factor, in that I don't think it mattered which country were winning (even if it were the US), I doubt it would garner much attention in the States. As I stated above, basketball and baseball are two sports that receive a lot of media coverage in the US, and the US lost those competitions to Spain and Cuba, respectively. The US hasn't won the FIBA Basketball crown since 1994! And that's, of course, because the very best players in America will opt out of it because it means far less to them than making sure they're best prepared for the NBA season that fall. They're actions are representative of the greater American mentality.
Women's middle distance running is more or less dominated by European powers like Russia, with a few Africans thrown in, and yet that receives no more attention than World Cross Country. How much more attention does mens sprinting get, that being a US-dominated event? A little more?
You know that some people in the UK (not even serious athletics fans, but just British sports fans) still remember when the UK beat the USA in the 4x400 at the 1991 World Champs. That was a big deal for Britain to take down the US in a storied team event like that. If Ryan Hall wins the marathon in Beijing, that will generate some measure of attention, but that's only because a) it's the Olympics and b) it's the marathon, one of the few events many Americans know anything about.