Well...How did we do??? Did the U.S. and Eugene do a good job hosting junior worlds?

Drive to San Diego, that would be like be traversing Europe.

Bad Wigins wrote:

Curious about Eugene wrote:

The six-day meet attracted 51,532 fans

It's so they can lie like this that they drag the thing out 6 days.

Tickets were sold for either all 6 days or the last 3 days. Not just one day. They can't sell more than 11,000 or so total tickets because all of them will show up for the last 3 days.

They probably had 6,000 people show up for the first three days, and the same 6,000 people plus 5000 more people showed up for the last 3. The first 6000 were probably mainly parents and relatives of the athletes, and the other 5000 were sensible people who had paid 40 bucks to see DL Eugene and weren't about to shell out 70 to 180 to see a lower-caliber event.

That's probably better than average for world juniors. Btw, if that meet had been in NY, LA or Philly and the attendance would have been triple.

It was just a HS sort of meet by the IAAF. Not a major. The big diffrence that I detected for the 1st race was the IAAF only allows necessary officials and crews on the track, outside of the track, and infield. So the head count of volunteers and officials on the field was around 1/4th of what they had the month before at NCAA's. That was a lot safer for the athletes. The coaches were surely relieved. It always gets dangerously crowded with malingering senior citizens roaming around, cajoling, and socializing when the meet is going on the infield at Hayward Field.

They probably had 6,000 people show up for the first three days, and the same 6,000 people plus 5000 more people showed up for the last 3. The first 6000 were probably mainly parents and relatives of the athletes, and the other 5000 were sensible people who had paid 40 bucks to see DL Eugene and weren't about to shell out 70 to 180 to see a lower-caliber event.

At any typical 2nd rate meet, coaches, athletes and parents (with free support passes) sit in the stands making up 1/2 the crowd as usual in little towns with nothing else to do during summer vacation. If it was a college meet in May, kids would be back at the hotel studying instead of in the stands.

Only complaint voiced was no tour to L.A./S.F. from the IAAF or individual nation federations. You know the IAAF big shots went to L.A./S.F. anyways for free (without the junior athletes and coaches who deserved the once in a lifetime visit to Disneyland).

dkny64 wrote:

David Monti. wrote:

Finally, the USA medal haul is particularly impressive because they did it without age-cheating. I can't say the same for some of the other teams...

David Monti, Editor & Publisher

Race Results Weekly

Mr Monti: Since you're an actual player in global T&F rather than some anonymous letsrun message board poster, I expect more from you than nebulous accusations of age cheating by un-named athletes from un-named countries with no evidence attached. Please either elaborate on these accusations or drop them.

In spike of his credentials, when David is posting on this board, he is a message board poster and this message board is where you come to express opinions -or as you say nebulous accusations. Over the years I have pointed out over a dozen fairly clear cut examples of African age cheating. (The idea of African age cheating did not come from out of thin air.) However, just like when someone accuses an athlete of doping, unless they fail a drug test or we saw them with the pills or needles in their hand, we really don’t know for sure, but we give it the duck-test and speculate. Albeit, the speculation is unfair and unwarranted at times, but if you give the public enough dots, it’s only natural for them to start trying to connect them.

With that said, when you have 3 Kenyan athletes on a cross country team with the same DOB; athletes who have used different DOBs; a junior team with no 19 years olds, everybody is 18; an athlete who was 18yo competing for Kenya and 3 years later he is still listed as 18 but competing for Bahrain under a different name; athletes who themselves like Geb and Komen who have said they are older than their documented age; athletes who have no record of competing in the secondary school champs, age group champs...basically they are unheard of, run one race in Africa and their next race is world youth and at 16yo they run a 1:44x 800m...so forth and so on. I can fill this page with decades of anomalies related African supposedly junior athletes and some clear cut examples of age cheating. David and the public has more than enough information to express their opinion about this issue.

Forget about David, here is my opinion; African age cheating is so bad that the youth and junior performances and records are laughable. On the male side, close to 100% of the East African athletes competing in age restricted competitions are overage. In fact, it is rare for a male East African athlete to be the correct eligibility age to compete in youth and junior global competitions.

Why do East African age cheat? The reasons are threefold:

1. Success in running at any level is a source of national pride in East African countries. With so many bad things going on, national leaders, politicians, track & field NGBs and the people need success stories and heroes they can point to and align themselves with. Age cheating does just occur with one country in particular, there are a number of countries that do it. Although it has been around since the beginning or age restricted competitions, it started to get really bad when in the late 90s to early 2000s, Ethiopia threatened Kenya’s dominance in junior cross and their production line of young professional runners. This eventually became not just an issue of national pride, but an economic one as well.

2. In some cases age cheating is inadvertent, there are athletes who don’t know their true age. However, for a young East African athlete, having a birth certificate is a negative, because not having a birth certificate enables you to game the system. When an athlete’s age isn’t documented, there are several ways to approximate an athlete’s age usually to within a year, but instead, an athlete’s age gets documented as being several years younger than their true age and the NGBs, coaches and agents are complicit in this.

3. The 3rd reason is why not do it? Where does a 500 lbs gorilla sit, anywhere he wants to…East African age cheat for the simple fact that they can. Questioning an athlete’s age is tantamount to questioning the legitimacy of how a nation-state’s processes and how they conduct their affairs; the IAAF wants no part of that and leaves the age issue up to the NGBs.

Ok. I bought single day tickets prior to the event for $5 through the goducks.com (but I'm in the student/faculty/staff crowd). No passports, but single general admission tickets.

Throughout the duration of the event, each day there were $10 general admission tickets.

Hayward Field is UNSAFE wrote:

It was just a HS sort of meet by the IAAF. Not a major. The big diffrence that I detected for the 1st race was the IAAF only allows necessary officials and crews on the track, outside of the track, and infield. So the head count of volunteers and officials on the field was around 1/4th of what they had the month before at NCAA's. That was a lot safer for the athletes. The coaches were surely relieved. It always gets dangerously crowded with malingering senior citizens roaming around, cajoling, and socializing when the meet is going on the infield at Hayward Field.

This is the tip of the iceberg. Hardly anyone pays to attend track meets in Oregon. Attendance and Paid Attendance are different numbers due to the clubby nature of the Eugene running community.

It may be a moot point with the Power Five taking over by 2016, but NCAA rules does not allow distant proxy facilities as you propose. Thus UO cannot use UP's venues nor the Portland Meadows horse track.