Many of Vin Lananna's friends don't know who Jakob Ingebrigtsen or Cole Hocker is - Do your friends know who they are?

Most of my friends don’t know who Hocker and Jakob are by name. The ones who watched the Olympics just remember “the American with the pony tail who beat the Scandinavian dude with the bad haircut and ugly tattoos.”

My friends who run: yes

My friends who don’t run: very few

Most people I know (and many of them are runners) don't know the top runners.

I think:

1. We don't have a shared culture anymore because the information we see comes from social media that shows us what we already look at.

No one outside the track world is seeing the Grand Slam Track facebook posts.

2. Again, social media, we only see the sports we follow. I don't know all that many baseball/football/basketball players. I couldn't name one hockey player.

I remember watching on the 6:30 evening news the finish of the Commonwealth 1500 where Bayi set the world record! Like CBS probably, that's what I used to watch.

If track and field wants to grow they (we) have to find a way to market the sport to reach more people.

I like the idea of those city street races and field event contests.

Close off a downtown area and have a high jump competition, pole vault, shot put.

Have top runners race- it doesn't even have to be a standard distance.

When I was a kid 50 years ago we had races in the street from one telephone to another.

Every neighborhood kid out there just running.

Races around the block were common.

They have to get creative and market it.

Am I the only one not surprised by this? I recently learned who Shohei Ohtani was because a friend couldn't believe I'd never heard the name before (haven't watched a baseball game in maybe 15 years), but everybody knows Babe Ruth, Barry Bonds, etc

Yes Most people back then knew who Prefontaine and Jim Ryun were/are, same with Bolt

Well my friends from College Track and Cross Country do, They are still my friends

Here's another take on it:

We have a local Olympian from the 2024 games. EVERYONE knows who she is.

Local high school, stayed local for college and now a pro.

Why? She's on the evening news. She's on facebook pages that everyone sees.

Here's a thought- they always say where a pro went to college. They SHOULD say where they went to high school, their hometown where people will identify with them.

I think there are two things that help explain this. First, track & field was a much more popular sport then -- on tv, in widely read magazines like SI, and in person (look at all the indoor track meets with sold-out crowds). Second, whether in retrospect he deserved it or not, Pre was a uniquely popular athlete. He had that charisma, and it probably helped that he didn't race in Europe much or have many East African runners to contend with; he could just beat US runners.

Ryun was "better" but didn't have the charisma, Liquori had the charisma but such awful Olympic luck.

You are correct about indoor meets and SI sometimes covering track and field events (written by individuals who knew the sport-you also had Track and Field News - the non-digital version of Let's Run). However, track was less popular outdoors (NCAA meet was never crowded, only Olympic trials at Oregon had full stands, with some following the outdoor relay circuit of Texas Relays, Kansas Relays, Drake Relays and Penn Relays).

Today, at least, You Tube and, yes, Let's Run, providing some better exposure not only indoors, but also xc and outdoors, along with Europe meets. (Just go back to the 1960's to see grainy videos highlight tapes of major track meets as a comparison).

I see more an issue with other sports taking people's attention away from track and field, as can also be seen in pro baseball. People have more interests to explore today and less time for "slow moving" sports like track and field. Name recognition is quite difficult, not only because top athletes don't stay on top very long and many have names that are hard to pronounce. Foreign athletes were infrequent competitors in the US and when they did come, it drew big crowds if they were from Russia (The USSR vs USA meets) and Africa (The meet at Duke). The relay meets have mostly gone away, with Drake and Penn still popular. Time trials seem to be more in vogue than team competition and when you don't know the individuals running the time trial or what is now considered "fast times" it seems difficult for someone, even those who were in the sport, to follow the meets.

I see it similar to trying to follow baseball where team members are constantly changing, unlike in the 1950's and 1960's when a ball player stayed with one team for his entire career. I still remember every Brooklyn Dodger who played on the winning 1955 world series team, yet can only name a few of the New York Mets at the present time.

I can not tell you who the leader of each event in track and field might be, whether on the pro circuit or at the NCAA level. Heck, I had trouble finding out where the regional meets were being held and when they were being held. Ask me where the NCAA Championships are being held and I couldn't tell you without looking it up.

Yes and the reason was that we had more of a shared culture. Sports Illustrated was THEEEE sports magazine and had a monthly track and field article as well as other feature articles from time to time.

Local newspapers had limited coverage of track meets. It was common for the Wide World of Sports to cover track meets throughout the anthology show.

I remember in 1980 I had a gf who was a typical 18 year old girl not into sports, not into track at all. BUT, she knew Coe and Ovett. Ovett was my favorite, she hated him because of his arrogance. She liked Coe because he was more "proper".

Find a random 18 year old girl who knows Hocker or Jakob now.

There were fewer outlets to watch sports and we all watched them.

This is the correct answer. His friends aren’t into track, they’re into telling stories about when they were younger.

My friends who are all into basketball don’t know who Jokic or SGA or LeBron are. They only know magic and bird.

Hey Vin, maybe a good place to start for your friends who are into track would be to watch a track meet!

I would venture today that more than half the population does not know 4 stars in any major sport, the big four, so I imagine it's more than 80 percent when it's a a fringe sport like track and field, ultra running, surfing and even rugby.

99.4% of the Sports, Entertainment, Theme Park, TV Broadcast, TV Streaming is held by the Hollywood TV Carrel. So you can't blame Lanana for that. THe free Nike fanbois work day and night for no pay, no ;ove, no hotel, no food....

Yes there were three channels on TV. If you watched sports at all, you were exposed to whatever was on, and some times track was on. Because there were so few options, that means millions of people were watching track at some points. The Olympic 100m final is possibly the only similar event currently, which is why people remember Bolt. The name helps.

Also, for Ryun, he was in Congress, too.

Nope. But they dont know who kipchoge is either. Most of my friends are in the adult bizz...

who is vin lananana, and how do I be his friend

You want to know why nobody knows who Jakob Ingebrigtsen is?

Because the average 18-year-old is a dopamine junkie mainlining 7,000 micro-doses of content before breakfast. Because we traded Jim McKay for Jake Paul. Because sports used to be something you watched with your dad on one of three channels and now it’s something you scroll past between ASMR garbage and cold plunge thirst traps.

The market doesn’t reward endurance. It rewards interruption.

And track? Track is discipline. Track is patience. Track is the long fuse. Which means in 2025, it’s practically invisible.

Here’s your data, if numbers still mean anything:

The 1972 Olympic men’s 1500m final pulled half a billion eyes worldwide.

The 2023 World Championships barely registered on Nielsen.

Sha’Carri Richardson’s suspension—her suspension, not even her races—got less Google action than a YouTuber’s off-brand water bottle drop that same week.

This isn’t about talent. It’s about signal loss. Because fame isn’t built on greatness anymore—it’s built on algorithms. Engagement. Outrage. Distraction as a business model.

Basketball passed the torch from Dr. J to MJ to Kobe to Bron to Ja. Myth became system. System became religion.

Track? Track left the stadium and wandered into the woods. No structure. No saga. Just brilliance, untelevised.

There’s no Pre 2.0 waiting in the wings because there’s no Nike ready to build him a shrine. No marketing machine rolling out the red carpet. No Spike Lee on the infield screaming about magic shoes. No franchise model. No arcs. Just moments. Gone before the sweat dries.

And we ask why the kids don’t know Haile Gebrselassie?

Because they know who the Island Boys are. Because they can name six guys with six-packs and microphones but not one who broke 27 in the 10K. Because they’ve been trained—trained—to notice spectacle, not stamina.

It’s not stupidity. It’s saturation. The river of information became a flood, and track doesn’t float—it runs. Quiet. Clean. Defiant.

And in a world that confuses volume with value, maybe that’s the most radical thing left.

It doesn’t beg to be seen.

It dares you to look.
B

like I said a few weeks ago, create a damn story.

I’m curious if we were to bring up another Olympic racing sport if the people on this site could do any better than the general public does for track and field. Without looking it up, can anyone name the current top athletes in the world for any swimming events? Or name any pro-level swimmer in the past 20 years besides Michael Phelps?

Track is not alone in its publicity problems.

Goe is a paid propagandist for Nike.