.............................. wrote:
lastly, I don't buy the whole "the rest of the world cares only about representing their country."
The rest of the world, like everyone else chases the shoe contract and appearance fees. then, for a short period of time, the change into their national uniform. Those meets often fall in line with the European track season, during breaks, etc. Then they jump right back into racing weekly or twice weekly to pay the bills. The US collegiate systems just pays the bills while you are training.
Representing your country is a consequence of already being good.
Also, there must be some pretty special talent, and pretty special coaches who know a year or 6 mos in advance that they are going to qualify and make the team for the WJC. You make it sound like that is some easy task. At least in the US there is quite a bit of competition for those spots. I dare say no one set their training plan up around a mid August best performance of the year.
I'm done with this
That's just spin doctoring and rationalisation for a mediocre system. The college pays for your "bills" as you say but you also don't get the choice of where you aim your goals and training. Talent can certainly be indentified, and even allowing for the fact that some improve quickly and catch you by surprise, but unfortunately the plan for those more elite athletes is the same as those for other athletes. That's the thing with an individual sport, which track & field is, everyone has different goals and a good coach should be able to accomodate that. For elite runners maybe that international representation, for "lesser" athletes maybe something else during the season or maybe those "lesser" happy to even just train for "every week" as they are ok with simply having the scholarship pay their way through college. Either way, a training program should reflect that,if the coach is any good, even if that means peaking in August. That's that idea of being a coach, to be alble to plan for each person individually. The Olympics and World Track & Field's are usually in August so it's a good time to be training for if you happen to be an elite athlete. Unfortuately College coaching is self-indulgent and it's seems one size fits all to the detriment of some athletes, and the US itself. While these athlete is tied by the bootstraps to scholarship to simply pays for an education the sport will never develop properly and many international performances will continue to ne "embarrassing" (for want of a better word).