FatButtFit wrote:
Forrestchild wrote:Anyone who is disrespecting the dedicated and talented athletes had never achieved himself anything noteworthy in his life. Otherwise, they would have respected and recognized talent in different field than running.
This is not only untrue it shows you have completely misunderstood the criticism of race-walking.
Most of the runners here admire good runners. They even admire the effort put in by far less successful runners. Sure you get the "If you can't break 15min for 5K you suck" trolls, but generally speaking most runners here appreciate the hard work that goes into running even at a lower level than themeselves.
Also most of the runners here can look at other sports such as swimming and see how awesome those athletes are.
But I think if we are honest we look at sports with smaller pools of potential winners such as rowing, canoeing and similar, and we can admire their dedication and talent while admitting that an Olympic gold in such a sport is not on par with an Olympic gold in a track event. Just an issue of less competition due to a less popular or less accessible sport.
When we get to a sport like Triathlon, because running is such a key element of it and because it is a new sport, runners tend to view it as an easy option. 10 years ago this was totally valid. A good runner could, more often than not, become a good triathlete fairly easily. These days it is far, far less so. Sure you still get the triathlon trolls here, and it is still not, nor will it ever be, at the same level of top level distance running (accessibility will always keep the pool down).
With a sport like synchronized swimming we just laugh! Why? Because it looks silly! Now, I accept that it requires great strength, flexibility and fitness. It's not easy! But it looks stupid, so we laugh anyway - that's life!
Now we come to race walking. Like Triathlon before, it is considered to be a similar sport to running at a lower level. You can take this charge and multiply it by 100! Firstly it is on foot, no swimming or cycling, and so the similarity with regards to the muscles used and fitness required is VERY similar when compared to other sports. Far more so than triathlon. And secondly while triathlon has become a professional multi-million dollar sport, race walking is light years from that.
Now like synchro, racewalking just looks silly - your instinctive reaction is just to laugh! It will never be able to overcome this. Look at the Mr T Snickers Ad! It was banned because they thought it was anti-gay! That's not runners picking on you - that's just what it looks like to Joe public!
So when you combine the weakness of the sport with the fact it looks silly, of course you will be looked down upon. And of course the fact it looks so stupid means very few people would be seen dead doing it, so again the standard drops further.
So the bottom line is you have a sport that is too similar to running with regards to fitness and muscular endurance to justify it's existence; a sport that looks completely stupid / gay / retarded; a sport where the pool of potential winners is so small that there would be more glory winning a Para-"Olympic" gold for 100m for one legged, one eyed and one armed people than an Olympic gold in racewalking.
And on top of all that you have the irony that was so well described by a previous poster who said it's "like seeing who can whisper the loudest!" Come on! You have to see the searing irony and tremendous humor in that!
So when you come on here, you just cannot argue anything constructive. We'll always see you as a lower standard of sport no matter what you say; thus the likelihood of an average runner becoming a world class walker is huge, but the reverse is impossible. You'll never convince a fairly good (say 16-17min 5K) college runner that a top race walker is a better athlete than them. All you'll do is dig your hole deeper.
And did I mention it looks stupid?
No, I wouldn't even try to convince such a mediocre college (and an American in addition to that) homophobic frat guy about anything, much less about racewalking. I guarantee you that any racewalker who is capable of walking around 1:22 for 20k or 3:50 for 50k can trounce such a guy in running event any day. As I said, I had friends on national team who were great race walkers, and solid runners. 16-17min 5k is their marathon pace.
I admit, racewalking looks silly and the sentence about competition who can whisper the loudest is ironical and true, but those guys are tough and great athletes. Such because US sucks in this event and cannot get it across the public (look at the millions of powerwalkers in the US that look even more stupid) as an acceptable sport, it doesn't mean that it is not popular elsewhere in the world. It is tremedously popular in Latin America (Ecuador, Bolivia, Mexico) and in Europe. In Poland- the triple winner of 50k Korzeniowski is a national hero and very wealthy man. The same is true for Russia, Italy, Slovakia, Spain, etc.- every country that ever had an Olympic gold medalist in this event is proud of it. It's only you insecure Americans that have issues with being seen in public doing racewalking...
You are wrong - the pool of talents in racewalking is huge, only in the US is small, for known reasons.