Best running journalist

How can anyone say Sandrock? He writes around quotes lifted from other authors. When you read his stuff it's like reading a high school essay you wrote in a hurry that walks the fine line of plagiarism. I guess you could be fooled if you haven't read a lot of running material but if you have it makes you think " haven't I read this before?"

Kevin Beck of kemibe.com fame!

Toni Reavis!I agree.Tony "No Baloney Reavis"He's been on top of his game since at least 1975.So, "Do I Get My Labatt's or What?

Digest wrote:

Toni Reavis

Luke wrote:

One thing that's interesting here is that with very few exceptions (Hersh, a couple of Colorado guys, and two NY Timesmen who only occasionally cover the sport), there aren't that many daily newspaper people being mentioned Here. No one from the Boston Globe, no one from the LA Times, not even anyone from the Washington Post, the paper the Brojos often praise. it shows that what few people write about the sport for the dailies aren't making a lot of impact.

its one of the things that elevated elliot denman in my mind. he wrote often about the sport - practically every week in some way, shape or form. he was lucky enough, of course, to work for a large enough paper that could send him to cover the olympics, to have enough power within hi paper to get them to send him to the world championsips, and have a paper local enough that he could cover community events (local track & h.s.) for the interest sections.

few guys wrote more about track than he did.

Agreed w/KMoore. Add Craig Neff of SI and Eric Olsen of the old Runner mag.

No One mentioned James(Jim) O'Brian. Elloit Denman introduced him to me at an Indoor track meet up there and afterwards we went out to a bar with Victor Sailor(Photo Run). Shortly after that James was Senior Writer for American Athletics magazine of just plan Athletics? He got mad at me for a stunt I did once but I told him I always like his writing. He could make an average joe runner look like a champ. Well actually the guys he wrote of were good but not to many took notice till he wrote of them. What am I saying? I mean nobody outside of track had noticed till he wrote of them but James O' Brian is a good J.

A couple of the best pieces that I ever read (other than Kenny Moore who is a borderline running journalist god along with Ding Dong Kardong)were Hunter S Thompson's coverage of the honolulu marathon in curse of lono (and running magazine)and Ken Kesey's coverage of the 1980 Olympic Track & Field Trials also in Running Magazine...hands down withot a shadow of a doubt my favorite currently active writer is John Crumpacker of the San Francisco Chronicle...he LOVES track and is knowledgeable and funny...at nearly 300lbs, I call him the sumo track fan...he also covers the 49ers but is such a huge track geek that he gave up the cushy SuperBowl travel gig to be able to cover world track & field championships....is also the current president of TAFWA (track & field writers of america) and for very good reason

MF

Two excellent ones: Kenny Moore and John L. Parker, Jr.

Tinman

Charlie Mahler, La Crosse, WI native and MN coach has potential to surpass many of the geats. He is smart, knows running, and he knows what is really important. Tinman

Anyone who writes for Jogger's World, or has written for them in the last six years is automatically disqualified from this competition.

Well, "yes/no," that would include Chris Lear...sure you want to stand by that statement?

all great picks...

thanks for the links to hunter s. thompson's coverage of the honolulu marathon! i have become a big fan of the good doctor over the past year. haven't yet gotten a chance to read "curse of lono"... i had no idea he was something of a running fan.

anyone have an idea where i could find the ken kesey 80's world coverage? links?

thanks!

Luke wrote:

One thing that's interesting here is that with very few exceptions (Hersh, a couple of Colorado guys, and two NY Timesmen who only occasionally cover the sport), there aren't that many daily newspaper people being mentioned Here. No one from the Boston Globe, no one from the LA Times, not even anyone from the Washington Post, the paper the Brojos often praise. it shows that what few people write about the sport for the dailies aren't making a lot of impact.

Barbara Huebner had the "Olympic" beat for the Boston Globe, but left a few years ago and is now the media chief for the adidas Boston Indoor Games. The Glob hasn't replaced her that I've noticed.

Dick Patrick was another newspaper guy mentioned.

Amy Shipley often has the "Olympic" beat for the WashPost.

Most papers who have full-time reporters who cover track have those reporters on the "Olympic" beat, which means they also cover swimming, gymnastics, figure skating, etc. Most of them (Crumpacker is an exception) happen to BE runners, which is to our advantage, but (as noted) many are being cut back in their travel budgets, like Dick Patrick at USA Today.

As far as "what few people write about the sport for the dailies aren't making a lot of impact," I'm not quite sure what you mean. There are dozens of stories written for daily outlets linked from this site and others every day. The majority are written by the low man on the sports department totem pole, or people from the Lifestyle section, who don't know the sport well, whether or not they are good writers. These writers ARE making a lot of impact, if measured by how widely their articles are linked and read within the running community. It'd be nice if talented freelancers like Chris Lear could get enough work to quit their day jobs, but to make an immediate impact on our coverage, it would be better if we could educate the people who are writing the articles now - and do it without the condescending attitude so often seen on this site. (Including in that last clause.)

Priorities Straight wrote:

Well, "yes/no," that would include Chris Lear...sure you want to stand by that statement?

And Kenny Moore.

anyone have an idea where i could find the ken kesey 80's world coverage? links?

don't know of any links but to clarify iy was in Paul Perry's long since defunct magazine, "Running" and the coverage was of the 1980 Olympic Track & Field Trials in Eugene (where Kesey lived)

MF

Anonymous Coward wrote:

[ It'd be nice if talented freelancers like Chris Lear could get enough work to quit their day jobs, but to make an immediate impact on our coverage, it would be better if we could educate the people who are writing the articles now - and do it without the condescending attitude so often seen on this site. (Including in that last clause.)

the problem is that chris lear isn't that good of a writer. he's had two books that have interesting story lines, but were poorly written. the only thing that has made those books semi-intersting was the access that he had.

its hard to be a freelance journalist if you aren't any good at writing. you can have all the access in the world to national/elite runners, but if you can't tell the story clearly, concisely, and precisely, a newspaper isn't going to pick up your work.

Apart from Paddy's selection, I'm distressed that some of the titans of athletic journalism have not been mentioned -and for me, the most influential of those, in print form, was Chris Brasher of The Observer and The Times, who died in March of last year.

Here's what he did for both the sport of Atheltics and the profession of journalism, as told by his last employer.

Martin

Chris Brasher, CBE, athlete and founder of the London Marathon, was born on August 21, 1928. He died of cancer on February 28, 2003, aged 74.

Olympic gold medallist who became a millionaire businessman and went on to found the London Marathon

Few men were as relentlessly competitive as Chris Brasher - or as formidably energetic. Olympic steeplechase gold medallist, newspaper and television journalist, multi-millionaire businessman and founder of the London Marathon, he brought a potent combination of idealism and cussedness to almost everything he did. As a colleague on The Observer, where he was sports editor from 1957 to 1961, put it: "You went with him or you got out of his way fast. I have never met anybody with such self-belief."

Brasher's life was dominated by an unquenchable faith in sport as a means of liberation and self-discovery and by a near-fanatical devotion to the outdoor life. It was entirely in character that he was also a fervent advocate of the Olympics, or at least of the original Olympic ideal.

The bloated, money-making extravagance of the Olympics in the television age, soured by drugs, corruption and commerce, filled him with despair. "I believe hugely in Olympism", he said in 1996. "But my love affair with the Games themselves has finally hit the divorce courts. All the magic has dissolved."

His victory in the 3,000 metres steeplechase in the 1956 Melbourne Games epitomised the inspiration he took from the Olympics. He was never the most naturally gifted of athletes - "I squeezed out what little talent I possessed," he said. His gold medal was not least a triumph of bloodyminded determination over more obviously talented athletes.

It was this same singlemindedness that led to the creation of the London Marathon in 1981. Surmounting formidable logistical problems and sweeping aside opposition, Brasher, ably supported by a dedicated team, organised the first race in only 17 months. Yet despite the instant and enormous success of the marathon, there were mutterings about Brasher's high-handed management and autocratic manner almost from the start.

They came to a head when Brasher and his business partner and co-director of the race, John Disley, were accused in the Channel 4 programme Dispatches of using the marathon to promote their sports shoe distribution company. They met the challenge head on, suing Channel 4 and the New Statesman, which had printed the original accusations. After a bruising legal battle, Channel 4 and the magazine withdrew all the accusations and Brasher and Disley were awarded a £1.1 million settlement.

Christopher William Brasher was born in British Guiana, where his father, a radio engineer, worked for the Colonial Office. After a transfer to Jerusalem, the family returned to England when Brasher was seven.

He was educated at Rugby and St John's College, Cambridge. Already a convert to outdoor adventure - he led two expeditions to the Arctic before he was 22 - it was at Cambridge that he discovered athletics, even if it was obvious from the start that he was more willing workhorse than track thoroughbred. But he was a good enough - and dogged enough - runner to be picked for the 1952 Helsinki Olympics.

If his performance there was undistinguished - he finished second to last in the steeplechase final - the experience confirmed his infatuation with the Olympics.

An imperishable moment of British sporting glory followed two years later when, on May 6, 1954, with Chris Chataway, he helped to pace Roger Bannister to the first sub-four-minute mile, at the Iffley Road track in Oxford. At the gun, Brasher shot into the lead as the first pacemaker, reeling off a fast first lap to help keep Bannister's record bid on target. With Chataway taking up the running when Brasher tired, Bannister powered past with 200 yards to go, to come home in the historic time of 3min 59.4 secs.

Acknowledging the superior talents of Bannister and Chataway, yet desperate to emulate their fame, Brasher decided to devote himself to the 1956 Olympics. With help from a sympathetic employer, Mobil Oil, which he had joined as a management trainee in 1951, Brasher threw himself into a training regime of exceptional severity for the period.

Nonetheless, John Disley, his later business partner, was widely regarded as a much better bet for a medal. Brasher, only the third-choice steeplechaser in the British team, had never won an international race before Melbourne. Yet, as the field came down the home straight in the Olympic final he held his place at the front. The drama was not over at the tape, though. Brasher was disqualified for obstructing the third-placed man, Ernst Larsen of Norway. However, neither the Norwegian nor Sandor Rozsnyol, who came in second, would support a disqualification. After three hours of deliberations from an Olympic jury of appeal, Brasher was reinstated as the winner.

After sitting up most of that night with Chataway and two journalists, all of them, in his words, "very thirsty", he had an equally alcoholic lunch the next day with the 13-strong British press corps, each of whom bought him a large gin, so he arrived on the podium, by his own admission, in a state of some inebriation.

As an Olympic champion, doors suddenly opened to him (not that he was averse to leaning on them). The following year, he was appointed sports editor of The Observer. Though he worked there full-time for only four years, he continued to write freelance for the paper as its Olympic correspondent until 1991.

His unflinching style never slackened. When a lawyer struck out a passage by Brasher as libellous, Brasher went straight to the composing room and ordered its reinstatement. After the 1968 Mexico Olympics, he wrote a 45,000-word book on the subject in six days, dictating to relays of secretaries. He covered the 1992 games, his last, for The Sunday Times. He was twice Sportswriter of the Year, in 1968 and 1976.

For most of the 1960s, Brasher worked for the BBC as a reporter and producer. This included four years on the Tonight programme, then at the peak of its innovative success. In 1969 he was made Head of General Features, Television, at the BBC. But within four years he had resigned, frustrated by the Corporation's bureaucracy and claiming that the job had become "a bore". He returned to freelance programme-making.

In 1976 he was sued by a Welsh landowner, Robin Herbert, whose treatment of his tenants had been criticised by Brasher in a 1974 BBC documentary, Who is Buying Up Britain? The judgment, reached two years later, was a rare setback. Herbert was awarded £30,000 libel damages, a near record at the time.

Throughout this period, Brasher had pursued his sporting passions with undiminished gusto, mountaineering, skiing and orienteering in particular, in 1966 co-founding the British Orienteering Federation.

As a natural extension of this sporting passion, he and Disley went into business together in 1970, selling orienteering compasses. A sports shop and a sports shoe distribution business, Fleetfoot, followed. By 1988 the annual turnover had reached £35 million.

Two years later, Fleetfoot was bought by the leisure footwear giant Reebok, whose shoes Fleetfoot had distributed for several years. Brasher and Disley became millionaires several times over. Brasher served as chairman of Reebok UK from 1992 to 1994.

It was Brasher's ownership of Fleetfoot that threatened to tarnish, however slightly, his greatest achievement, the London Marathon. Brasher had been overwhelmed after taking part in the New York City Marathon in 1979, and instantly decreed that London should have its own marathon. "Could London stage such a festival?" he wrote the following week. "Do we have the heart and hospitality to welcome the world?"

The answer was an emphatic yes. Brasher hoped for 3,000 entries for the first race, in March 1981. In the event, more than 21,000 were received. Since then, the London Marathon has regularly attracted more than 25,000 competitors and has become as fixed a part of the British sporting calendar as the Boat Race, the Derby and Wimbledon.

Unlike them, it has also become a major fundraising event, generating millions of pounds every year for charity. Brasher's role in this startling success can scarcely be overstated.

His abrasive style was not without its detractors, however. Two assistant race directors departed in short order, one declaring he "couldn't take any more members of staff sobbing on my shoulder after Chris had finished with them". There were complaints, too, about the amounts Brasher insisted be paid to star athletes.

Whether he was berating the BBC for their television coverage or peremptorily ordering a startled race spectator to clear a blocked drain, there was never any doubt who was in charge.

In 1991 the claim by Channel 4 and the New Statesman that Brasher and Disley had exploited the race to their own financial advantage after Fleetfoot and, later, Reebok were nominated the official London Marathon shoes led to a traumatic legal case. Had their pockets not been so deep - or their determination so implacable - Brasher and Disley could not have seen the case through. It was only in 1995, after they had spent close on £1million of their own money on legal fees, that Channel 4 and the New Statesman backed down.

Although he retired as director of the marathon in 1995, Brasher maintained the whirlwind pace of his life. Despite his advancing years, he continued to walk, climb and ski with an energy that would have put a man half his age to shame. He also had a stake in a further series of successful business interests, above all the Brasher Boot Company, which he used to finance a wide range of conservation initiatives, another cause close to his heart. And he discovered a new passion in horse-racing, to which he was introduced by his wife, the former tennis star Shirley Bloomer, whom he had married in 1959.

He was appointed CBE in 1996.

He is survived by his wife, a son and two daughters.

To continue on that thread and diverge just a little; Hugh McIlvaney and Tom Humphries. Two of the best all round sports journalists I've ever havd the plesure of reading.

to use ali's phrase, brasher was "a baaad man!"