Are we witnessing the death of the marathon?

Raysism wrote:

Ryan Hall, god love him, has no personality and no charisma y.

Don't u mean Galen rupp. Hall does have personality. It maybe a Christian one you don't like but he's got one.

Rupp and secretive al sal have done nothing for the sport In the us.

What a load of horsesh!t complaining about African interviews. Which Western athletes give great interviews? Maybe if you find it really interesting to hear "Blah blah blah grace of God, blah blah blah training going well, setbacks, cramping" for the hundredth time.

I live in the real world... wrote:

I liked the good old days when all those cookie cutter americans use to win marathons

Could anybody really tell the difference between Shorter, Rodgers, Meyer, Richardson, Coppess, Fleming, Salazar?

Actually, yeah, I could.

death of the marathon?

hardly.

people have never run faster, kimetto was simply amazing yesterday, could have gone faster if he had to.

races are larger and being sold out, millions of dollars raised. can't drive 15 miles on the highway without seeing a 26.2 bumper sticker...

american sports are marketed very well, you know who aaron rogers is, who michael jordan was, who johnny football will be. . .

marathon is a mercurial event, you get three or four years to do this well. . .that doesn't fit our mentality.

peyton manning has played for 15 years in the nfl. . .

marathoning is actually thriving,

but it ain't the marathon we grew up with. . . .

its quite healthy.

Dennis Kimetto? He was already in the top 10 all time marathon list before Chicago

To all the folks pretending to be indignant about the Kenyans being uninteresting to prove how not racist they are; stop.

The fact is that distance running at the elite level is seriously lacking in personality, especially compared to other more popular sports. A lot of times, they happen to be Kenyan because they're generally the best. But our American white guys are boring too. Until we get some top guys with some swagger or something interesting to say, we'll still be having this dopey "gee, why isn't my sport more popular?" discussion. I would argue that people like Usain Bolt, Michel Jordan, Muhammad Ali, etc. did more for their respective sports through their public image than through their talents.

Not at all. I'm waiting for all-time hottie Tirunesh Dibaba to start competing in the marathon. Meanwhile watching Kara Goucher and Tatyana Arkhipova would do.

One thing even more annoying than people who try to show off how unracist they are is people who complain about them, and try to act like they are too tough and hard-boiled to deal with any of this "libtard non-racist crap". By the way, it is possible to think that Kenyans are being unfairly stereotyped not because one wants to demonstrate one's enlightened, equalitarian nature, but because it's true.

I don't agree with the idea that distance runners need to find some shtick, like a dance or a motto or a tattoo, to make themselves "interesting". I think it is the job of journalists to bring out the stories and tell something interesting about the athletes. Runners may seem "boring", but that is a failure of the media, or modern culture in general, not the runners. I've read a lot of old T & F News interviews from the 70's and 80's, and almost all of them were interesting. It's like interviewing has become a lost art, and now interviewers just ask the same questions over and over, and every athlete sounds more or less the same. It's the same in all sports. It's not like NFL or NBA or MLB players are more interesting than runners. I would imagine that in general, runners would be more interesting to interview than athletes in many other sports, given the more cerebral nature of the life of a distance runner.

When I think of American legends of marathoning, I think of people like Frank Shorter, Bill Rodgers, Alberto Salazar, Joan Samuelson, and Deena Drossin. None of these runners are particularly zany or wild or crazy on the surface. They are not cool like, say, that wacky guy Dennis Rodman, or Johnny Football, or whoever is considered to be "charismatic" (is "charismatic" a synonym for "annoying egotistical idiot"?) . But they are interesting nonetheless. You don't necessarily even have to like them, but when you have a highly successful runners, there are usually some interesting stories there. But you need skilled journalists to bring those stories out.

In my opinion, Muhammad Ali took the whole idea of being the joking, boastful, larger-than-life super-athlete to its zenith. After him, that character should have been retired. Trying to be charismatic in that way only works for rare characters like Ali who have intelligence to back it up. In most cases, it just provides the more self-absorbed athletes a way to demonstrate what a bunch of turds they are.

runn wrote:

I agree- I remember back in the 80's when Rotterdam and Boston and NY and Chicago and even LA were on live TV.

The lead pack was diverse from the USA, Kenya, Tanzania, etc and some European nations- Brit, France, Poland, Belgium, Portugal, Italy and on and on.

Now, it's a group of Kenyans with an American or two just off the back of the pack.

YAWN.

The other thing (along the same lines) is that in Rotterdam (for example) you would have Lopes, DeCastella, Salazar, The Soh Brothers, et al. fighting it out.

Three of them would have just run the WCCC meet (and were at the front). You knew what track races they had run the summer before (and what they were gonna do that coming summer).

The same thing at Boston and New York every year.

Even now 30 yrs later I can recount the winners AND THE BATTLES at NYCM, Boston, Fukuoka, Chicago, London, Rotterdam.

It is not racism (or even motivated by race) to say that the marathon has lost some of its excitement, it is just the truth.

What they are doing in ALL the major marathons now is much more impressive than the 2:08-2:10 winners and placers that happened in my youth, much more impressive. But it is hard to relate to.

Also, anyone who doesn't think that the current RAFT of 2:03-2:07 runners are not doping are morons. If you could run 2:03 clean, you could definitely run 1:59:59 on the Armstrong protocol. There are a million doctors in Europe that help athletes with this. The problem is that they ARE ALREADY helping them.

Most of the guys running 2:07-2:12 are doping as well, they just would be running 2:12-2:15 without the dope.

yawn...here come the clones wrote:

Countless no-name cookie-cutter africans running sub-2:05. At every marathon a new nameless clone comes out of the woodwork and wins it.

How does it feel to be a racist?

How are Kenyan athletes any more clone-like than US athletes?

If you can't tell the difference between Duncan Kibet and Wilson Kipsang, you must have a mental handicap.

Xfit_guy_the_real_one_1 wrote:

Have a look here at Rich Fronings lady. Ever seen a runner carry a lady around like that? No? Because they can't.

She's alright, but Rupp, Hall, etc, all did as well or better.

rupp-certified saladbar wrote:

How does it feel to be a racist?

How are Kenyan athletes any more clone-like than US athletes?

If you took a genetically homogenous group of people from a tiny isolated region of Norway, they would also look like clones. Especially if they all had the exact same shaved hair style, no facial hair, no glasses, and the same uniform.

And "rupp-certified saladbar", one of my least favorite posters, calling me a racist? LOL you freaking idiot.

ho hum wrote:

The sport is dying in the US. When yet another unknown Kenyan wins a major marathon it does nothing to inspire those or interest Americans. If anything it does the opposite. When a Frank Shorter or Bill Rodgers wins it makes you want to go out and run a 20 mile tempo because in the back of your mind your thinking, "maybe, just maybe, I can do this too". When a Kenyan wins you think, "well what the hell's the point, I'm from the wrong country. I could run 150 miles a week for years and year and still not come within a mile of elites".

I think this line of thinking is ridiculous. Ryan Hall or Ritzenhein running 2:05 or winning a major marathon has no effect whatsoever on whether or not you have the talent to that. To look at them and say, "maybe I could do that too," is nuts if you have never done anything to indicate you have their kind of talent. If you're a young kid who ran 3:42 or 13:44 in high school, then it makes some sense that you could aspire to their level.

runn wrote:

I agree- I remember back in the 80's when Rotterdam and Boston and NY and Chicago and even LA were on live TV.

The lead pack was diverse from the USA, Kenya, Tanzania, etc and some European nations- Brit, France, Poland, Belgium, Portugal, Italy and on and on.

Now, it's a group of Kenyans with an American or two just off the back of the pack.

YAWN.

How do you think Europe feels watching their men coming up short over and over again in the men's sprints?

Then stop all prize money. Pay some names under the table like they did back then and you'll have western runners running 2:07 and 2:08 at the front of marathons. If you can't beat them, change the game.

What's the difference between Kimetto coming off his farm in Kenya and running 2:03:44 and Jim Ryun coming off his farm in Kansas and running 3:55.3 in high school and 3:51.1 a few years later in terms of being relatable to people of lesser talent?

Your only evidence is "they're so fast." The western world is at front lines of pharmacology, and yet they're getting their asses handed to them in long distance running. What formula did you use to arrive at 1:59:59? Or did you just pull it out of a hat?

I find it ironic that you malign 100% of the best marathon runners in the world today who are all subject to random out of competition tests and, at a minimum, blood tests at the major marathons and the biological passport and preserved samples for future testing, and yet in the same post, write sentimentally of the good old days in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, when there was no out of competition or longterm storage of samples of any kind, tests were far less comprehensive and any of those champions could have loaded up on testosterone and blood doped to their hearts' content until shortly before their competition.

I don't doubt that there is some cheating in some individuals at or near the top, but you must agree that the measures in place have made it fairer all around.

what is a libturd? I am so uncool I do not know that word. I am a Filipino, and love to train for my sport here in America.

I think anyone who runs a marathon in 2.03.000 must have a great personality or a very strong character.

I do think cheeta is alot more interesting that me and I agree i would rather read his posts than mine. I still think there was a good few racist comments on here intitially.

Would love to have saw PRE FONT run a marathon though he has swagger. Mibby top runner could run in facy dress and prove there personality.

Americans tend to be somewhat jingoistic when it comes to supporting sports, so any sport in which Americans don't do very well struggles for audience in the US.

Perhaps this is partly because of, or explains the fact that the main spectator sports in the US are ones that hardly any other countries take seriously.

On the other hand track and field and marathoning in particular have a real problem with marketing as a spectator sport.

The marathons are doing just fine. In fact there are more city marathons than ever. Prize money keeps going up. Cities are jostling to have a world class marathoner from Kenya participate. Once I listened to the mayor of Baltimore bragging about a world class Kenyan with a PB of 2:10 participating in Baltimore.

Sponsorships of city marathons are increasing. NY saw a 21% increase in sponsorship despite hurricane Sandy. Its a joke to suggest that the marathon is dying.

And for many track fans, its an exciting time as the top tier marathoners push the records to previously unthinkable levels.

Simple solution. You can solve the whole problem. It's simple. Just run 2:03, win a major marathon and give a great interview. Be the inspiration for us all. If you can't run that fast well.....