I just read the press release that Fiona’s team issued — it seemed kind of insulting to keep dishing up the same story. Like, if you shove it down our throat hard enough, we will swallow it and say it tastes good. But it doesn’t work that way!
There are a few things that are clear — the way this whole thing went down, hit a nerve with people (including me) and just doesn’t sit right. If only her team knew that it would hit a nerve with some of the running public (perhaps with much of the running public?), I DO think they would have responded differently.
At some point, you have to backpedal and say, “I don’t know what got into me. I was so hyperfocused on taking that spot on the start line, come hell or high water, that I didn’t consider anyone else. It was a mistake.”
I would also like to see Puma back away from what she did. The running public are boring people like myself who buy a lot of running shoes — Puma knows, and I know, that Fiona can potentially get appearance fees in future marathons, and could have given the alternate the spot. She did not NEED to do what she did — she WANTED to take that spot, and thought she could do so without any blowback.
To give a different analogy, I think Graham Blanks occupies a similar role to where Fiona once stood. He is the darling of distance running who ran for an underdog school, and was a homegrown boy competing against East Africans in the NCAA. And I was happy to see Graham line up at the Olympics, whether he had a great shot at the podium or not.
But had Graham limped to the start line, with Parker Wolfe sitting in a dorm room in Paris waiting to be called in as alternate, this also would’ve sat wrong. So, i don’t buy for a second that people who do not like Fiona’s decisions are biased against women or whatever — that’s silly.
