Ben Rosario has some ideas on how to save the sport. Create 4 Majors so the Olympics are "no longer the pinnacle of our sport.”

I agree that something besides the Olympics should be the Pinnacle of the sport. How many other major sports have their biggest championships only every 4 years?

Football, baseball, basketball, hockey, tennis, golf, soccer, etc all have yearly championships.

At least have WC three years (the Olys) so we have something every year to shoot for.

Coevett wrote:

How about we clean up the dopjng mess in East Africa ( which Seb Coe has gone a long way to doing)?

I know it's hard for a majority in the bubble that is LetsRun to accept, but most of the potential global audience for athletics just doesn't care about a sport in which only doped up faceless Kenyans and Ethiopians appear able to win.

Why are they faceless, Coevett? Is it because all black people look the same? Or is it because they're like brainless cyborgs, able to pound out the miles but incapable of advanced thought and emotions like white people? Or do you just hate looking at their faces? Please, enlighten us.

every Year wrote:

At least have WC three years (the Olys) so we have something every year to shoot for.

I agree, have WC 3 out of 4 years. Idk about 4 marathon majors. You still can't compete in all of them. Distance running is different from tennis/golf/other sports.

You could spread out the Diamond League to a year round format & have a point system like tennis does where some meets are worth more than others.

I like World Cross being a yearly event. Maybe a global road running circuit instead of just gold/silver/bronze labels. I think the USATF running circuit is pretty good & some individual chapters (like New England) do a good job without the kind of budget the IAAF could have.

Marathons have the Majors. Track has a cheapened Diamond League.

At least in Europe the IBU and UCI have a following with the biathlon and cyclo-cross world cup season plus a world champs.

Precious Roy wrote:

The big issue is that modern training is designed to have athletes peak at the end of the season for either the Olympics or Worlds. There will be a lot of resistance to changing that kind of training to have athletes ready to compete at a top level four times in a season.

This ^^^

If one meet is in late May, and one in mid-Oct, how are athletes and coaches supposed to coordinate training? Will certain meets offer bigger appearance fees (like London marathon for WMM)? Will the top talent naturally shift towards one or two of the four meets?

You can't expect athletes to be in tip top shape over the span of 3-4 months every year so if you don't have a meet with the purpose of everyone needing to peak, a decision on who the best athlete actually is will be hard. It reminds me of the WMM system where world's is basically another major and the while the winner of the WMM is picked based on a point system, there's clear downfalls to the set-up.

We keep hearing Fall and Winter outdoor athletics meetings, Spring and Summer Cross Country are wanted to fill Elon Musk's new satellite TV sports channels. If you want the money then peak when the meeting is held. Life could be worse.

Faceless person wrote:

Coevett wrote:

How about we clean up the dopjng mess in East Africa ( which Seb Coe has gone a long way to doing)?

I know it's hard for a majority in the bubble that is LetsRun to accept, but most of the potential global audience for athletics just doesn't care about a sport in which only doped up faceless Kenyans and Ethiopians appear able to win.

Why are they faceless, Coevett? Is it because all black people look the same? Or is it because they're like brainless cyborgs, able to pound out the miles but incapable of advanced thought and emotions like white people? Or do you just hate looking at their faces? Please, enlighten us.

If you are being charitable it is because there is a dozen of them in the race and a good chunk of them flame out after 1-2 years never to be heard from again. Nobody complains about Bekele, Geb, Tergat, Kiprop and so on being faceless. It is the random guy you never heard of who shows up, runs 3 12:58 races in one year and then never shows. up again.

Granted not having everyone wearing the same Nike uniform would really help in telling people apart

People have talked about the idea of having "teams" for cities and creating a league.

One way that I think this could be done is creating a roster of "subelite" runners and hold a draft. Each team has to fill out a roster with athletes designated as sprinter, distance, jumper or thrower and then hold several scored meets. At each meet you have 4 events, one from each category and score them like a dual meet. So maybe one week you go 100m, 5k, long jump and discus then the next week is 200m, 800m, high jump and shot put. You could hold a championship or playoffs at the end of the season and incorporate relays. If you have a big enough roster and schedule this could be something where you don't have to race every meet and could be selective about what events you have.

I understand this is similar to the tracktown idea from a few years ago but the biggest difference would be having more teams and smaller but more frequent meets.

Making the sport more popular...... Why?

There is plenty of participation at all levels. It's not dying like many suggest. Numbers at the grass roots on up prove that to be wrong.

Yes, there are more sports to choose from than ever before and more time to spend on athletics/recreation worldwide and continues to grow due to many factors, education, training, nutrition, money notwithstanding. Many great athletes will go to other sports for a variety of reasons so the depth of talent could be effected/watered down but yet Track & Field records continue to be broken.

Influence, access, personal interest, personal gain. I don't think the sport is in trouble due to lack of interest. Youth coaches can improve the education of young athletes about the history of the sport and begin helping young athletes value quality of life and interest in human performance and the limitations with which they exist. They can also teach an appreciation for the special people in history that continue to push the human performance envelope and encourage them to think about what is possible in athletics and other aspects of life/society. The intent of the Olympic Games was to get people together peacefully and wonder of what improvements are possible in the future. The Games have it's place, even in changing times.

When I started teaching technology classes in the 80's, I encouraged students to visualize the future of sports and sports entertainement. We talked about 3D Holographic projectors that would allow you to "EXPERIENCE" vs observe. I want to believe I was there via sight, sound, smell etc... and I wanted to "feel" the experience. I would never be able to attend Zurich, Olympics etc... otherwise. BRING THE MEETS TO THE PEOPLE!!!!!! Provide a great virtual experience if they can't get there in person. Not only in location, but in time!!! I want to Experience Berlin & Jesse Owens and hear what people were saying as it happened. I want to EXPERIENCE Kathy Freeman taking that women's 400 in Sydney in front of the home crowd and feel what it meant to them!!! Bring me the next great showdown in the Shot Put, mens or womens, that comes down to the last attempt of the competition for the win. But I want to be ringside and feel the sun and the pressure of the EXPERIENCE!!! TOTAL RECALL if you will.

Becasue that hasn't happened yet, I have had the good fortune and pleasure of being on location for a lot of great competitions. Sometimes the environment was electric and others very dissapointing that only a few people were in attendance to see national and world records broken. But my personal interest that's foundation was the seeds planted by good youth coaches has allowed me to pursue having those experiences the best way I know how. All I can do is pay it forward.

Yes, the sport can still improve it's format and delivery but the value of history and evolution cannot be changed. It's becoming easier for society to just make up their own realities and forget what ingredients are imperative to even have the opportunity to engage in these kind of discussions. Not what it is, but what it can be. Not worrying about comparing and sometimes losing to other sports in popularity but appreciating and celebrating what it is at the Human Performance level.

Until I get that Total Recall technology, I'm going to continue attending meets, watching YouTube and educating kids. They are the future of the sport.

I have some ideas I'm not the guy to execute. But I think I understand how the world works.

If we want the sport to be saved/extremely profitable and bring in big players with lots of prize money you have to create public interest. Everybody and their grandma knows what running is but very few understand the sporting and high level competition.

But guess what? everyone's at home and everyone's running these days. Great. Now make it so short racing gets interesting.

- By either getting athletes and or government involved get local competitions for track or street track. Make the 800m popular. Even the mile.

- Have really identifiable people come on tv and encourage people go out and race: why can't folks race a mile every weekend? get better etc? run at home

- Name all running shoes after sponsored athletes. The GoMeb was great. There should also be the GoKara, the Next Galen etc. People spend hundreds on Air Jordans... running shoes actually matter more than basketball shoes - why is this ignored?

- Get those athletes on tv and compete on tv more often. Pay them to do so. Screw WR attempts or whatever they're saving themselves for. I'd rather see head to head monthly or weekly competition than see someone train in the dark for 8 months and pull a hammy and be out.

Marathons are boring by that nature - it comes down to the last 100m anyways in some of those races. Get people racing hard but short enough they recover.

Again "all out efforts" every 8 months is not as exciting as head to head racing. Make it interesting and frequent!

This is an interesting idea. I think having fewer events from each category at each meet could help to make for better competitions that aren't watered down. The only issue I see with this is that if the meet only has 4 events, the meet could end up being too short where fans don't want to come out and watch for only 4 events. I supposed if they planned it so these 4 events would be high quality and take 1-2 hours, it might work.. Or maybe do this, but with a few more categories each week such as: hortizontal jumps, vertical jumps, throws, sprints, mid-distance, long distance, relays. Or stick w/ throws, jumps, sprints, mid-D, long D, and add in a relay each week. Maybe even have a few relay only meets.

I think the issue with the Track Club Series flopping was that the athletes had no real affiliation with the city they competed with, nor did half of the athletes really care about those meets or the team scores which made is less interesting to watch. I think for this concept to work, there either needs to be enough money in it to get good athletes to really buy into the team thing (and have jerseys to clearly identify them all as one team even if they all have different brands due to sponsors) or the athletes need to have an actually real life affiliation to the city they are competing for. I would be more interested in watching a team meet where cities put their best local athletes up against those from other cities in a team meet such as the top Twin Cities area club teams or individual athletes selected to be on this team go up against the local Chicago clubs or selected Chicago athletes in a meet where the athletes genuinely are racing for the team, than watch a meet with random elites/sub elites who dont care about the meet or team compete for random cities they don't care about or have any real conection to. I enjoy following our local elites in MN and would be more interested in watching something like adult club track competing for teams (like in HS) than some random watered down pro meet where no one cares.

My thought that was 4 events with men and women (I didn't specify that part) you could make it short enough to keep the attention of all the fans the diamond league thinks aren't capable of sitting through a full length track meet while also keeping it competitive by forcing more head to head competition. Maybe you "draft" the top 5k runners to dominate the 5k/10k when they are on the schedule but now you need them to drop down and race a 1500 or 800 and those stars they usually wouldn't compete against think a Rupp vs Manzano showdown.

Now those examples aren't exactly accurate since I doubt you would ever get that tier of athlete to commit to something like this but if you could find a way to get sponsorship/owners this could be a way to develop the next wave of sub elite. Get your athletes fresh out of college who want to keep training but lack the resources or opportunities (only so many lanes in Monaco, flights to Europe etc.) or start at a local level with people in the area who want to tryout and compete on these teams and do it regionally.

If the sub elite idea takes off maybe see if USATF would change the qualification process and allow 1-4 wild cards per event at a USA championships for the top finishers on the championship team at the end of the season.

Track is unique to different sports because a performance can also be judged by your time, not just by who you beat.

A good football team beating a bad football team and scoring 57 points isn't a real big deal.

But if a 5000 m runner goes under 12:50 in any race, it is always a big deal.

Incorporate performances by time as well as who you beat in these majors.

Pay by time and place. Everyone under 13:00 gets good dough no matter where you place.

But winning gets even more.

Give a trophy to the best average time over the four majors.

Do something to utilize the uniqueness of track.

For World and Olympic Championships, the top 3 performers in each event for the season should get an automatic bye to the final.

When explained this way, I like this idea. I think it could work if they found a way to make the athletes on these teams really buy in and care about competing for the team points at these competitions. They would also have to make efforts to identify more with the cities/teams they represent in order to get more fan buy-in. I think starting with the more sub-elites at a regional level could work to start off as a test run. I think that would get more buy-in this way by having the teams be sub-elites that don't have many better competition options available to them and are actually competing for their own city.

I think part of the disconnect between the large # of track participants and much smaller fan base is it's hard to follow this sport at the pro level due to lack of domestic pro meets and everyone doing their own thing. The team idea proposed above could work, or even just having the existing elite club teams host scored meets against other clubs in the US would also probably draw fans and make it easier for the less elite pros to compete w/o having to put up money to fly to Europe etc. Like have teams like HokaOneOne, MN Distance Elite, Zap Fitness, NYRR, Brooks Hanson, etc host meets and invite other teams like this to compete. Could be like a distance carnival since most pro teams are more event group focused like that. If you hosted meets like this w/ good marketing in cities w/ active running communities, this could draw decent crowds. A MN did something like this, but w/o the team score part, w/ polevault and has an annual pv event that includes elites and some locals at different levels competing on the rooftop of a pub downtown. The event draws good crowds and sponsors every year w/ prize money. We need more events like this.

In my impression track & field was more popular and a bigger deal in the 1980s when the WC was only introduced and not every other year. (I was still a kid and don't remember anything T&F before 1983 sufficiently well.) The best stuff in terms of records and "duels" was often going on in the years before/after the olympics, say Coe in 1979 and 1981 and Cram in 1985. And because of their rarity Olympics and WC were really very special events.

So I don't think the correlation is so simple as some people think. Nevertheless there is no going back to WC only every 4 years but as it is it is certainly a sufficiently full schedule: e.g. 2016 Olympics, 2017 WC, 2018 Commonwealth games and EuroC, 2019 WC and so on.

dadsfadsfdasfdsafdas wrote:

Faceless person wrote:

Why are they faceless, Coevett? Is it because all black people look the same? Or is it because they're like brainless cyborgs, able to pound out the miles but incapable of advanced thought and emotions like white people? Or do you just hate looking at their faces? Please, enlighten us.

If you are being charitable it is because there is a dozen of them in the race and a good chunk of them flame out after 1-2 years never to be heard from again. Nobody complains about Bekele, Geb, Tergat, Kiprop and so on being faceless. It is the random guy you never heard of who shows up, runs 3 12:58 races in one year and then never shows. up again.

Granted not having everyone wearing the same Nike uniform would really help in telling people apart

Name me some of these Kenyan and Ethiopian one-hit-wonders who came out of nowhere to make the final of an Olympic or World Championship race, then disappeared within a year or two.

I can name an American: Matt Centrowitz. Came out of nowhere to win gold at Rio. Hasn't done crap since at the international level. Oh, and his coach just got banned for doping violations.

rojo wrote:

But whenever we get to arguments of "What can we do to make our sport popular?" I've become a bit of a pessimist. I mean if you asked me this about cycling or rowing I'd saying, "Nothing."

First thing that I thought of reading his proposed events was rowing, thinking of the "championships" like the Henley Royal Regatta. It's widely popular social event in Britain even for people who don't care about rowing at all whatsoever, and spectators tickets are sold out nearly 6 months prior every year. Same idea with Head of the Charles in Boston, bringing in $72 million total revenue for the city.

However, these events do very little to materialize meaningful revenue for the athletes or popularity for the sport. The reason why golf and tennis athletes are so successful is because they have a significant viewer base and media revenue. Getting enough people to attend in-person events shouldn't be too much of an issue, but since you have to scale the event costs to account for this it's not the sort of free money that you get with TV/online viewership.