I really liked the Q&A. For the outsider, gave a little insight to how these pro teams are run.
Question: When a shoe company sponsors a team, like Hoka did, I assume the pay Ben as well as the athletes in the stable? When an athlete wins prize money, a % goes to the agent, does the coach also get a % from said winnings?
It sounds like Ben is going to put on a race, similar to the one they did during Covid, in AZ? I think we need a fast marathon with the chance of cool temps in the Jan to early March timeframe with prize money. Hopefully, he starts with this and builds on it.
I really liked the Q&A. For the outsider, gave a little insight to how these pro teams are run.
Question: When a shoe company sponsors a team, like Hoka did, I assume the pay Ben as well as the athletes in the stable? When an athlete wins prize money, a % goes to the agent, does the coach also get a % from said winnings?
It sounds like Ben is going to put on a race, similar to the one they did during Covid, in AZ? I think we need a fast marathon with the chance of cool temps in the Jan to early March timeframe with prize money. Hopefully, he starts with this and builds on it.
Best of luck to Ben and all the athletes.
If you read the article you would have seen that Ben was paid this:
"According to the organization’s most recent Form 990, a tax filing nonprofits must make public, Rosario was paid $177,558 in 2023."
I did read that, but must of slipped my mind as I was thinking about it. So he gets a straight-up salary, no cut from the athlete. Only the agent gets a piece.
Not knowing the real estate market in Flagstaff, it seems like a decent amount to make. Again, good for him.
It’s Rui Yong btw. Soh Rui Yong. He has a Facebook page where indeed a certain whistleblower by the name of Joe KS frequents and attacks. Please get the names spelled correctly if you want to be credible. His sister’s name is Romaine.
The attacks are in part due to claims of suspected fraud and cheating on Rui’s part in Flagstaff with Jordan and Ben. I’m a big fan of Rui actually back then as he frequented the restaurants I used to work at as a part time student at NAU. But Rui’s ship started collapsing when Jordan got multiple ADVs as these 2 came and went home together after their meals at the restaurant. They had each other’s back throughout their time in Flag as Rui was a relative newcomer to the area and Jordan needed social company and some encouragement after going through a performance downtime.
Rui was never caught for any ADVs. you could say he is clean but everyone of us knows that on todays milieu it’s no longer a concrete proof of being clean. It’s more like everybody is guilty until proven innocent which is also WADA’s stance in some of their legal cases against various athletes.
Rui is still running professionally but has since been left off the Singapore team to major games due to strange reasons. However given Singapore tough anti-fraud laws it is not quite hard to envisage that the real reasons for Rui’s debacle with the Singapore authorities is his former fraudulent activities in flagstaff. It can’t be anything else.
So much fake news and the targeted focus on Rui shows these posts are coming from the same person (Mark Gan Zhi Wei / Joe KS) with multiple letsrun accounts responding to himself.
Rui's ship collapsing? Simple search of the name shows that all his best performances came after 2017, the year of Jordan's positive test:
It is also well documented why Rui has been left of the team and it is because of petty politics and flip flopping by the Singapore National Olympic Council:
Ironically the SNOC's President who thumbed Rui down for years citing "conduct" issue had to resign when he was caught having an extramarital affair, for years!
SINGAPORE — The Singapore National Olympic Council (SNOC) has accepted the resignation of Mr Tan Chuan-Jin as its president, a day after he quit as Speaker of Parliament and walked away from his political career.
There has never been any mention of said "fradulent activities", apart from now, from an anonymous poster. More slanderous content that should be chargeable in a court of law, and the admins would do well to moderate such content.
Jordan as a student of NAU and a resident in Flagstaff would have been friends with over half the running community there. Shall we write them all off for drug association then?
Ben Rosario was critical of Culpepper for not committing to the team... but then he bails?!
Ben founded the team, put in his own money, coached their most succesfull athletes, gives it a form that the team can continue without him, does some public appearances for free.... that's not bailing, that's a class act!
It's not a class act to criticize a coach publicly for not committing to his team when it was obvious Ben wasn't committed.
Hi, Cruz. It's facts, not criticism. Integrity is when your words and actions align. Alan said he would move to Flag, then backed out of that promise without a compelling reason why. Ben committed for over a decade, with his own money. He is allowed to exit gracefully and he articulated his reasoning well. Just put a focus on committing to your community college classes.
I generally am very selective of the news I read in the newspaper. As my knowledge of the laws of Physics (human nature and behaviour) is extremely vast and affluent, official news channels just reads like total garbage at times. Almost 99 perfect of information is captured by government agencies. Even the choice of words that work in your favour have a repressive agenda and motive. Physics is still the best
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Well said - 'why isn’t it possible that Alan rather ESCAPED Ben and NAZ elite and tried to distance himself as far away from both of these entities because of things he learnt and saw in the team that appalled him?
Well said - 'why isn’t it possible that Alan rather ESCAPED Ben and NAZ elite and tried to distance himself as far away from both of these entities because of things he learnt and saw in the team that appalled him?
Hi Cruz! Your dad wasn’t around Ben enough to get to know him, much less his athletes. He bailed because he didn’t want to move. Now he’s a HS teacher. He stepped off the path and won’t return to that level of coaching again, ever. Rosario built the team with his own cash and now wants to try something else. he offered the future to your Dad and Alan bailed.
This post was edited 50 seconds after it was posted.
Significant personnel changes are coming this month to Hoka NAZ Elite, and the first and perhaps biggest departure was announced Wednesday morning, when founder Ben Rosario officially resigned as executive director. It is not...
Rosario said the pro group landscape is not oversaturated, in Flagstaff or across the country. But he gave a caveat: that groups will have to step up their performance to remain relevant in the next four years. Coming from a background earlier in his career as a running-store owner in St. Louis, Rosario used the running boom as an example.
“There was a time with running stores where they got a little saturated,” he said. “People said this is the end of running stores. Well, no, the cream rose to the top and the bottom went away. What you’ll see here is that it’ll get even more ‘elite,’ if you will; it’s an overused and somewhat controversial word in our world. I think people will still come (to Flagstaff) to train. There’ll be more people here than ever. But in terms of the teams, you’re going to have to be performing at a high level to make it.
“As that is related to Hoka and NAZ, that’s why I’m in favor of what they’re doing (with contracts), even though it’s difficult. Another way to look at it is, if your roster includes athletes that Nike wouldn’t sign, why do you have them? That’s a brutal way to look at it, but … Look, I’m competitive. If there’s one thing I’m sad about leaving, it’s that I’d love to go against Nike. Nike will do a great job, Mike will do a great job, no question, but there’s nothing that says another brand can’t compete. But they have to put in the resources. We’ll see.”
Elly, Katelyn Tuohy, Hannah Steelman, and Sam Bush have formed a little running group back in Raleigh. they'll still go to Flag occasionally for altitude training, they just won't live there full time.
I think folks are starting to realize living in Flag full-time as post-collegiate is not what it's cracked up to be. It sort of sucks there tbh. Most athletes over time just get worn down living that high and the air quality is pretty atrocious with the dust and fires.
The air quality is generally very good here. Bad fires are rare given the monsoon and snow precipitation. Phoenix air quality isn't good is that what you're thinking of?
There are at least 100,000 accusers of El Guerrouj doping to run his world records and none of them have been charged in a court of law anywhere in the world. Neither does he come to this forum and become all defensive and wimp to us why he should be clean. I believe El Guerrouj runs infinitely faster than a Soh Rui Yong too. I don’t get why a much more well achieved athlete with a million more followers on twitter and instagram takes the doping accusations like a man while the poster ‘Mark Gan aka Joe KS’ which seems to be the very vindictive Rui Yong himself is reacting like a cry baby?
Since LRC is not the right forum to mount such a defense without being seen as guilty of the above mentioned offenses of doping, Rui Yong should know that the harder he tries to defends himself against the offenses the more guilty he has to be. People are not stupid and he should know that. If he thinks he is smart then he must know we are equally smart at least. What he can envisage, we can also envisage in other similar ways.
In addition, the fact that his standing as an elite marathoner is not even a millionth fraction of the talent and achievement level of El Guerrouj or even the questionable Eliud Kipchoge himself makes his defense even more guilty than ever.
Why can’t the Singapore authorities with strong anti fraud laws know Rui Yong to be fraudulent but out of respect for his future employment prospects has been kind enough to use less offending wording. Aren’t we smart enough to know that? Do we need to be spoon fed every drip bit like a cry baby? We are educated and we know how to think. Rui Yong can stop showing us news articles that are more for the general public who knows nothing about sport and doping. He cannot fool the very smart.
Right Alan and Cruz are so clean that when they headed over to NAZ elite got the shock of their lives. My only question is why isn’t Alan speaking out? It’s like he has been so silent it’s nerve wrecking for us. Is there a non disclosure clause in his contract that says ‘don’t you ever reveal even 1 thing bad about our team or you will face the music….’
