Why don't we see Kick Ass African American distance runners?

Since you asked the question, i'll answer it for you. The reason you don't see many African Americans doing well in the distance events is mainly because it isn't promoted in our communities.

The big 3 sports football, basketball, and baseball have one thing in common. A need for speed. Many track guys run track in addition to playing these other sports simply because sprinting helps them in these sports as supposed to distance running.

Let's face it. No one is going to draft a sub 28 10,000 guy to play linebacker or wide receiver. They want guys running 4.2 or 4.3 40's.

There is more fame to being fast as well as a bigger paycheck.

The guys that moved up passed the quarter moved up because they didn't have the speed. Take me for example. I ran a 15 100m in 9th grade my first week in track practice and got it in my head that I wasn't going to catch Carl Lewis anytime soon.

From there I moved I tried the quarter where I was beat by the first place guy by 11 sec. and finally moved to the half where I started beating people.

Blacks don't necesarily duck distance running. They just don't see the benefits in it. Hell if I could be a 100m guy I wouldn't even consider running anything longer that a warm up mile. But because of my failure in the sprints, I was able to see the beauty of the distance events and appreciate it (except for the marathon which is just sheer torture.)

But I will say everytime I ran into a sprinter and invited them to run quarter repeats or a 8 mile run, I always got that "are you out of your f***ing mind stare" from them.

So that's your answer. Hope that helps.

Les wrote:

Black Man, you took the words right out of my mouth. Speed pays. Distance running doesn't. Even for white folk. In reading Steve Scott's book The Miler he said "We'd all run the 100 if we could."

Actually Herb Elliott said that.