To answer the OP - wealthy Americans are too soft to go to a "third world country" and complete for their nation against the world's best countries. No national pride. All they care about is money and what's in it for them. The newly-minted Americans are much more patriotic.
Patriotic - when they go for a training run on a U.S. team in a World Competition?
At least if you are going to represent the U.S. do not make excuses that it is a training run. If you are worried about London then do not take a spot from another competitor that will honor the race.
The newly-minted Americans got their butts kicked by the countries that they would be a long shot to even make the team for.
Not buying the patriotic pitch - it is a flawed program to expedite U.S. citizenship and buy the U.S. some tarnished medals.
Upper middle classes are generally more interested in health and fitness--less privileged people in America are overweight in big numbers. There isn't an accepted culture of running or fitness in the upper class sense of the word--look at the poorest school districts in the country, I bet many kids are already overweight by junior high. The idea of distance running is probably less readily available to the imaginations of those kids, unfortunately. Why don't poor people do triathlons or swim? It's a similar question and the biggest reason has to do with culture. Also- research has shown the correlation between poverty and childhood obesity holds true even when you control for race---so it's socioeconomic culture rather than racial culture.
Yoga used to be simple/inexpensive?
Because people who work hard and want to succeed aren't poor in the USA.
That's a good point--but what about whites from larger families?
I think the largest factor is delayed gratification. People are not randomly wealthy...delayed gratification often is the driving force. Build a career over the long haul, save, invest, build a pension, and avoid “sugary” spending.
Distance running is a close surrogate. The pay-off is a PR thousands of miles away, or good health 30 years on. Distance running is quite boring, except for those elusive magical moments, with the next one always harder to attain. In many other sports, things are much more fun and much more exciting right from the start. A new distance runner is icing shin splints while a new basketball player might be shooting a buzzer beater for an C team.
The Stanford Marshmallow Study illustrates this
“ Follow-up studies with the children later in adolescence showed a correlation between an ability to wait long enough to obtain a second treat and various forms of life success, such as higher SAT scores. And a 2011 fMRI study conducted on 59 original participants—now in their 40s—by Cornell’s B.J. Casey showed higher levels of brain activity in the prefrontal cortex among those participants who delayed immediate gratification in favor of a greater reward later on. ”
To be wealthy:
Don't have kids early or if you do, have only 1 kid.
Don't do journalism as a major in college.
Above all, follow the $.
perhaps its what they see their parents are in to.
wealthy parents are into sports like running, tennis, golf, etc. this influences their kids to be into the same thing. For the most part, you can't as an adult participate in full contact football. the better runners i know are also highly successful in their careers. They are CEOs, doctors, scientists, etc. I run with a club, we don't have any plumbers, hair dressers, or landscapers. The majority of the group have masters or above.
That is so true.
There were times last year I almost wanted to not run for my marathon training that day.
But the race made it worth it. I probably made a mistake by training too early for it (March for an October Marathon).
So true about the education.
A lot of runners, if you google a few of the top random ones in a given marathon and run a linkedin search, for instance, has them with good jobs and good degrees.
Are there any working-class runners in your club?
That's a good point about parents.
Education doesn't guarantee anything though.
its their parents wrote:
perhaps its what they see their parents are in to.
wealthy parents are into sports like running, tennis, golf, etc. this influences their kids to be into the same thing. For the most part, you can't as an adult participate in full contact football. the better runners i know are also highly successful in their careers. They are CEOs, doctors, scientists, etc. I run with a club, we don't have any plumbers, hair dressers, or landscapers. The majority of the group have masters or above.
Sounds like a fun bunch! Where do I sign up?
joe the poumber wrote:
its their parents wrote:
perhaps its what they see their parents are in to.
wealthy parents are into sports like running, tennis, golf, etc. this influences their kids to be into the same thing. For the most part, you can't as an adult participate in full contact football. the better runners i know are also highly successful in their careers. They are CEOs, doctors, scientists, etc. I run with a club, we don't have any plumbers, hair dressers, or landscapers. The majority of the group have masters or above.
Sounds like a fun bunch! Where do I sign up?
To be fair, they are also very laid back and respectful to all. i'm the working class stiff in the group. We welcome all and encourage all, its a self selecting group of course.
theorizer wrote:
Here is my completely unverified, unscientific theory-->culture.
Cross country and track & field, as modern sports, owe their heritage to England. Compare this to football, basketball, and baseball, which are all American-made creations.
Therefore, football, basketball, and baseball appeal more to the middle America, including southern blacks and NASCAR whites.
In contrast, distance running appeals to the WASPy types--the New England and coastal whites.
Question: Isn’t American football the evil spawn of the English created Rugby?
ok that makes me feel a little bit better. Not all rich people are snobby.