wejo wrote:
Drainthefecesswamp wrote:
The first tier pros are targeting races with bigger recognition (Olympics, world outdoors, major marathons, half marathons, etc) or bigger compensation (large road races) or both (diamond league meets, etc).
Why would a top tier american runner, who needs to run other big races to make their 70k to 150k per year, run a race where they will likely make nothing?
Have you seen the list of pros running in the men's race? It's LOADED.
As for the Americans, the top guys and girls often run races where they get paid almost nothing. Think of all the Stanford meets, etc. Much of the indoor season as well has very little money. Many Americans go to races to a) chase fast times b) take on the world's best c) enhance their brand since most of the top people's money comes from shoe contract and not prize money.
I think it has more to do with the time of year. There's a lot of time between indoor, xc and outdoor. The top Americans are either running a spring marathon and don't want to get injured (easy to do on xc course), are already injured or borderline-injured, or they are in the early phase of training for outdoor track. I think if we had more pro level xc races around here, then maybe that would develop some xc specialists.
