Some of these points are valid but much of this is not accurate. There are no mixed age group relays if you are swimming at any level of competition. Also there is no half time. Generally a short lunch break and nothing is announced. Much like running, swimming is very much an individual sport. This post over glorifies the team aspect. They were right about the number of volunteers, but this is about it.
I think they are probably speaking about a summer swim league. While that might be the gateway into swimming for some, it is not what swimming is for the majority of athletes. Summer swim league is definitely not the difference between USA Swimming and USATF. Most summer leagues are not even registered with USA Swimming and would not be up to their standard of competition / coaching.
Go to any track meet. One event will end at 12:02, the next one won't start until 12:10, then 12:20. If those two are 100m sprints, you've got 20 seconds of action and 28 minutes of downtime.
I get it to some extent -- track requires hurdle setup, moving the steeples, and so on. But it is designed to go so very slow, for very little reason. You don't need to watch a sprinter walk to their lane, spend two minutes setting up their blocks, do a start where they run 15m, and then jump up and down ten times before even getting called back to their blocks. It's all just so slow and boring.
I agree. I also think track and field is actually more like six sports being contested at the same time. I honestly don't know how many distance fans walk out to the hammer throw venue. The throwers are a cool group of people but it isn't what most of us do. I would never go watch a throws-only meet.
And honestly, it is the same with sprinters, hurdles, jumps, multis, throws, and distance. We are really going to the meet to see one or two of those things. Few people say, "my favorite event is everything!" The best meets for me are the "distance carnivals" where I can watch only the events I care about. Sprinters must hate watching the 5000m. I feel their pain.
So, unlike swimming where every kid does all four strokes (and there are only four), we have like 28 events ranging from steeple to the pole vault. 90% of what is happening at a track meet is "fine" but unless it is world-class, it isn't what the normal fan came out to see.
Track needs to take a page out of the WNBA playbook and manufacture a proxy for the culture/race war. No one cares about the actual games they just want to argue and fight for their side.
And how about having meets in places where fans/parents actually live?
There are about 1,000 competitors at swimming trials, how many at track trials?
And the money thing: we used to have chaos at track meets, there were thousands of people even for elementary school champs. And 95% were poor, took the bus, and packed their own food and drinks.
The only reason money is a barrier is because USATF makes it so, to serve their own convenience. Screw them.
This is right -- 1k competitors (how many T&F athletes will be in Eugene?) & 20k people last night. So a good chunk of the crowd is filled by family/friends. A lot of people know someone competing. Hold it in a place with an NFL team, market the event like crazy, & then you get even more people. Hold it at the NFL stadium & you don't have to do a thing for presentation. They can do the lights/graphics/sound/etc. There's something to be said for an arena atmosphere versus having to hold an event outside. Just going to feel more intimate/louder indoors. No reason USATF can't explore things like this. Idk if it would work but it'd be good to see them try something. Is there a football/soccer stadium in the US where you could put a track inside of it for the Trials. Some college football stadiums do have tracks but there aren't many left. I understand the Eugene of it all too though. I mean, some meets have done poorly in well populated areas. I'm ok putting our biggest event in the place it always is unless we feel confident it can be pulled off elsewhere. Eugene has the history & the stadium. Maybe more & more fans will make the trip out there. The Trials were packed in 2016.
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I don't care how much you hype it, I'm not watching swimming.
I don't think track needs to be something else. I've seen complaints for decades of how track needs to market itself better. Somehow, participation is high and Americans are running really fast.
Running has a cult following and it's working out just fine.
Perhaps the most fatal flaw we have is ourselves. Track is lame, but no lamer than swimming. I'd much rather watch a track race frankly. We as track fans suck the worst. Swim, wrestling, college lax, those fans are electric (and probably intoxicated).
I don't care how much you hype it, I'm not watching swimming.
I don't think track needs to be something else. I've seen complaints for decades of how track needs to market itself better. Somehow, participation is high and Americans are running really fast.
Running has a cult following and it's working out just fine.
Message boards needs the same old complaints though.
Holding every major USA track event in Eugene is almost criminal incompetence.
People who don't watch track any other time will watch Olympic track and field. It's one of the pillars of coverage along with swimming. So the trials should be an exciting event for a city to host, bringing in those fans that only watch every four years to see it live. Instead it's in the middle of nowhere, where even die hard fans are sick of traveling after all the events there the last few years.
Stop with the Eugene hate, please. If you are getting on a plane to anywhere to watch a track meet, you are in the 0.0001% of sports fans. I know zero people who would fly to Indiana to watch track. Sorry, that is not happening. So unless you put it in Hawaii where I am going anyway, I am not flying to a track meet.
And secondly, feel free to give it a try. Host a meet, do the work. Build the stadium, find the volunteers, and handle the logistics of hosting a meet better than the ones I have been to in Eugene this year. If you do that, maybe I'll fly down to Sacramento or out to the Midwest.
I don't complain that the Kentucky Derby is always in BFE Kentucky every year, do I? The state of Oregon is home to Track and Field's culture in America, the same way Boston is home to our Marathon culture. That is just an historical fact.
You know who was born in Oregon? Ryan Crouser, Dick Fosbury, Ashton-Eaton, Steve Prefontaine, Dan O'Brien, Galen Rupp, Mac Wilkins (born in Eugene), Bill Bowerman, Phil Knight, etc. If your community has a stronger historical and cultural connection to the sport, I am sure it will bid to host the next big meet.
You make a great point about people not flying anywhere to watch track, then somehow defend holding the meet in Eugene. The point is to go where people already are. Then you advertise: "Hey, remember how you watch Olympic Track and Field every four years? Come watch the Trials in your city!" That's how you grow the sport.
And how about having meets in places where fans/parents actually live?
There are about 1,000 competitors at swimming trials, how many at track trials?
And the money thing: we used to have chaos at track meets, there were thousands of people even for elementary school champs. And 95% were poor, took the bus, and packed their own food and drinks.
The only reason money is a barrier is because USATF makes it so, to serve their own convenience. Screw them.
This is right -- 1k competitors (how many T&F athletes will be in Eugene?) & 20k people last night. So a good chunk of the crowd is filled by family/friends. A lot of people know someone competing. Hold it in a place with an NFL team, market the event like crazy, & then you get even more people. Hold it at the NFL stadium & you don't have to do a thing for presentation. They can do the lights/graphics/sound/etc. There's something to be said for an arena atmosphere versus having to hold an event outside. Just going to feel more intimate/louder indoors. No reason USATF can't explore things like this. Idk if it would work but it'd be good to see them try something. Is there a football/soccer stadium in the US where you could put a track inside of it for the Trials. Some college football stadiums do have tracks but there aren't many left. I understand the Eugene of it all too though. I mean, some meets have done poorly in well populated areas. I'm ok putting our biggest event in the place it always is unless we feel confident it can be pulled off elsewhere. Eugene has the history & the stadium. Maybe more & more fans will make the trip out there. The Trials were packed in 2016.
I've always thought USATF should make the fields a lot bigger at US nationals. They could give the auto-qualifiers a first round bye so the meet would be no different for the top athletes. With the meet spread out over an entire week there's no reason not to add more athletes, there are too many days that are sparsely populated with events as it is. You would get all kinds of interesting stories with more athletes too: up-and-coming youngsters, everyday joes that had the competition of their life in the preliminary rounds...
There would be a few challenges like the 10k that doesn't have prelims, but for most events we could expand the fields significantly at very little cost and it would certainly put more people in the stands as well. The extra heats and flights could just fill some of the down time already baked into the schedule.
The entire leadership needs to be dumped, imo. Clean house, they are totally pathetic.
The amount of money and effort they put into building this single use venue is staggering, it's a level of repulsive greed and excess that USATF could only dream of doing. building a swimming event in a football stadium that will be torn down after is one of the most outrageous wastes of money I've ever seen. Lots of palms greased, lots of contracts being fed for payola. Dirty as dirty gets! I'll keep USATF, thank you.
This. USA Swimming is heavily involved at every level of competition for swimming. They have a hand in everything. If you swim at all growing up, you pay into USA swimming and likely benefit at some level from them. The USATF meets look like child's play in comparison. I have a feeling former swimmers are much more likely to make donations to USA swimming because they feel more of a sense of connection, even subconsciously. Doesn't hurt that swimming is a rich sport. Maintaining a pool is expensive AF. Money is inherently tied into swimming.
It is true. USA swimming is where ALL future elite swimmers are prepared in America. Colleges put the finishing touches on the best of the best.
Fair point. But summer swim is the gateway to more competitive swim. It’s the primary swimming venue up to about age 13. It’s where the culture of the sport is built.
Separate sites... e.g. one for distances 800 and up (a distance carnival) in a cooler location and one or two more for sprints and the field events that can be in warmer locations or even altitude.
Shorten the time between races (keep it moving).
Host in a baseball stadium (if one can fit a track) since the NFL stadiums are definitely too small for a track. Or how about a race track?
The primary swimming venue up to age 13? No. No it's not. Club swimming usually starts at 6 or 7, especially when those little kids have older siblings who swim. If you're gonna have to take one kid to the pool, you're gonna want to take all of them. In some areas, YMCA is a primary swim club organization, but that's still nothing like summer swim. They are all like regular club swimming.
old white dude absolutely pumped to watch white-dominated sport held in Whitesville USA
who'd have thunk it?
I’m a track sprinter, you damn fool.
Even if all that shlt was true, so what? If I’m old and black can’t I cheer for the Adidas sprint meet in Atlanta?
Kids like you need to get real and stop posting your stupid shlt. It’s not me who you’re making me look like an a-hole.
You don’t even know what you’re doing by posting shlt like that. You’re making enemies, that’s what. I see turkey-tough kids like you all the time. Grow t f up before you get your azz kicked.
Sprintgeezer I’ve been on this site for ten years and I remember stumbling on a post where Justin Gatlin on Instagram got into a cyber dispute with some 19-20 yr old who flipped him off (because Gatlin was performing well and people suspected him of doping again) Gatlin made your mom jokes and I saw your screen name commenting on an account that looked to be a white high school kid. The post was removed on Instagram and letsrun and Gatlin even deleted his Instagram claiming he was hacked. That was you wasn’t it ?
I actually agree with you on that. I don't need the OT here every four years, I go to Pre and Oregon Relays and that's enough for me.
The problem is that other cities aren't bidding on this meet. They don't think it is worth the effort. By "they" in this case, I mean the actual human beings in those cities. You have to have an organizing committee, volunteers, officials, weather, venue, and the motivation to do the work. I am not hearing about a big group of Boston 2028 to host the trials. I am not hearing Oahu clamoring to get the meet.
Where are the other people who are willing to put on this meet? Humans write the bids, not cities.
Separate sites... e.g. one for distances 800 and up (a distance carnival) in a cooler location and one or two more for sprints and the field events that can be in warmer locations or even altitude.
I actually thought about this during my run today. Why do we hold all the events in the same place and at the same time?
We could do more by cramming less into one huge meet. We wouldn't need to seek out towns that had huge venues because the "crowd" would be divided up into three smaller groups (plus multis).
We could have a Distance meet in a cooler city, a Sprint/Jumps meet in a warmer city, and Throws Championship like the Throw Town meet this year that saw the discus world record broken. Hurdlers go to the sprint meet because they often double.
The only downside is that few people would ever do the 400/800 double anymore. But honestly, how often has that happened? Superstars like Athing Mu could still do it since they would have the funding to attend both meets (assuming they aren't the same weekend).
Track needs to take a page out of the WNBA playbook and manufacture a proxy for the culture/race war. No one cares about the actual games they just want to argue and fight for their side.
I don't know about Track but Letsrun certainly creates one.
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