I understand why they are getting rid of the 5 and 10k. We all know the fastest 5 and 10k runners today are doped to the MF gills and just came out of nowhere when Mo steps off the track. Sadly they are great at evading tests. This is actually a good punishment if they aren't going to be caught doping. I hope the truth comes out someday.
We need some sexy glamorous 5 and 10k track meets. Oh hang on...
Another great step forward!! Distance running will have to find a new home. lets move our activity forward.
And you wonder why many young runners are going straight to the roads without a track experience? Runners like Jacob Kiplimo, Rhonex Kipruto and Geoffrey Kamworor are not made for anything less than a 5K. That means there will be no Diamond League experience for them as from 2020. very Sad indeed.
wejo wrote:
They really think the problem with the sport is the meets take 2 hours instead of 1.5?
If people are going to PAY to go to a track meet I think most people would actually probably rather be there 2 hours intead of 1.5.
Name ONE sporting event on television that is under 2 hours.
I can't think of a single one. If they're were going to take an extra 30 minutes to preview the races, etc and have less action over 2 hours I think that might improve the broadcast. But cramming more stuff into 1.5 hours is going to save our sport?
I already consider the 3000 to be a spare event when they have it versus the 5000.
Is dropping 6 minutes from a broadcast going to save the sport? It might hurt it as a bunch of casual runners can relate to 5k more than 3ks.
How about letting the meets decide if they are going to have a 3k or 5k?
And why have 1500 and 3000? They aren't that different. The 3k means nothing to anyone who follows the sport.
What other events are getting dropped?
Just checking the date. It's not April 1st. that would normally be the only explanation.
IAAF needs to be cancelled right now. or I'm going to retire from the sport. It's meant to be a fun pure sport, but it's just a farce stacked on more farce. f****of**** IAAF. The leaders like LetsRun have to do something, like shame IAAF leaders and deciders, with hit pieces, that are true, about their farcical activities.
I don't get it. Maybe it's different in Europe, but I would say 80% of actual track fans in the US are former distance runners. That's the base of your sport.
The casual fan is probably more interested in the sprints, but the casual fan isn't not watching track meets outside of the Olympics because they don't like the 10000. The casual fan is not watching track meets outside of the Olympics because they don't care enough about any event to change the channel on their TV.
This is just kicking your fan base in the shins and getting nothing back.
anacondarunner wrote:
I was hoping you were trolling. This is an abject tragedy.
Real talk. We used to be able to enjoy one 10k at Oslo, one at Stockholm, and one at Van Damme. Now we can't even have the 5000m.
Maybe people can start staging a 5k and the occasional 10k at smaller meets that are close to the dates of the Diamond League meets? But you need money for this or spectators. Otherwise, this is the beginning of the end of the distance running era. XC has already died mostly (its done well in Britain, but nowhere else. So little interest in the WCCC already). Now track has died. All that is left is marathon and a bunch of random Africans who run 2:04 or 2:06 and are not heard from again.
2 thoughts
1) They just set the Olympic standards at 13:13.5, where do they think people go to chase these standards? This requires many of our top distance runners to chase the standards at meets that the average track fan is barely going to hear about. Plus, this limits the opportunity to chase it. How many of these distance carnival meets (USATF distance class, Portland track festival, European distance carnivals) actually have races that go under 13:13?
2) Distance runners always complain about not getting enough TV time for races. Rightly so, but what about field events? How many fans even watch field events? They show the top 2 maybe 3 athletes making 1 or 2 attempts and that's it. By this logic should we take the field events out of the Diamond League? The 3k isn't even a championship event, should we just do the steeple and have the next highest event be the 1500m?
wejo wrote:
Name the biggest distance stars the past 25 years:
On men's side, I'd go with El Guerrouj, Gebrselassie, Bekele and Farah.
What do 3/4 of them having in common? They 5,000 (and the 10,000).
The average distance person gets the 5k and hit has history. They don't get the 3k.
If these stars never get to race even a 5,000 who will we have a future long-distance star?
Even El G has 5k Olympic gold
The ghost of Pat Davey wrote:
anacondarunner wrote:
I was hoping you were trolling. This is an abject tragedy.
Real talk. We used to be able to enjoy one 10k at Oslo, one at Stockholm, and one at Van Damme. Now we can't even have the 5000m.
Maybe people can start staging a 5k and the occasional 10k at smaller meets that are close to the dates of the Diamond League meets? But you need money for this or spectators. Otherwise, this is the beginning of the end of the distance running era. XC has already died mostly (its done well in Britain, but nowhere else. So little interest in the WCCC already). Now track has died. All that is left is marathon and a bunch of random Africans who run 2:04 or 2:06 and are not heard from again.
Totally. All those random WMM winners like Mohammed Farah, Eliud Kipchoge, Galen Rupp, Lelisa Desisa, Geoffrey Kamworor, and Daniel Wanjiru that you've never heard of before and never see again...
The Scot wrote:
We need some sexy glamorous 5 and 10k track meets. Oh hang on...
http://www.nightofthe10kpbs.com/
This is a chance for adidas, Nike, brooks, sketchers et al to step up and sponsor a bunch of distance only events.
So if I understand correctly the “5k race” perhaps the largest individual participation sporting event the world has ever known (XC/road included) has no place in the IAAF mainstream?
Don’t get me started on XC (and the massive grass roots participation) and how that gets kicked to curve, this is insanity, so weird how triathlon can do better than running in marketing themselves.
ILoveThis wrote:
Nobody wants to see people running around a 400M track much more than 8 times. It is frightfully dull and boring
TIA
Tell that to the 7000 people who come to Highgate each summer. It's gripping!
Negative BBC writeup:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/47527083
It states the situation quite clearly:
IAAF announcement: "we're making DL stronger, better, more relevant, this is a great improvement, etc. etc."
IAAF action: reduce the meetings, reduce the events, shorten the TV coverage, remove distance events, remove the one event that is wildly popular in the real world.
It's like chocolate bars getting smaller and the price going up - that feeling of being shafted.
#thanksIAAF wrote:
Negative BBC writeup:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/47527083It states the situation quite clearly:
IAAF announcement: "we're making DL stronger, better, more relevant, this is a great improvement, etc. etc."
IAAF action: reduce the meetings, reduce the events, shorten the TV coverage, remove distance events, remove the one event that is wildly popular in the real world.
It's like chocolate bars getting smaller and the price going up - that feeling of being shafted.
the IAAF action is looking to make the IAAF irrelevant, which is fine from here.
time to start some other org for mainline track and discard IAAF alltogether.
I put on such a meet back in the early 1990's indoors at the old BU Armory. We had Manhattan, Northeastern, Penn State and BU men compete in a 10 event meet that lasted a little over an hour. We had 4 athletes per event, with all athletes scoring. I don't remember how I set up scoring, maybe 5-4-2-1? We had the PV and HJ with 4 attempt limit and the SP and LJ with 3 attempts. On the track we had the 55, 55h, 400, 800, mile and 4x4. The team scoring came down to the 4x4 with all four teams in contention. Most of the events ran consecutively with a running event followed by a field event when possible. I think maybe the PV and HJ went on while oval races were going on. I do remember having the SP in the infield and nothing else going on, as was the case with the LJ.
Harry Groves came up to me after the meet and said it was a great meet and a great concept, but I should never run it again, because it would kill the sport. He was a proponent of sending a full team to the NCAA Championships and also believed that if AD's got wind of this shortened version of a track meet, they would cut the sport even more.
I don't remember if this was before or after men's scholarships got cut to 12.5, but I never ran that meet again. Instead our Terrier Classic and Valentine meet grew to over 3000 participants with the meets lasting forever.
I certainly enjoyed putting on that 1 hour meet a lot more than putting on those marathon 8+ hour meets....ha, ha. I even had visions of televising the meet via our school's media center. No Flotrack back then.
wejo wrote:
They really think the problem with the sport is the meets take 2 hours instead of 1.5?
If people are going to PAY to go to a track meet I think most people would actually probably rather be there 2 hours intead of 1.5.
Name ONE sporting event on television that is under 2 hours.
I can't think of a single one. If they're were going to take an extra 30 minutes to preview the races, etc and have less action over 2 hours I think that might improve the broadcast. But cramming more stuff into 1.5 hours is going to save our sport?
I already consider the 3000 to be a spare event when they have it versus the 5000.
Is dropping 6 minutes from a broadcast going to save the sport? It might hurt it as a bunch of casual runners can relate to 5k more than 3ks.
How about letting the meets decide if they are going to have a 3k or 5k?
And why have 1500 and 3000? They aren't that different. The 3k means nothing to anyone who follows the sport.
What other events are getting dropped?
Well, the most popular sport on earth is usually done in 2 hours or less...
Here's how they do it:
5-10 minute introduction, lineup preview, and discussion
45 minute first half + any stoppage time (NO COMMERCIALS)
15 minute half time,
45 minute second half + any stoppage time (NO COMMERCIALS)
Soccer! A superior sport. Plus, almost every player runs more than 10k in a game. So there's plenty of running for you diehards and lifers.
No commercials during the game. Imagine 90 minutes of uninterrupted track and field...or any other sport.
#thanksIAAF wrote:
Negative BBC writeup:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/47527083It states the situation quite clearly:
IAAF announcement: "we're making DL stronger, better, more relevant, this is a great improvement, etc. etc."
IAAF action: reduce the meetings, reduce the events, shorten the TV coverage, remove distance events, remove the one event that is wildly popular in the real world.
It's like chocolate bars getting smaller and the price going up - that feeling of being shafted.
Exactly back in the 50s-90s the 10,000m kept the crowd entertained when only field events were on. Stadiums were filled. Now they are half empty. Get rid of the 5000m and stadiums will be totally empty. And I'm a 400-800m guy.
So where did this dopey idea come from? Michael Johnson about 6-8 years ago, he proposed meets of only short distance events. This is the opposite
of what should happen, you want your sport to be on TV for as much time as possible collective advertising revenue. This is the reason golf and tennis are so wealthy, they go on all day.
It's as if the British Seb Coe, who hated 3k and up, including xc, though he did 3k and xc at least, said I will kill the 5 and 10k as soon as there isn't a dominant British athlete running and winning them all the time, as soon as Mo moves to the marathon, the 5k and 10k are gone from the circuit where the money is. Mo was the second most well-known track athlete since 2011, after Bolt. And he won all his medals at 5 and 10k. But now that the Brits have no medal hopes at 5 or 10k, men's or women's, they're gone from the circuit. Will the Olympics and World Champs be next? And what lunacy to remove them from the Diamond League even as you raise the standards enormously to 13:13/27:28! If the wee lassie could run the 5 as well as the 1500, would it be staying?
Also, it has to be said that the 5000m is where the action is right now for rising talent with Kejelcha, Barega, GWet obviously still, and then Jakob, two rising Kenyans, including Kipruto, and who knows? Maybe even the Swiss-French Wanders.