BREAKING: IAAF announces that from 2020 onwards, longest race in Diamond League will be 3000m

Best news I've heard all day.

Bib #1 wrote:

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.

why? they are in the business of selling shoes and clothing, not growing sport. Growth is to ween out the

"running shoe" lines , and focus on tennis, basketball and golf shoes. Look at New Balance with a growing PGA presence .

tarckstar wrote:

Attention spans are shaping the world. The bigger tragedy is that we go 8K all season then 10K at nationals. What's the deal there?

Hardcore fans watch the marathon start to finish. A 10k is only 27 minutes. This sucks. The 5000 & 10000 are the best events on the track.

A golf telecast lasts 4 hours.

milermb wrote:

"I thought that the 10000 had already been put on the list of next to be removed events from the Olympics. It should be, regardless. It's boring as all get out. Replace it with XC on a visually interesting course."

Clearly never heard of or seen any epic Olympic 10,000s, such as 1956 or 1972. One of the best races of all time was the European 10,000 in 1971.

I for one, absolutely LOVED watching all of the chaos Almaz Ayana caused in the Olympic 2016 10000m race. Seeing an athlete put everything out there on the table at the "highest level meet" in the world.

Ayana almost broke the 5000m world record at a 5000m diamond league as well!!! Shame seeing that the event is getting removed.

SteepleBias wrote:

Part of the 5000 / 10000 problem is that it is essentially the same runners running nearly the same race at the championship level. Typically it is a slowish start with a furious kick over the last 400m. How many times has the same runner won the 5000 / 10000 at the WC and Olympics vs. not?

Not as often as you think. Since 1980, its happened in 4 of the 10 Olympics for the men.

For the women, the 5 and 10 have been offered since 1996. The same person has won both 1 out of 6 times.

wuzthere wrote:

This is rubbish about track never having the possibility of being a mainstream sport. The sport just doesn't keep its own. How can someone put in 4 years of HS track and then not become a fan of the sport? And by the time we have people putting in 4 years of track in college in addition to HS track, and not watching a track meet all year while watching golf on weekends, we should realize what a disaster we have in the sport. By the numbers, more people do organized track in HS than any other organized sport. I will agree with you that the "engaging the youth" concept is misguided.

We need to keep our own, period. If we do that, we will accomplish miracles.

Great point. Think about how many people run track and don't follow it as a sport.

Around like 2006, I asked the freshman at Cornell if they knew who Haile G was. Less than half of them knew who he was.

It’s a stupid correlation. Many in HS track don’t follow the sport. Out of my team on a small number if the 50 + kids who ran XC watched the Olympics races.

College is a little better. But track keeps putting events behind paywalls. Tickets to live events are overpriced and they are few.

Sebastian Coe is President of the IAAF.

SOLUTION:

1. Add a lane inside lane 1 and put it behind a curtain.

2. Dispense with the pacers in the 5000 and 10,000.

3. While the steeplechase and 1500 are being competed, run the first 9000 meters of the 10,000 behind the shroud, then let them emerge for the final 1000, just as the runners start to ratchet up from 6:00 to 4:00 pace. (PPV livestream the first 22 laps behind the shroud for the purists.)

4. Start the 5000 behind the shroud and run the 800 in the same manner.

All distances 800 and up are completed in 45 minutes. Commercial breaks happen without any interruptions in the action.

Maybe this is a "Trump" move.

It's there to get our attention.

But it will not be permanent.

Screw the IAAF. What a bunch of knuckleheads.

I'm a fan of track & field AND distance running. This is a blow against the sport. Buncha maroons.

obstacles wrote:

Star wrote:

Phasing out the steeple and 10,000 makes sense.

For the steeplechase, it complicates building a new track anywhere.

You have to design that pit inside or outside for a single event that most people never try to run or follow.

Then get those barriers.

Get rid of the track 10,000 and put in a 12K Cross country event.

I like the idea of a XC / Steeple mixed race. That would give the Steeple and XC runners more of a challenge, and both specialist would have to work on skills for both types of events.

WHY?

No way jose wrote:

wejo wrote:

I used too much hyperbole. I pulled a rojo. 3k means something but not as much as 500

And I agree with the poster above that the top 5,000 in Brussels last year was the top distance event on the circuit. People will be talking about it for years. 6 extra minutes of running (where there could be commercial breaks which are needed for TV) is not a bad thing.

With a 3k, you'd better not take a commercial.

No. Even people who run could not name the winner of Brussels 5k , or name his name even if you held his picture in

front.

A TV producer would present the 3000 by showing first 600 m , commercial break, than last 600 m . that would be around 3 minutes of coverage , which is a lot for TV.

You are correct sir.

Sebastian Coe and Ato Bolden.

That is why this happened.

It’s not just a US thing either. I got in a cab in Toronto and the driver was Ethiopian. He didn’t know who kenenisa Bekele was

The 3000 is a nothing event that nobody cares about, even disregarding that nobody will ever get anywhere near Komen and the best performances are now indoors.

The 5000 may bore people, but meets usually start with a long period of field events before anything happens on the track. No track event prolongs a meet, and they already show field events during the 5000 anyway. Once they discover picture-in-picture technology they can show multiple events at once.

Star wrote:

That's a terrible idea to save time.

Air it in two hours instead of 90 min.

Most sporting events take 3 hours to air.

People watch golf 8-10 hours a day for four days straight.

Or run the 5000's with online viewing early and televise recaps.

It's not a good idea to alter the sport.

If we had free streaming of uninterrupted 5000m races, you'd get a pretty large audience of people viewing whatever scrolling ads they could put up at a low cost to produce.

What they should have done was to schedule them in the middle of the event, like a halftime, so people who did not want to watch could go to concessions, use the loo, etc.

Sydney Olympic 10,000m was Tergat vs. Geb, not Bekele.

And I agree that the IAAF decision is terrible.

Bra-ket wrote:

Sad day. I love the 3k and I'd love to see it run in more outdoor meets at the collegiate/sub elite level, but that's about it.

In one regard, this may be because the current and just past stars (Kejelcha, Jakob, Tefera, Mo, Barega, Hagos) are all probably best suited for the 3k so maybe once we get more 10k suited studs the tides will shift back.

Press F to pay respect to our sport

Yep to many white boys can put in the work and come on in the longer distances. Heck we don't want to promote dedicated workers over long periods of time in society anyway.