Valby was disappointed tuohy didn’t show up to take her whooping in the heat of the night.
Valby was disappointed that Tuohy got an NIL deal and she didn't until now. Tuohy runs in races with pros and Valby doesn't. Valby is always MIA until this last fluke of a 5K title she got. Nike will be expecting alot for the money they're paying. Time to put down the makeup and start racing
I got bad news for you. Valby doesn't even wear makeup. She's just naturally that pretty. That, and she's barely scratched the surface of her potential. Her arrow is rising. Your arrow is angry.
I'd say she got good on lower volume, so why would she go into that meat grinder of a program? Infeld is a Nike athlete, and trains with the Bosshard group. Or Union Athletics Club has Emma Donaghu as a 5000m training partner, along with a slate of mid distance speedsters. Nothing about her style or personality say Bowerman to me.
Lower volume? She does very high volume training, just not running volume since she's chronically injured. In high school, she was very high volume, but had horrible running form and was a lot heavier. Dropping weight and correcting her form has enabled her to get faster. Not sure why people believe the line that she is undertrained and has massive amounts of room to improve. Yes, she's very talented, but I just don't see her being successful in the pro ranks since she's constantly injured and doesn't have the necessary speed it takes to be successful.
Valby is just like Ostrander. Will have a great NCAA career winning championships and always being in the front but it will not result in a pro career due to all the injury problems and time spent in the pool. There’s nothing wrong with that, winning NCAA titles should be celebrated regardless of the future holds.
I'd say she got good on lower volume, so why would she go into that meat grinder of a program? Infeld is a Nike athlete, and trains with the Bosshard group. Or Union Athletics Club has Emma Donaghu as a 5000m training partner, along with a slate of mid distance speedsters. Nothing about her style or personality say Bowerman to me.
Lower volume? She does very high volume training, just not running volume since she's chronically injured. In high school, she was very high volume, but had horrible running form and was a lot heavier. Dropping weight and correcting her form has enabled her to get faster. Not sure why people believe the line that she is undertrained and has massive amounts of room to improve. Yes, she's very talented, but I just don't see her being successful in the pro ranks since she's constantly injured and doesn't have the necessary speed it takes to be successful.
Was she chronically injured in HS the way she has been during college, based on what I'm reading in this thread? Losing weight may have made her faster and netted her a major sponsorship but let's hope it didn't limit her potential 5-10 years down the line.
They used sponsored champions who everyone knows and who also have huge followings: think Ronaldo, Nadal, Biles etc.
Most people who run as a hobby don’t know champion runners, Nike often uses normal people or celebs for their running campaigns so yes social media numbers DO matter. A lot for that matter. Having worked in that field it’s the first metric a brand wants to know about. There’s no value in advertising to use a face that nobody recognizes in the hopes that people will care whether or not they won a cross country race. The value for Nike with Valby is her future potential and moreover getting in there first before another brand.
I'm also in the industry. Note Progressive's FLO and Jake from State Farm had 0 awareness and no Instagram when they appeared in their first ads. Now they are household names driven purely by the company ad spends. Similarly some dude named Grimace, who is not even human, can't use a smartphone and had 0 Instagram followers, has a birthday right now being celebrated at McDonalds with his own signature milk shake. So there can be 'value in advertising to use a face that nobody recognizes' if your ad spend is big enough to make them recognizable.
I'm not saying there is no value in social, or no value in being a mega star, just that there are other ways to skin the cat. In Valby's case I might even get her a social mgr to build her following, as she is so photogenic.
I completely agree with you that Nike and Adidas are just using these NILs as parking spaces to take these kids off the market. The extent of Adidas' use of KT in 7 months is 2 Instagram posts.
They used sponsored champions who everyone knows and who also have huge followings: think Ronaldo, Nadal, Biles etc.
Most people who run as a hobby don’t know champion runners, Nike often uses normal people or celebs for their running campaigns so yes social media numbers DO matter. A lot for that matter. Having worked in that field it’s the first metric a brand wants to know about. There’s no value in advertising to use a face that nobody recognizes in the hopes that people will care whether or not they won a cross country race. The value for Nike with Valby is her future potential and moreover getting in there first before another brand.
I'm also in the industry. Note Progressive's FLO and Jake from State Farm had 0 awareness and no Instagram when they appeared in their first ads. Now they are household names driven purely by the company ad spends. Similarly some dude named Grimace, who is not even human, can't use a smartphone and had 0 Instagram followers, has a birthday right now being celebrated at McDonalds with his own signature milk shake. So there can be 'value in advertising to use a face that nobody recognizes' if your ad spend is big enough to make them recognizable.
I'm not saying there is no value in social, or no value in being a mega star, just that there are other ways to skin the cat. In Valby's case I might even get her a social mgr to build her following, as she is so photogenic.
I completely agree with you that Nike and Adidas are just using these NILs as parking spaces to take these kids off the market. The extent of Adidas' use of KT in 7 months is 2 Instagram posts.
Interesting point but you know that Progressive spends around $2b a year on advertising. Of course the whole country would know Valby if Nike that as spend behind her. I also wanted to mention that you run the risk of having these ‘brand mascots’ who become bigger than the brand itself. Ie: people know who Flo is from the commercial yet have no idea what Progressive is.
I hope Valby is savvy with her next moves. She certainly has all of the goods
She was injured her senior XC, but other than that, she didn’t miss any time. I was at a lot of her races and was always surprised by how fast she was, considering her running form; they have definitely worked on this, as her form is much better than it was in high school. As for why she’s always getting injured now, maybe it’s because of the form change, or a certain cross training element, but might also have to do with nutrition (as she is much thinner - it’s not that noticeable in interview pictures, but in running pics, there’s a huge difference)
Being pretty helps, but what you are really being paid for is influence and brand exposure; winning global medals provides much greater influence than being pretty.
Sha'Carri hasn't come close to winning a global medal but she makes pretty good money.
Winning isn't everything. Filthy rich Anna Kournikova never won a singles tournment in her entire career.
Valby is just like Ostrander. Will have a great NCAA career winning championships and always being in the front but it will not result in a pro career due to all the injury problems and time spent in the pool. There’s nothing wrong with that, winning NCAA titles should be celebrated regardless of the future holds.
She was injured her senior XC, but other than that, she didn’t miss any time. I was at a lot of her races and was always surprised by how fast she was, considering her running form; they have definitely worked on this, as her form is much better than it was in high school. As for why she’s always getting injured now, maybe it’s because of the form change, or a certain cross training element, but might also have to do with nutrition (as she is much thinner - it’s not that noticeable in interview pictures, but in running pics, there’s a huge difference)
I think it is just as easy to at least partially ascribe Valby’s injury predicament in college to getting into an injury cycle, due to getting too ambitious when entering college in trying to play catch-up to the likes of tuohy that had already been taking the sport very seriously for years.
She was injured her senior XC, but other than that, she didn’t miss any time. I was at a lot of her races and was always surprised by how fast she was, considering her running form; they have definitely worked on this, as her form is much better than it was in high school. As for why she’s always getting injured now, maybe it’s because of the form change, or a certain cross training element, but might also have to do with nutrition (as she is much thinner - it’s not that noticeable in interview pictures, but in running pics, there’s a huge difference)
I think it is just as easy to at least partially ascribe Valby’s injury predicament in college to getting into an injury cycle, due to getting too ambitious when entering college in trying to play catch-up to the likes of tuohy that had already been taking the sport very seriously for years.
Should have added, the form changes will be a positive, rather than detrimental. She can replace some of the arc trainer sessions with methodical slow hill-rep sessions in fairly low-stack-height shoes that build and strengthen the kinetic chain better for running in lieu of some strength sessions in the gym.
She ran Millrose (8:35), Dr Sanders (4:006), TrackFest at Mt Sac (15:03) this year with seasoned pros. Sorry not mediocre. And all you can up with is one day when she had a bad race. What has Valby accomplished in her racing outside a few NCAA meets? Squat
You say this is squat?!" She looks like Kipyegon in this race. A generational talent.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Her form still looks a bit jilted. To fix that, I suggest she periodically interrupt her Arc Trainer sessions (e.g., every 10 minutes) with Walter George’s 100-up Exercise, which may be the best overall running exercise/drill that ingrains the neuromuscular patterns of great running form.