I told y'all the Brits are dirty! It's been state sponsored doping there since Harold Abrahams. Give Steve Scott his gold medal now! Missing the World Championships 'to train' - my big Texan behind! Keely and Laura should be banned from all competitions forever. We should never have bailed the Limeys out at Agincourt. Next time, keep the marines at home and let the Brits fight on their own with their big teeth!
Maybe she's just negotiating a higher base salary?
The timing for such a move seems right. Nike wants to be the global shoe brand number one, but outside of the US the average viewer probably can't name any runner associated with them except for Kipchoge, Rupp and Mu - and two of those are about to be tripped soon by father time.
Huh? Nike has been the global athletics and shoe brand for long time. They don't need Mu when they have Jordan, Renaldo, LeBron, Tiger, etc. T&F needs Nike a lot more than Nike needs T&F. That's why they don't have to pay track athletes much.
I’m sorry but I have very little respect left for her. She seems to avoid racing the 800m at every possible opportunity for no apparent reason. It’s boring and it’s bad for the sport when the best athlete is never seen outside of a major championship. Sort your sh*t out, or don’t bother coming back.
One more reason to believe she’s become nothing but a Prima donna. She’s no longer a serious pro athlete. She’s a spoiled selfish brat that wants the fame and money but takes the easy way out. Run or shut up. I have zero respect for her at this point
One more reason to believe she’s become nothing but a Prima donna. She’s no longer a serious pro athlete. She’s a spoiled selfish brat that wants the fame and money but takes the easy way out. Run or shut up. I have zero respect for her at this point
More than just prima Donna. She probably knows there’s a big risk of testing positive. Racing guarantees testing.
Does this have any bearing on a possible McLaughlin withdrawal? I think not, as the latter has actually competed on the circuit this year (well, a grand total of TWO meetings outside the Trials...) but she DNS her last race either (knee injury, supposedly). It would be funny-ha-ha if McLaughlin also didn't start in Budapest.
So what's the details of her contract? It can't be performance based to get paid and not race. Is not racing causing her to lose money? She's being paid well right now?
I wonder what gives her an impression that she's going to make it on the runway?
From what I've seen of her, while she indeed does have long legs, she also moves pretty stiff and somewhat akward in front of camera. Just like athletes normally do.
I didn't fully elaborate. Obviously you have to have something reasonable in your doping rules, but I think banned for life if you disrespect the process. Otherwise just allow doping. Athletes dodge meets and tests so they can dope and get away with it. If they aren't going to enforce it, just allow it, at least then the athletes would show up and compete. If they are going to enforce it, kick out completely the dopers. So sure, allow 3 whereabouts failures, but if you have 3, you're gone for good because you're not professional enough to be in the sport. Maybe you're not even a doper but you are making the sport look like it is full of cheaters.
Why are we afraid to get rid of talented athletes that damage the sport? If Tom Brady said the n word in an interview he'd be fined and suspended and maybe allowed back but if he did it a second time he'd be done for good. Who cares how talented they are if they ruin the sport? Same goes for coaches. Imagine if an NFL coach said whatever he wanted to in front of the camera...in fact it's already happened and many have been fired for running their mouth. Who is arbitrating that? Do you say whatever you want at work with no expectation of being able to be fired? Try lying on a financial form for a business and see what happens.
Team time trials (with exception of during COVID) can be done at a meet where other people not on your team are allowed to compete. Why let them set up a cultivated safe meet so they can qualify? Would the Chiefs play the Chiefs practice squad, wallop them, and then be allowed to play in the Superbowl? Make people compete, otherwise it's not a sport. It didn't bother me as much back in the day when an athlete would have a couple of key meets where everything was set up for them, then they raced the rest of the season, often losing or even bombing out. Manzano used to choke hard in some meets running something awful like a 4:07 mile and then show up medal a few weeks later. Now we see a couple cultivated efforts, complete radio silence, then nationals (unless they have a bye) and Worlds, and then nothing forever. Admittedly this is mostly an American problem.
Whatever, I probably shouldn't care at all, but track is the only sport I watch anymore...
Maybe if the Diamond League meets actually paid professional money to win events people would care to show up and might bother to show up with niggles because the fees are in line with their talents.
In what world is 10K for a win at the best weekly event of a sport in 2023 world class pay?
They also take forever to cough up, according to the athletes who have spoken about it, which hardly says that they actually consider athlete welfare when people might depend on that money as a considerable chunk of their income.
They also take forever to cough up, according to the athletes who have spoken about it, which hardly says that they actually consider athlete welfare when people might depend on that money as a considerable chunk of their income.
Because it also takes the sponsors forever to cough it up.
3 missed tests. 12 months out of the sport. Deal made to keep it quiet.
Possible. Quite possible, considering who her coach is. Or a secret provisional suspension a la Shelburrito, that the Nike lawyers fight against behind closed doors.
The likelihood that behind all this we have a ‘peyz’ or ‘polite requests’ situation keeps increasing. The real loss is the w 800m where casual fans were starting to take interest again in a true top end rivalry; those types of rivalries, judging by available YouTube videos led to full stadia at meets in the 80s.
The narratives confuse me. Everyone seems to be on the same page that Athing Mu has lost motivation with the sport and is no longer that interested, but the same people are also postulating that she has started doping and that this article is to cover up a silent ban for missing tests or testing positive.
My question is, why would someone who won the World Championships and Olympics as a teenager and broke the American record after a full collegiate season with 1:55:04, who is *losing interest in the sport* and considering taking up modeling, suddenly start doping when she hasn't even done anything spectacular in her event this year and has been focusing on living her life? I find it quite plausible that she simply wants to take a break, however it is frustrating trying to read into these situations when Bobby won't let the athlete be transparent.