Ben Rosario has some ideas on how to save the sport. Create 4 Majors so the Olympics are "no longer the pinnacle of our sport.”

Is this a joke? How can one so utterly lack a historical perspective? one cannot ignore/erase a century of the sport.

It would take decades to establish anything even half as important for the sport as the Olympics, and even then its success would be doubtful.

It's like saying that one could easily establish a tennis tournament in China or Russia that would then in a few years rival Wimbledon.

They need to add World Cross Country as a major for distance runners and make it every year again.

Don't get me wrong, the suggestion could work as replacement for the DL etc. So it is not a totally bad idea per se (albeit rather naive).

But not even close to touching Olympics or WC.

Yeah hold 4 championship style meets in 5 months when athletes train to peak only twice per year.

zzzz wrote:

They need to add World Cross Country as a major for distance runners and make it every year again.

^^^^ Love it. We had a huge major for distance running and threw it away by a) first watering it down with a short coruse race and then b) making it biannual.

What is he talking about?

Wimbledon, the French Open, and the US Open are all older than the modern Olympic Games. Even the Australian Open is over 100 years old.

The Britush Open is even older than Wimbledon.

How about we clean up the dopjng mess in East Africa ( which Seb Coe has gone a long way to doing)?

I know it's hard for a majority in the bubble that is LetsRun to accept, but most of the potential global audience for athletics just doesn't care about a sport in which only doped up faceless Kenyans and Ethiopians appear able to win.

illinoisjones wrote:

Yeah hold 4 championship style meets in 5 months when athletes train to peak only twice per year.

Yes, this is the problem. The Olympics/World Championships are great, they are part of the solution not the problem. It is bad that athletes don't consider World Cross/World Indoors real championships. Fixing those events (more $$$) and getting each area of the world to commit to their continental champs as a big deal would solve this. Then you'd have 2-3 "majors" per year naturally between indoors, cross country, outdoor track and regional champs.

In general, I think his piece is interesting. I love how he's trying to do something.

But whenever we get to arguments of "What can we do to make our sport popular?" I've become a bit of a pessimist. I mean if you asked me this about cycling or rowing I'd saying, "Nothing."

Currently we have the Diamond League. WE at letsrun treat that like a big deal and view that as sort of the equivalent of the NFL regular season for our sport.

When I watch a DL, I actually think there are too many events in too short of a window. I want fewer events but want them to mean more. I don't want to see two 5000s in the span of 3 days with 60% of the top guys in it. I'd rather see one every 2 months with everyone in it.*

That's why I didn't like the recent DL changes. They were saying that no one wanted to run 6 DL 5000s so they were getting rid of it. I was like, "I don't want them to run 6. I want everyone to show up at 2-3 and it would be amazing."

I'd father have 1 race with a $100,000 1st prize that everyone shows up with than 10 at $10,000.

Personally, I think if we are going to a major concept you should have maybe one major per event group. You have a huge throws festival that everyone goes crazy about. You have a huge sprint festival and distance festival.

The problem our sport has that's a lot different than tennis or golf is there are so many champions. We hold a 11 day world champs and crown close to 40 champions. Golf and tennis crown one male champion, one female champion. Actually basically every other major sport has one champion. There is only one Super Bowl winner, one world series winner. So if we are going to have majors, I think we'd need to do it by event group otherwise your attention is just too diverted. The press has no idea who to focus on.

*PS That's why I hate when the 5000 at a WC is diluted either because the top talent doesn't or can't double back from the 1500/10k.

PPS. The success of the "major marathons" is interesting. No one complains, "But Kipchoge wasn't here." We celebrate the winners. But if ther was a track major in say 2012 and David Rudisha didnt show up in the 800 it wouldn't mean as much.

PPPS. I feel like this post is a bit like Ben's initial interview. I don't have the time I need to full elaborate but want to get something out there.

"After all, this is the same country that hosts the Berlin Marathon after party at a full-on night club and had Eliud Kipchoge walk through the crowd like he was a heavyweight boxer entering the ring before a fight to the tune of We are the Champions after he set the World Record."

Is there a video of this?

Coevett wrote:

What is he talking about?

Wimbledon, the French Open, and the US Open are all older than the modern Olympic Games. Even the Australian Open is over 100 years old.

The Britush Open is even older than Wimbledon.

How about we clean up the dopjng mess in East Africa ( which Seb Coe has gone a long way to doing)?

I know it's hard for a majority in the bubble that is LetsRun to accept, but most of the potential global audience for athletics just doesn't care about a sport in which only doped up faceless Kenyans and Ethiopians appear able to win.

Yep totally agree, the sport needs a total cleansing, it's not just East Africa, Russia, Usa and UK are all guilty of degrading the sport. Ultimately full responsibility lies with Seb Coe, world athletics should have put an end to the shoe issue which is ridiculous. 26.2 miles doesn't even taking a flinch out of the top marathoners these days. Time to reset that particular issue

I like this a great deal. It needs some tweaks-making the meets 4 days long like a golf tournament, limit the field sizes based on current world rankings, etc. This would actually save the steeple, 5000, and 10,000 unlike Diamond League excluding them. Leave the marathon and the 50K walk out but, you could have a 10-20K walk outside of the stadium. Have the start/finish near the bars and race on a 2K loop to take in the party atmosphere.

Golfers and tennis pros don't whine about having to compete at all four majors or trying to peak for them. This might also be a boon to the American sport as domestic athletes might put all of their efforts into winning Pre on home soil. Kind of like Nadal specializing his clay court play for The French Open or European golfers favoring The British Open on a links style course, pick your spot. You will be a major winner and your earnings will rise.

Track is dying under the current format and it is long past time to consider radical solutions. This wouldn't harm the Olympics in any way as athletes still want to be there as evidenced by the ATP/ WTA and PGA/LPGA pros that still represent their countries at The Games.

Agreed, Robert. This is why road racing is becoming a big deal — there’s one competition, and one champion (well, one per gender). We as track fans always want to see head to head matchups. centro vs Farah in the 1500? Van Nieukerk vs Michael Norman in the 200? The problem is there’s too many events. If you had maybe three majors / year, one in the 1500, one in the 5000, and one in the 10k, then athletes would be forced to race head to head. Sure maybe the 1500 specialist won’t win the 10k but it’ll be cool to see how far he’ll get. And there’ll be some amazing storylines. Say some guy wins the 1500 and 5k championship. Now comes the 10k champs in the fall. Will he take the triple crown?

I don’t know how you do this for field events, but to be honest, outside of the olympics / area champs there’s no reason to throw so many disparate sports together in one competition. Nobody complains that there isn’t a pole vault during the Berlin marathon so why should there be one during my distance races on the track?

Ben isn't that bright on other things. I'm surprise that people keep interviewing pro runners and their coaches as if they have a pulse on the fans of T&F and running in generally.

Mostly they have ZERO clue. Their ideas are either unworkable or cost prohibitive. I've seen countless runners/coaches/media who seem to think there is an endless pot of money that is waiting to be spent on track

rojo wrote:

zzzz wrote:

They need to add World Cross Country as a major for distance runners and make it every year again.

^^^^ Love it. We had a huge major for distance running and threw it away by a) first watering it down with a short coruse race and then b) making it biannual.

#savecrosscountry !!!!!!

Having meets at given single locations are dead idea in today's techy world.

TV Tech allows simultaneous meets broadcast at the same time on multiple screens or Brady Bunched on the same screen.

I'd lie to see a dozen simultaneous meets across a metropolitan area at a dozen track and fields broadcast on the same show threaded by event.

Coevett wrote:

What is he talking about?

Wimbledon, the French Open, and the US Open are all older than the modern Olympic Games. Even the Australian Open is over 100 years old.

The Britush Open is even older than Wimbledon.

How about we clean up the dopjng mess in East Africa ( which Seb Coe has gone a long way to doing)?

... just doesn't care about a sport in which only doped up faceless Kenyans and Ethiopians appear able to win.

How about the following:

1. Ban East Africa from competing internationally for the next 10 years and ban people from training in East Africa. Renew the ban as soon as anyone from there tests positive.

2. Keep the Olympics but make it back to being a strictly amateur competition.

3. Introduce these Opens as the top level in the sport but also hold them on different competiton surfaces like tennis to add interest. For example give the Brits or Europe a meet on cinders (making the surfaces would have the added bonus of relaunching the European economy and forrestry industry in the wake of the covid 19 crisis), the US can have the meet on asphalt or on indoor boards, somewhere like Australia could have the meet on grass, and somewhere like Asia or Japan could have the meet on some crazy hi tech surface with zero limitations on energy return or shoe technology. Another possibility would be a winter meet in Canada or Scandinavia where competitors compete on snow or ice surfaces.

4. If we colonize Mars in the next 40 years, hold an indoor major meet there as some sort of celebration ...

Great ideas. I think his idea is similar to what the Golden League was already trying to accomplish. But I like his format better than what it has evolved to.

How about a 1,000 entry 10K using VR glasses and 64 tracks across the continents. That's 15 entries per track. Each athlete has VR sunglassses and can see composites of runners from the other 63 tracks. One race. One final. One champion.

This is brilliant, Ben.

The world is a slightly different place than 10, 30, 60 years ago, yet T&F is mostly unchanged. E-Sports are a very, very big thing now, and we think the same old run/jump/throw format is going to cut it?

Think of innovation in EVERY other sport. Then recall what has happened to address competition, attention span, marketability in our sport.

The new Hayward Field is going to draw a mob on opening day, and things will look bright. That will be very much like the Olympic Trials marathon crowd, though, a bunch of runners showing up to see faster people run. That's not what we need. We need the same sort of people who turn on a golf tourney, or a NASCAR race, or a boring mid-July baseball game, to have T&F on their radar. And they don't. We let it be minimized, and put on the same shelf as gymnastics, which draws the public interest every Olympic cycle for a multitude of reasons. Even the token American skeleton racer in the Sliding Olympics gets more airtime than our 57th-ranked 5000 meter runner, and they're ranked even FURTHER back.

There is nothing interesting, or extreme, or current, or relevant with today's T&F scene for the ordinary American. We need to try something, and this is as good an idea as any.