Aliphine Tuliamuk complains of NBC Trials coverage on twitter

America is a bunch of immigrants. America was only ever strong because of them. The people in your family are immigrants. My family are immigrants. The people coming over on the Mayflower were immigrants.

+1. Nice summary.

moot wrote:

Agreed they did not focus on her. I think it is more of a bias for homegrown talent.

Which is why we are celebrating Mottram"s 40th birthday and Nick Willis is regarded as a God around here.

It was crappy coverage. Aliphine is great, deserved better.

While watching the race, I was wondering who made the decision to cover it like that. Racists, or anti-immigrants? Second-rate coverage.

moot wrote:

Agreed they did not focus on her. I think it is more of a bias for homegrown talent over immigrants.

I am guilty of this bias. I do not list Lagat among my top Americans of all time because he came here after he was already a 3:26 guy. But I’ll root for Donovan Brazier all day long.

Really what do you expect? We set up Athletics and the Olympics as this “team” sport where you root for your country above all others, so yeah, I want my champions to be American from the day they were born (well...since they young at least, Lopez Lomong I root for).

I’m not denying racial bias exists, just that I think it’s more immigrant bias with this one.

There is a lot of truth in this. Runners like Lomong, Shadrack Kipchichir, Leonard Korir, Paul Chelimo, and Kirubel Erassa would get more love if they had been born in the US. By the way, these five men--all immigrants from Africa--were the top five 10,000 meter runners in the US last year. I think a lot of Americans--both black and white--see the US championships and quietly think to themselves, "Oh look. The Kenyans (sic) are winning again." Granted, most of us root for Chelimo and Lomong, but I doubt most LetsRun readers could identify Kipchichir or Erassa if we saw them walking down the street. I think distance running would be much more popular in the US if the top US runners were Americans from birth or at least from an early age.

hurrikane wrote:

Throwing a temper tantrum is going to cost her fans, not gain her fans.

Nobody needs misogynist weirdos like you as a ‘fan’. I promise she’d prefer to have nothing to do with you. As a female runner, I love Aliphine more than ever. She’s being real and vulnerable expressing her feelings, and she’s not wrong. The press only cared about Molly Seidel, and anyone who followed any mainstream coverage would have seen that. Molly is awesome too and of course that’s not her fault that Aliphine was ignored. I’ll be cheering for all three qualifiers.

C jessup wrote:

These pros are clueless. She’s bringing up something that happened months ago. Complaining she “uncelebrated” and cried because no one worshipped her during the race.

Of course the usual chorus of idiots - freshman, Goucher. (Two white idiots chime in)

People just don’t get running isn’t popular to watch.

Are you happy, LRC founders, for what kind of thinking you're responsible for in our running community? If you paid any attention at all, OP, you would have noticed the disproportionate coverage given to white runners during the race and after it. Molly Seidel got an overwhelming amount of coverage. We can still like her and she can still be a good runner but we live in a society where her 2nd is worth more than Aliphine's 1st.

Wake up.

worster wrote:

moot wrote:

Agreed they did not focus on her. I think it is more of a bias for homegrown talent.

Which is why we are celebrating Mottram"s 40th birthday and Nick Willis is regarded as a God around here.

I don’t have an answer for you there. I certainly don’t care about Mottram’s birthday but you’re right, I made a point about the media and then Letsrun does this. If there is any defense I guess it would be that Gault has done 11 Throwback Thursday’s now and a few have been about international races with no Americans (and some with only Africans) so maybe Gault does not share my bias. Maybe if Gault had been running the NBC broadcast it would have looked different.

People are just going to ignore the fact that Seidel got all her coverage because she made the marathon team in her debut? It was a more interesting story, that's why she got coverage. Another more interesting story is how so many of the favorites bombed. Sorry to the winner, but often the coverage is not directly proportional to your order of finish.

streak wrote:

hurrikane wrote:

Throwing a temper tantrum is going to cost her fans, not gain her fans.

Nobody needs misogynist weirdos like you as a ‘fan’. I promise she’d prefer to have nothing to do with you. As a female runner, I love Aliphine more than ever. She’s being real and vulnerable expressing her feelings, and she’s not wrong. The press only cared about Molly Seidel, and anyone who followed any mainstream coverage would have seen that. Molly is awesome too and of course that’s not her fault that Aliphine was ignored. I’ll be cheering for all three qualifiers.

+1

Okay but what is the claim here and what do we want to happen? This is what I struggle to understand if I am honest.

Is the claim that the NBC sports commentary team are racists? Is it that the NBC sports division of NBC is a systemically racist organization? Are we looking for public apologies and shaming and firings?

I just don't get it. Honestly think about this for a second and take stock and a little context

We have athletes going back and re-watching footage of themselves running and checking if they get mentioned enough in the commentary. Meanwhile POC and specifically African Americans are being murdered brazenly and unapologetically by the police. So we are leveraging racism to push our "wasn't mentioned enough in the commentary" agendas meanwhile truly serious sh$t is going down which we need to address?

Do I need to put it a different way? What is even the criteria for "enough mentions" or "enough coverage". Hey, Aliphine Tuliamuk may feel she didn't get enough commentary - but doesn't mean she is right. Here is some criteria for you - George Floyd and was murdered. Breonna Taylor was murdered. Michael Brown was murdered.

This, I am very sorry to say, objectively sounds very selfish and entitled. I thought hers was an awesome story (which I found out on the NBC commentary funnily enough) and was just as happy for her as any of the other 5 athletes that qualified that day - I'm just disappointed now.

The coverage of this race was trash and s the winner Aliphine deserves to complain but I can't get behind rooting for someone that has worn the vest of another country in this scenario, especially not someone that earned an Olympic medal in that vest. If it's a major marathon sure but not for making this team. It only comes around once every four years and for some they may only have 1 or 2 cracks at it in their life yet 2/3 of the women's team has competed internationally for Kenya. Abdi is a completely different story and yes his PB is better than Ward's but that PB was nearly 15(!) years ago and prior to the trials Abdi looked to be on his retirement tour the past few years. He raced like crap most of 2018 and 2019, everyone thought he was just racking up appearance checks. You can't tell me that you see Abdi putting up a 1:04 in two half marathons and really expect his name to generate hype leading up to the trials.

ShilohDoesntCare wrote:

You can't tell me that you see Abdi putting up a 1:04 in two half marathons and really expect his name to generate hype leading up to the trials.

He ran two 1:03s. Stretch things much?

Slow half marathons are common before marathons. He had the creds to be a threat.

Ryan Hall: 1:03:53 before 2:04:58, 1:04:08 before 2:08:41

Lee Bong-Ju: 1:04:02 and 1:04:04 before a 2:08:04

Lots more examples I can give.

I think the event and post-coverage did skew towards Molly. Is that fair? Maybe not, but the sport skews white and upper middle class. Does this demo care about the Kenyan Americans, as they are called on this site? I have no idea, but I'm going to guess not. Plus, there was all the hub bub about Molly being a barista, which we all know as followers of her that this was a half-truth. Yes, she worked in a coffee shop; no, that is not her only source of income.

That said, if Aliphine wants "fame" or whatever, wrong sport. I thought she is a super cool, upbeat lady, but now she just seems entitled. Does Sally Kipyego care? Probably not. She knows she kicks butt and is satisfied with that, probably, unless I missed her rant on social media as well.

Also, let's face it -- if Aliphine stays a Kenyan she on not going to the Olympics. Period. Want to get some attention? Medal next year and show us all!

Yes, probably fair to say this. However jumping to this "racism/xenophobic narrative" is still perplexing. Why might it skew to Molly? Because she had a comeback from an eating disorder that nearly ended her career and this was the first ever marathon she had run - in fact she had only run as far as half of one in competition prior to this one in which she qualified for the Olympics? I mean is this really about a race or some stupid competition about who thinks their story is better or not?

However the timing and implication from Tuliamuk is that it was blatant racial discrimination of which there is ZERO evidence. Cut the emotion out of it and those are the facts. And I understand that everybody wants to jump on this and champion this because it's easy, righteous and probably makes themselves feel good but I guarantee you this doesn't help move anything forwards in this respect.

runnerz wrote:

ShilohDoesntCare wrote:

You can't tell me that you see Abdi putting up a 1:04 in two half marathons and really expect his name to generate hype leading up to the trials.

He ran two 1:03s. Stretch things much?

Slow half marathons are common before marathons. He had the creds to be a threat.

Ryan Hall: 1:03:53 before 2:04:58, 1:04:08 before 2:08:41

Lee Bong-Ju: 1:04:02 and 1:04:04 before a 2:08:04

Lots more examples I can give.

2018. NYC Half- 1:04 Philly RnR- 1:04. The difference is that Ryan Hall was still competing well at the marathon while Abdi ran 2:18 in Boston and barely made the top ten in NYC. Ryan Hall was in his prime at the time and competing for the podium consistently in the half and full not 43 years old like Abdi. I saw Abdi in person at the time and looking at the results you can see that he was not in 2:08 type shape at that time as you're insinuating. Take a look at the voting on this site. You're spinning the facts to fit a false narrative. Hardly anyone thought Abdi was going to be a factor in that race even on the boards here where we are way more informed that the public. Abdi got like 8% of LRC thinking he could make the team.

He also ran a 1:03 in 2018. If you are skipping back to 2018, why not 2017? Abdi 2-0 vs. Jared Ward 0 in head to head marathons by a combined total of 8 minutes. You can't tell me you see Ward putting up a 2:18 and a 2:15 and think he's isn't just racking up appearance checks.

In 2019 Abdi ran 1:03:12 and 1:03:32.

I don't remember how I voted in the poll, but I definitely thought he had a chance. Barely top 10 at NYC in 2:11 on that course is no joke.

Back to back bad years at Boston, one wasn't his fault of course but 2:18 is atrocious for Abdi. Yes 2:11 is great for the NYC course but he finished almost a minute behind Ward in that race. At his age people expect a sudden decline. You can't deny that Abdi wasn't on anyone's radar, it was the story of the trials because it came out of nowhere.