Mary Cain and Chris Chavez's criticism of Ostrava W1500 commentating

I believe it was something along the lines of, you can tell those women at the front are pacers and not racers "because of the way they're built," referring to the fact that they were slightly larger/more muscular than the distance runners in the race.

I'm sensitive to all this, but saying pacers are sprinters and are therefore more muscular than 1500 meter runners...is not sexist or mean or anything like that.

Unfair criticism of the announcers.

i will continue to root for her comeback. but im not a fan of her boring, overly sensitive activism.

agip wrote:

I'm sensitive to all this, but saying pacers are sprinters and are therefore more muscular than 1500 meter runners...is not sexist or mean or anything like that.

Unfair criticism of the announcers.

To put his in Trumpian terms this commentator's call wasn't "perfect," but I don't think it was outrageous. He didn't say they were fat, he said they were muscular and chuckled around the aspect that they looked much different than the rest of the field. If you had Isaiah Harris pace a 3,000 with Yomif Kejelcha I suspect the exact same comment would be made and nobody would take note. I don't think anything was sexualized in his commentary, and I don't think it was mean-spirited. Calling an athlete muscular is mean-spirited in what way? Like if an announcer called Serena muscular or powerful and said she overpowered Caroline Wozniacki would that be mean-spirited and sexualized? Come on. He shouldn't have chuckled and sticking to the credentials of the field would've been more PC e.g. the pacermakers are 400/800m runners, which is why they might've set off so quickly. That being said, it wasn't egregious besides the subtext of his laugh.

I refuse to listen to what she says until she comes clean about her PED use under Salazar.

What he said wasn't bad in itself, but the way he watched and then laughed and hesitatingly said it was belittling to the women running.

Yes the chuckle had a chauvinistic feel.

streak wrote:

What he said wasn't bad in itself, but the way he watched and then laughed and hesitatingly said it was belittling to the women running.

Yeah you gotta take tone into context, it's a way humans communicate.

I think the actual statement is fine, but the tone is a bit off color.

No you don't. Grow up.

you forgot to mention the part where she said

"If an athlete has publicly talked about a part of their appearance - like why they dye their hair a fun color, paint their nails before each race, have actively been working on increasing their upper body’s muscle mass, etc - then it’s ok to quote the player. If it’s not a fun-fact coming directly from the athlete, don’t talk about it. "

Yeah in my opinion Cain is off base here. I remember the call live and I can’t see how it was so offensive.

You need to pick your battles, or else people won’t listen when you really have a good point.

I am sure that the NFL announcers won't say one word about height or weight.

In addition, when similarly built pacers paced the men's 1500 an hour later, he called them "powerful" runners. He could have easily done that for the female pacers, but chose to comment on their body rather than what characteristics that body provided them.

I am as progressive as they come but find this ridiculous. Should we not comment on the size of a quarterback or the height of a basketball player while we are at it? These things are meaningful characteristics related to sport. This is just false equivalency activism IMHO.

ring of fire wrote:

In addition, when similarly built pacers paced the men's 1500 an hour later, he called them "powerful" runners. He could have easily done that for the female pacers, but chose to comment on their body rather than what characteristics that body provided them.

I was gonna say, does anybody remember how announcers talked about Chris Solinksy, Erin Donahue, Nick Symmonds etc...

I seem to remember the announcers remarking about how "powerful" Caster was when she raced but perhaps I am misremembering.

Swaglord_the_real_one_1_1 wrote:

streak wrote:

What he said wasn't bad in itself, but the way he watched and then laughed and hesitatingly said it was belittling to the women running.

Yeah you gotta take tone into context, it's a way humans communicate.

I think the actual statement is fine, but the tone is a bit off color.

fair

as far as the tone stuff goes, some people are just awkward. it could've been said better, but we don't exactly get the marv alberts of the world doing T&F commentary.

post mahone wrote:

I was gonna say, does anybody remember how announcers talked about Chris Solinksy, Erin Donahue, Nick Symmonds etc...

I seem to remember the announcers remarking about how "powerful" Caster was when she raced but perhaps I am misremembering.

Yes, Tim Hutchings definitely would commentate on Caster being powerful or even stocky. I had no problem with that. I agree with JWH, going after the minor offenses that are arguable is only going to hurt the overall cause here.

I got the sense that part of the chuckle was because they were so far out in front of the field. They clearly looked like strong long sprinters compared to the rest of the athletes.