classic Wejo. In response to a thread on Mary Cain's opinion, he attacks her character.
YOU ARE THE PROBLEM
classic Wejo. In response to a thread on Mary Cain's opinion, he attacks her character.
YOU ARE THE PROBLEM
oops potato wrote:
classic Wejo. In response to a thread on Mary Cain's opinion, he attacks her character.
YOU ARE THE PROBLEM
Is there a deleted post that I didn't see? Could you specify how he attacked her character for those of us who are late to the party?
Viking21 wrote:
oops potato wrote:
classic Wejo. In response to a thread on Mary Cain's opinion, he attacks her character.
YOU ARE THE PROBLEM
Is there a deleted post that I didn't see? Could you specify how he attacked her character for those of us who are late to the party?
Buttercup, read Wejo’s last post. Dumb f*ck
LRC note by Rojo: No posts have been deletd. As you can tell, the critic is unhinged.
THOUGHTSLEADER wrote:
I actually have no problem with Allie O's critique:
https://twitter.com/allie_ostrander/status/1303426550264549376Maybe note that they went out too fast for the field, and are doing a cruddy pacemaking job. Note that they are not 1500 runners and might be making rookie pacemaking mistakes often made by sprinters etc. No doubt Cram, Hutchings et al who are track announcers would have noted those sort of things (not to say they also wouldn't note some of the differences in appearances)
Correct. Allie's comments are right on the money. But precisely because he's not a track announcer is why I went out of my way to defend the guy from the cancel warriors. He literally didn't know how to analyze the meet, he was going solo so he just is describing factually what he's seeing. "Person in blue in the lead, person in red in 2nd, etc. Bigger people to the lead - they must be the rabbits."
And somehow that is viewed as sexual?
Dr Yuengling wrote:
rojo wrote:
Was the chuckle great? No.
I don't really get why people think the chuckle is problematic. Large disparities in body type are amusing when they are placed next to each other. For example, the shot put meme you shared, or the famous Manute Bol-Muggsy Bogues photo. It's not disparaging to say "wow, haha,those women look totally, radically different than the rest of the field. It's the same reason you might chuckle if you saw a person walking a St Bernard and a chihuahua. Juxtaposition of near opposites is a basic form of humor and doesn't imply that either is better or worse.
Yes. You are correct. I don't think it was meant to be bad. I actually think this guy looks up from his notes and sees and laughs as it was jarring to him the discrepancy and made it easy for him to figure out who is who.
Please don’t use names like “cancel warriors.” Especially bc you have no context for what it means to be an actual warrior. Thx
100% agree with Wejo and Rojo here. This is complete nonsense and a non story.
knox harrington wrote:
Here is Cain's full instagram comment:
After a recent race went viral due to announcers joking about a woman’s body, I got into an interesting conversation with a friend. He wanted help responding to the question, “is it ever appropriate to comment on a women’s body composition or appearance, since in other sports, male athletes appearances can be made fun of and called overweight.”
•••
Starting with the basics: Announcers and reporters jobs are to help viewers follow-along and get expert-level insight on the sport. With that in mind, why should any announcer ever feel comfortable passing judgements about how someone looks? 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. The very idea that any reporter would feel comfortable making mean-spirited or sexualized comments about any athlete - male or female - is disgraceful and unprofessional.
•••
Now there’s one other important point to make: the majority of reporters, on-air announcers, and journalists are male. If any of the major sport broadcasts teams took athletes and their fans seriously, they’d be clearing out the old guard, and giving women an opportunity to fill these roles. Athletes come in all shapes, sizes, genders, and from different background. Even when the specific event being broadcasted is all-male or all-female participants, men and women should share the screen and equally have the opportunity to report. That way, we’d have a greater diversity in our expert-level insight... or the main point of having a broadcast team.
This is a simple sport, and being lean is a very big part of it. So, unlike Mary, I think it is possible to make an above board comment on an athlete's apparent strength/size without waiting for the athlete to spontaneously talk about it. Such comments are not inherently "mean-spirited or sexualized" though they certainly can be.
I also think she's being obtuse when she says "Athletes come in all shapes, sizes, genders, and from different background." Athletes aren't all clones, but this is a terrible description of high level sport. Within a particular event or role, there are generally very obvious tendencies towards particular shapes, sizes, genders, or backgrounds.
That said, the Ostrava 1500 commentary was awful. For 30 seconds of a 4 minute race, the only thing the announcer could think to say is "the pacers look bigger"?! Given the sensitive nature of body image, low/no value comments such as these should be left unsaid. The weird tone makes it worse.
I agree with Cain here, fresh voices in the sport would be wonderful. More female writers/commentators would be great, but I'll cheer for anyone who has something interesting to say, or can ask an interesting question.
TLDR - I agree with rojo. gross.
Great post.
Let me add a few things
1) After Chavez sent his tweet out, I called him to defend the announcer. I just thought it was uncalled for to get the SJWs out to cancel this guy.
2) I really don't think the announcer wasn't "passing judgements" as Cain claims. He was just stating a fact. Cain is the one passing judgement and assuming he viewed the more muscular women in a negative light.
3) You are right in that bodies for particular positions/events don't come in all shapes/sizes. I don't know of any small offensive lineman or any short centers. Whether we want to admit it or not, Body type is a HUGE - PROBABLY #1 aspect to being a pro athlete in many sports. What was the stat in Sports Gene? Something like 25% of Americans over 7 feet tall are in the NBA.
I've written several article about the tallest and heaviest male 10,000 runners/marathoners like this one:
https://www.letsrun.com/2010/heightweight0504.phpNow since weight is so much more sensitive for women, we should try to avoid it but come on people, let this go.
same as it ever wuz wrote:
coach tj wrote:
Cain is pathetic now. She's complaining about calling the pacers muscular. She will never be competitive in this sport again so she's trying to remain relevant as an activist.
If she cares about women, she would have spoken out long ago about Caster Semenya being a man in women's races. Or she could speak out against males converting to women then dominating women's sports in high school and college. Speaking out against those things would ACTUALLY help women, but she just wants to be the politically correct police.
Weird how these feelings get posted about again and Goucher but not someone like Chavez. Letsrun does not like outspoken women.
While I agree that many men can't handle outspoken women, I'd like to point out we devoted 10 minutes of our podcast to this when Cain hadn't even said anything about it and it was just a tweet by Chris Chavez. I called Chavez up about it (I think it's highly unlikley I'd have called a female journalist about it).
Chavez tweet had like 200k views right away. This topic has little to do with Mary Cain.
The OP probably realized this existed because Cain is way more popular than Chavez. One is a famous athlete, one is a journalist. That being said, you raise a good point so I've added Chavez's name to the title.
There are events in track and field also that require athletes to be big. Track has more diversity of size than any other sports. A 10k guy may weigh 110 and a thrower may weigh 410.
As an aside, a cuz of mine just posted a photo of her daughter (my niece) on FB. She was in her new physician assistant garb, celebrating a new job. So of course it generated a whole bunch of comments from (mostly female) acquaintances, the majority of which are along the lines of “so pretty”, “so beautiful”, etc. Face it, women are into appearance.
Chavez has very little hands
oops potato wrote:
classic Wejo. In response to a thread on Mary Cain's opinion, he attacks her character.
YOU ARE THE PROBLEM
Is this the type of misinformation people want deleted on LetsRun?
I mentioned NOTHING about Cain's character. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I think this is the problem some have with social media. They can't stand if someone has a different opinion. I said nothing personal about Mary and didn't even mention her by name, and you are accusing me of attacking her chracter? How so? Feel free to email
wejo@letsrun.comI guess I should just get used to it. With social media we can hear everyone's complaints so it just comes with the territory. Mary Cain can sound off on an issue and I may or not agree and I guess someone can sound off on me (and make stuff up) and I may not agree.
Watching the meeting at home I made the same exact comment about some male pacemaker in the 1500m.
If you are not mature enough to discriminate between laughing at someone’s physique and stating that different events have different physiques, you hace a big problem.
The beauty of our sport is that it caters for everybody. STOP telling big/bulky people they can be distance runners, same applies for light athletes thinking they can become pro shot putters and sprinters.
elitist wrote:
As an aside, a cuz of mine just posted a photo of her daughter (my niece) on FB.
If your cousin's daughter is your niece, then your parents are siblings?
knox harrington wrote:
elitist wrote:
As an aside, a cuz of mine just posted a photo of her daughter (my niece) on FB.
If your cousin's daughter is your niece, then your parents are siblings?
Good catch. Just goes to show people can say stupid things without meaning to be offensive.
zinger wrote:
a lonely widow woman wrote:
This is stupid. He's commenting on the muscle mass of the pacers, since they are shorter-distance specialists. Nothing even remotely sexual or demeaning about it.
A rough analogy would be comments about a football wide receiver's height or hand size compared to a lineman's weight or size, or a basketball guard's body type compared to a center, etc.
Eh. I think the comparison to football players isn’t really a fair one. There are positions in football that you literally have to be big in to play. You can’t play tackle if you’re 5’7 and 120.
Now you can say the same thing about running, but guys like Solinsky, Mottram, Wheating show that that’s not always the case, even if they are exceptions.
And there are events in track that require specific body types. When was the last time you saw a 6'5/250lb distance runner. Guys like Mottram and Solinsky might have been tall but they also weight like 165lbs.
If you watch any sport the athletes physical appearance is commented on constantly. Big hands, wide bodies, long arms and so on. Go watch Drew Brees or Kyle Murray play and count how long they announcers can go before mentioning they are short for a QB. And uniform choices also get commented on constantly from pregame suits to what sneakers they are wearing. What you don't have in male athletics in the sexualization.
Now why the annoucers are saying anything about the pacers other than they went out too fast is another question.....
wejo wrote:
oops potato wrote:
classic Wejo. In response to a thread on Mary Cain's opinion, he attacks her character.
YOU ARE THE PROBLEM
Is this the type of misinformation people want deleted on LetsRun?
I mentioned NOTHING about Cain's character. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I think this is the problem some have with social media. They can't stand if someone has a different opinion. I said nothing personal about Mary didn't even mention her by name, and you are accusing me of attacking her chracter? How so. Feel free to email
wejo@letsrun.comI guess I should just get used to it. In social media we can hear everyone's complaints it just comes with the territory. So Mary cain sound off on an issue and I may or not agree and I guess someone can sound off on me (and make stuff up) and I may or not agree.
I dunno, Trooper. You imply that anyone who agrees with Cain on this is coddled. That’s an insult. Sorry!
Although we talk about the "mental aspect", athletics is all about the body. But we can't talk about the body, even though coaches and athletes obsess about the body, and (the diminished number of) sports fans certainly notice the body type of the athletes. I say "diminished" because the cancel culture is wearing down the audience for professional sporting activities.
The commentator, in my view, did not sound malicious or salacious as some online commentators believe. His biggest crime if anything was, incompetence. How hard is it to follow a few simple cues?
1) Names of the top runners, their PRs and SBs.
2) WR, and Stadium record.
3) Pace needed to run each lap to hit WR and SR pace.
4) Typical splits expected for a high level meet. Maybe compare with NCAAs.
5) Once the race starts, if it is a championship style, say something about tactics.
6) Read out splits!
1-4 can be laid out before the start and reiterated if need be.
5-6 with more stats, time permitting is useful during the race.
Surely a professional commentator can do this?
THOUGHTSLEADER wrote:
elitist wrote:
I do. They may not be the best announcers but they’re trying. Announcing isn’t that easy.
By extension, one could say that if your PBs aren’t within spitting distance of world class you shouldn’t be running. Allie’s times definitely fall short. By a lot. Maybe she shouldn’t be running?
Personal best(s)
800 metres: 2:11.30
1500 m:4:14.76
Mile: 4:33.5
5000m: 15:24.74
10,000m: 32:06.71
3000 metres steeplechase: 9:30.85
Announcing isn't that easy, but this guy isn't a track announcer and it showed. That 30 seconds of announcing was objectively terrible. To not say anything about the pacers going out too fast and leaving the field in the dust is pretty dreadful. Nearly every other announcer would.
Allie is closer to an elite track athlete than this guy is to a good track announcer. I've heard Ian Eagle and Gus Johnson do track. Despite no real track background, both guys fared much better and they certainly could understand the dynamic of bad pacemaking. Allie calling this guy out for having nothing of value to say when there was quite a race dynamic going on (Faith Kipyegon letting the pace go, and not chasing after a PB) is totally fair even if she's not an A1 athlete.
Agree—problem with track is that they are generally scraping the bottom of the barrel for announcer quality as guys like Ian Eagle are doing basketball...and we get Dwight Stones, albeit he is a lot better than this dude...