Unreal: Max Siegel raises the white flag yet again. US WILL NOT send team to World Half

I’m disappointed we are not sending a team.

Someone mentioned a lawsuit. Make someone sign a waiver if they want to compete.

He’ll someone could just as easily sue saying they were deprived of an opportunity by USATF to make a living. If legally we can send a team there I think we should. If you don’t feel comfortable going don’t go.

Pretty much every pro sport is going on in US now. Looks like big 10 football may even come back. London marathon is having us athletes. French open etc .

Coronavirus is a terrible disease but a minuscule threat to healthy young people. Let them make the decision if they want to compete.

We just got emailed this. I took a quote and made it QOD.

https://blog.nalathletics.com/2020/09/12/usatf-2020-world-half-marathon-championship

It seems that you also don’t agree that the Diamond League should be taking place to small crowds and the Americans that have participated so far are foolish?

Hardloper wrote:

NERunner053 wrote:

He's prioritizing the health of athletes & not telling them to risk their lives.

That's moronic, no one's life is in danger.

You don't think there's an increased risk for contracting COVID with travel?

NERunner053 wrote:

Hardloper wrote:

That's moronic, no one's life is in danger.

You don't think there's an increased risk for contracting COVID with travel?

Unless you really just came out of your basement after sheltering in place since March. You should know sporting events have been going on I. This country and abroad for some time now. Americans competed in Diamond League events. The Tour de France is currently going on with a few Americans riding and actually contributing to their trans efforts.

The fear and stay home peddling is old news by now. It’s sad how some just refuse to get over their wish to control everyone.

The athletes are adults who earned the right to compete.......it should be their choice to complete or not compete, not the decision of overpaid bureaucrats.....Another appalling, out of touch, ivory tower decision by USATF......Likely the real reason is using COVID as an excuse not to spend the money to send a team......With USATF it’s never been nor likely ever will be athletes first!!

If there were no meets then I would be okay with this, but this seems like a bad decision.

Alas, I bet few saying we should send a team can name anyone who has represented the US in the past. (These are rarely "A-listers"). I can name one only because I know him and his wife was my kid's kindergarten teacher.

Runner10287 wrote:

NERunner053 wrote:

You don't think there's an increased risk for contracting COVID with travel?

Unless you really just came out of your basement after sheltering in place since March. You should know sporting events have been going on I. This country and abroad for some time now. Americans competed in Diamond League events. The Tour de France is currently going on with a few Americans riding and actually contributing to their trans efforts.

The fear and stay home peddling is old news by now. It’s sad how some just refuse to get over their wish to control everyone.

Unless you've noticed, every sport minus the NBA have had people testing positive for COVID daily. I'm not taking an extreme stance here. There are risks to traveling rn & ya'll are acting like this decision was made under normal conditions. I'm over the partisan language & name calling around this. I'm not saying this decision is amazing; I'm just trying to understand it. Other countries won't be sending athletes for these Champs. Triathlon is similar enough to World Athletics & just had a championship that wasn't really a championship because not everyone was able to travel for the event. I think we just need to accept that things aren't going to look normal for a little while longer.

So stupid. Hey USATF; grow a set and try thinking for yourselves or take a risk will ya!? I’m pretty sure the fittest Americans we have would survive the covid if they became infected. Quarantine. Dana White has been letting men and women beat the sh!t out of each other for months on end now and they haven’t destroyed the world as a result.

Normally, I like Letsrun, but these posts by the Johnsons may be one of the more irresponsible pieces of journalism I have seen in a while from this site. I am looking at the email notice sent to the athletes, coaching staff, and medical staff for this team.

According to the notice, the USATF COVID group of medical experts unanimously recommended to NOT send a team. The US State Department has a Level 3 travel advisory for Poland (and basically all of Europe) recommending that people not travel.

Should USATF ignore their own medical experts and the US State Department to send a team? Wejo talks about a lawsuit. There is your lawsuit.

The constant knee-jerk reaction by the Johnsons and this website against everything that Siegel and USATF does is tiring.

Oh man people tested positive! Show me the deaths. Hell show me anything worse than a few cases of having a bad flu symptoms. Literally everyone else was asymptomatic you dope.

NERunner053 wrote:

Hardloper wrote:

That's moronic, no one's life is in danger.

You don't think there's an increased risk for contracting COVID with travel?

There are always risks of catching a cold, flu, mononucleosis, plane and car crashes, etc. These are risks we accept in everyday life. Covid is not dangerous to young healthy athletes. If someone does not feel safe at the airport, they should not be forced to go. But it's not the USATF's call to prevent anyone from going.

All the covid testing in the NBA/MLB is CYA theater so people like NERunner053 don't complain. Dozens of positive tests, and how many even have symptoms? 18 Marlins players tested positive. Did any of them have more than a runny nose?

USATF blows wrote:

This on top of the USATF selling BLM shirts is too much.

Thanks for the great tip! The BLM shirts look great and I just ordered one.

Personally I think that sports like Athletics which were struggling anyway have used Covid as a bit of a get out clause.

USATF probably loved to find a reason to not to bother organising what is their only job to organise.

please, Please, PLEASE tell me this really isn't your argument? wow. Dude, there's an infinitesimally small increase in risk, as compared with getting in my car and driving down the block vs across town. Let's say there's a shite burrito place 2 blocks from my house, and an amazing one, 3 miles across town. Risk is waaaaay higher driving to the good one but I won't even give it a second thought. Relative risk of flying to poland is way smaller than the driving example so, if I wouldn't give it a second thought, why would I (or anyone who qualified) give one single sh** about flying to poland? As another poster said, not a single one of them would have basically ANY risk of dying (except in a plane crash), as there has yet to be a SINGLE instance of a national/world class athlete dying from covid...heck, I don't even know of any who have experienced significant adverse affects from covid, come to think about it. Truly, people need to get off the "omg, it's the end of the world!" bandwagon.

NERunner053 wrote:

You don't think there's an increased risk for contracting COVID with travel?

good god. absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. plenty of healthy, fit, young folks have died from this. plenty more have serious, lasting symptoms. that you don't know any of them doesn't tell us much, other than that you may not know many people.

to be clear, i have no problem with these events occurring, and no problem with young people making decisions for themselves as long as the consequences can be bounded (which rarely happens with young people), and ive really enjoyed watching this years TDF. but this was absolutely the right decision by USATF, for a variety of reasons, only one of which is the risk of liability.

i imagine the top 3 qualifiers that wanna go could find a way to go--why do they need usatf to back them? if the response is merely: it's costly, i'm not sure that's good enough. and if it's something political like: i think usatf should take a stand and show us covid can be dealt with given proper precautions, that's probably not a winner either.

They don't need to do anything. They just need to get out of the way and let the athletes decide.

USATF does very little other than pay for the tickets. If I was a pro and had made this team and this might be the only team I ever made, I"d like to make the decision myself. If someone gets on a plane with a K95 mask, they aren't going to get Covid. Have their been reports of tons of flight attendants getting it? No there hasn't.

Moreover, if a healthy 25 year old pro distance runner gets Covid, it's not going to be very dangerous to them. If this was me and it was the only team I'd ever make, you'd bet my ass I"d sign whatever waiver USATF wanted me to sign.

If we are talking about lawsuits, we funded one against USATF last year and won it. We aren't just blowhards in the media that are all talk and no action. We actually spend our own money to support

The reason why this pisses me off is the same reason why running only 30 people in the 1500s at the US Olympic TraiLs pisses me off. It's clear that USATF doesn't care at all about the 'b' team athletes or realize that this is their DREAM. When you run 30 in a 3-round Olympic trials, it's terrible for fans to go from 30 to 24 in round 1 and it's also worse for the atheltes. Instead of having 48 people who can brag for their whole life they were in the Olympic Trials, you only have 30. So the fans and the athletes lose out.

There's the entitlement culture we expect around here!