rojo wrote:
Can someone explain the logic of this? I'm all for sports coming back but I thought we were trying to limit unneccessary indoor contact. So why are we running an indoor track meet in September? Is it simply that there aren't any outdoor tracks available in NYC? Or people don't want to deal with wind. It just seems odd to me.
I played rabbit for the guys so can hopefully give some intel. From our perspective there was a track meet 20 minutes away...so we went. Johnny and Colby are fit and there hasn’t exactly been a plethora of opportunities. It required zero logistical work on our team’s end as opposed to the 1500m TT in Bethel, CT the week before where they ran 3:36-3:37; that was not easy.
From The Armory’s perspective: They have an indoor track, not an outdoor one. It seemed like a dress rehearsal in terms of putting on a meet amidst the pandemic. We weren’t allowed inside the building until 30 minutes before our heat, given assigned seats, and of course masks were worn until the race. There were procedures in place like specific staircases for going up or down and only being allowed to walk around the seating area in one direction, so you’d never pass someone face-to-face. The races were all spread out and the other 800 heats had two guys per race with one guy starting in lane 1 and the other in lane 4 for all 4 laps (yes an 8 turn stagger).
There was *maybe* 25 people max in the building at any given time. Given that indoor dining is allowed at 25% capacity and The Armory can seat a few thousand people, this hardly seems inappropriate. Also NY has consistently had a <1% positive rate for two months. So this hardly seems any worse than other athletes flying across the world to compete in Diamond League races. And I don’t want to speak for The Armory, but my guess is the ability to keep their doors open is partially dependent on being able to host track meets, so finding a viable way to be able to do that seems important for their bottom line.