Official The Track Meet 2020 Live Discussion Thread

Congrats to Weini Kelati on an excellent run. Great job!!

Congrats to Associate Head Coach at University of New Mexico Laura Bowerman who has coached Weini for the last year and up through last week. Great job!!!

Weini had she remained a student-athlete at UNM would have been given credit for the all-time, everywhere collegiate record for the 10k, but would not have gotten the established collegiate record which can only be set during the collegiate qualifying season of March 1st through the last day of the NCAA Outdoor championship. There are two lists for records.

For the individual who said there were missteps with Weini by Stephen Haas. That is completely inaccurate. Stephen as her agent (and now her coach) worked very hard and got her an incredible contract that any collegiate runner in the country would have jumped at. He did a great job and should credit for that.

Happy holidays to all

Rich

I have to admit that I did not think Kelati could go this fast and I did not think Monson would be anywhere near as fast as she ran. Their sponsors probably got great bargains on these two.

usnspecialist wrote:

old hand wrote:

Nice win by Metter from Air Force Academy winning the slower heat of the women's 10k in 32:09. But I'm confused: pretty sure she was wearing the Vaporfly Next% (mango color)...aren't those illegal on the track?

Illegal for international meets and qualifying standards, legal for national level competition and setting Olympic trial standards. Given that she was unlikely to run a time fast enough to qualify for Olympics out of the slow heat, she was fine.

Can you post a link to where you found this info?

Sounds like you know what you’re talking about, but would have guessed if they’re illegal to qualify for the Olympics and get records they’d also be illegal to qualify for the trials.

Kudo's all around wrote:

For the individual who said there were missteps with Weini by Stephen Haas. That is completely inaccurate. Stephen as her agent (and now her coach) worked very hard and got her an incredible contract that any collegiate runner in the country would have jumped at. He did a great job and should credit for that.

Happy holidays to all

Rich

Rich -

Kudo is, indeed, all around.

Even with two NCAA titles, as a non American born athlete she's fighting an uphill battle from a contract perspective. That she ended up on her agent's in-house team tells me that Haas probably didn't shop her around too much or, if he did, there weren't many good offers.

Again, even if her base salary was guaranteed $10 billion dollars for the rest of her life, why sign a contract the week before you could potentially collect another powerful bargaining chip? The obvious motivation would be to race in the singlet of a group that her agent has a stake in. Not a good situation when your agent has competing interests like that.

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I have loved watching Weini compete for UNM and would have like for her to remain a collegiate athlete, just like I didn't enjoy watching Josh Kerr leave for the pro ranks. I love watching collegiate athletes grown and develop to be at the top of their games. But the contracts that are being given out for the select few are pretty special.

I don't think it's a violation of any NDA but all the major players tried to sign Weini, and all the contracts were very, very good. But the devil is in the details and I believe some had details that maybe weren't as good. Stephen did bring diverse offers to Weini as he should have and she could have chosen any of them that she wanted. One things that she has always spoken about is her liking Flagstaff so that provided an attraction to UA. Now, being realistic, given he has a relationship with UA could that have influenced UA to come up with a better contract? Certainly. But in the end she was treated very fairly by Stephen and UA and maybe in the end that's all that counts. Everybody just wanted her to be happy. Cheers.

Haas is a good agent. Looking out for Haas.

He's not a coach yet. He's "coached" Chez for a few years now.

Just like Ritz, and Ben, you can't hang a sign out and say you are a coach. That doesn't make you a coach.

They will learn. Make mistakes. Hopefully learn more.

You never know. These young guys think they know it. But, in reality, they are high school coaches at the moment.

They have the talent. And they will burn through much of it, but have some stars.

I trust the gal/guy to fly my airplane who's done it before. Not the first class passenger that Delta gives them their own plane to.