Typical American: living abroad and complaining how the country does its business. Your hubris knows no bounds.
Typical American: living abroad and complaining how the country does its business. Your hubris knows no bounds.
NCAA Champ wrote:
bun and pony wrote:
Good one. Paul Cummings was too poor to pay for a mission so he actually graduated on time. Any in the past 40 years?
If you're too poor the LDS Church will pay for you to go.
from Wikipedia:
Cummings was a Latter-day Saint. He wanted to serve a two-year LDS mission, but since LDS Missions are served voluntarily and missionaries serve without compensation, he was unable to raise the required funds. After meeting with LDS Church President Spencer W. Kimball, Paul was encouraged to stay in school on an athletic scholarship, earn his degree, and continue to run and compete.
bun and pony wrote:
NCAA Champ wrote:
If you're too poor the LDS Church will pay for you to go.
from Wikipedia:
Cummings was a Latter-day Saint. He wanted to serve a two-year LDS mission, but since LDS Missions are served voluntarily and missionaries serve without compensation, he was unable to raise the required funds. After meeting with LDS Church President Spencer W. Kimball, Paul was encouraged to stay in school on an athletic scholarship, earn his degree, and continue to run and compete.
Mmmk...we get the point, some people don’t like LDS and/or the way BYU runs their athletics programs, for better or for worse. Can we now return to the original topic?
Its great but in the end you have someone like Kincaid who would basically be the lord of running in Japan. No Japanese comes close. Not that great in the marathon either as we can see in the Olympic results. They were all far behind Rupp. As a matter of fact, the best Japanese was 2.5 minutes behind Ward!
hakujin wrote:
Typical American: living abroad and complaining how the country does its business. Your hubris knows no bounds.
You apparently missed the part where I praised the coverage, as captured by the phrase, ". . . the tremendous TV coverage."
Everything has its pluses and its minuses. I just pointed out one minus. And not showing the winner of a race would obviously be a big minus for any TV coverage anywhere.
To conclude that that reveals hubris on anybody's part is just silly. So go pick your nits elsewhere, little fella.
Primo Numero Uno wrote:
Isn't Japan one of those countries famous for age cheats?
No. Not at all.
Aren't you one of those people who likes to ask loaded questions?
Based on population on a per capita basis 22 sub 14 Japanese high school runners would suggest that the United States should have about 57 sub nine high school two milers.
Taro wrote:
Primo Numero Uno wrote:
Isn't Japan one of those countries famous for age cheats?
No. Not at all.
Aren't you one of those people who likes to ask loaded questions?
Some people cannot tell the difference between China and Japan. He should be one of them.
Ganbatte wrote:
Do you know what they do before jr high? Do they play other sports and then get into running or are they sort of brought up as runners? In America it seems like there is a stigma against starting kids too young.
Out of curiosity, I checked the wiki pages of some of the current top runners in Japan. Most started running seriously in the 7th grade, some started in the 10th grade. The most popular sports they participated before that was soccer, followed by baseball. Yuki Sato was a very good swimmer (made the Junior Olympics). Those three sports have very developed youth competitions below the junior high level.
[quote]The Land of Rising Sun wrote:
Most started running seriously in the 7th grade . . . /quote]
I have indeed noticed quite a few kids from my neighborhood middle school running the roads and bike paths around here (Chigasaki).
I started running in 8th grade but never touched the roads until 10th grade. In 8th and 9th grades it was all interval training on the track (the longest race was 880 yards).
I also think Japanese kids get more exercise in their daily lives than American kids do now because the Japanese kids -- even pre-school kids -- still walk or ride a bike to school.
Most American elementary and middle schools today seem to have parents in cars lined up in front of them every morning and afternoon.
Below is a link to complete coverage of the Japanese national HS ekiden championship, run last weekend.
The kid wearing bib #17 at 1:34:10 of the video is a HS sophomore. His track 5,000 PR is 13:50.