Deer Malcom Gladwell you don't build the sport around Ben True

Ben True is my favorite runner as well. In 2011 he was the top American finisher in the Peachtree Road Race which was the first race I ever ran in that had a field of pros. I’ve followed his career since then and have always cheered for him. Glad he’s getting some exposure from this. I also root for Galen. Always good when Americans perform well on the world stage.

trueform wrote:

True, is moral, outspoken and raw. Three things Rupp just isn’t.

Hi, Ben. Can you tell us what's so "moral" about throwing your wife under the bus?

It's too bad Rupp has zero personality. Running popularity on the elite side could have gotten more popular if he was any percent more engaging. He just isn't relatable. The doping stuff doesn't help. The secretive nature of everything he does doesn't help. The lack of racing doesn't help.

True isn't Mr. Social Media but, among running circles, he's admired as a blue collar runner. We need some more charisma among our elite ranks.

OP goes home DEVASTATED.

NERunner53 wrote:

It's too bad Rupp has zero personality. Running popularity on the elite side could have gotten more popular if he was any percent more engaging. He just isn't relatable. The doping stuff doesn't help. The secretive nature of everything he does doesn't help. The lack of racing doesn't help.

True isn't Mr. Social Media but, among running circles, he's admired as a blue collar runner. We need some more charisma among our elite ranks.

I don't think of Ben True as a blue collar runner at all. He went to Dartmouth, his alternate profession of choice is skiiing and he's married to a professional triathlete. Has he ever had a job where he had to set an alarm clock? I think of him as a clean runner who has a really good name.

Galen has the name of a cartoon villain, but he seems so earnest and I like him more post Salazar.

coffeecrisp wrote:

I don't think of Ben True as a blue collar runner at all. He went to Dartmouth, his alternate profession of choice is skiiing and he's married to a professional triathlete. Has he ever had a job where he had to set an alarm clock?

Yeah, he is a fake "blue collar" runner.

If you want a real blue collar runner, try someone like Ben Blankenship. ;)

Just Another LRC Idiot wrote:

coffeecrisp wrote:

I don't think of Ben True as a blue collar runner at all. He went to Dartmouth, his alternate profession of choice is skiiing and he's married to a professional triathlete. Has he ever had a job where he had to set an alarm clock?

Yeah, he is a fake "blue collar" runner.

If you want a real blue collar runner, try someone like Ben Blankenship. ;)

Sounds like by “blue collar runner” people just mean runners they like. GFY

Why does world class matter?

People enjoy close competion and characters.

Sports like Gridiron and Baseball are hugely popular in NA despite not being world class sports (or even played by the rest of the world)

Ice Hockey is huge yet nobody cares about it on the wider scale.

And then even with a sport as big as Football, you get plenty of fans at West Ham, Leeds, Newcastle etc and they're not even domestic class let alone world class. You'll get 30K people watching the equivalent sporting performance of a 17 minute 5K.

So actually being 'globally competitive' doesn't seem to be important at all for the fans. This is backed up by Instagram- the most popular runners on there are certainly not the fastest. Ben Parkes is "only" a 2:25 marathoner yet is globally famous.

Maybe now with the shoe debacle it's time to move the focus from times to characters. Let's learn more about these guys and girls, get some juicy interviews, build up hype, then let's watch them race man-o-man without clockwatching. Besides, the average punter couldn't tell the difference between a 3:55 and a 4:25 mile race anyway.

Lets make the sport FUN to watch.

outsider69 wrote:

maxed_out wrote:

Gladwell in the podcast says you don't build the sport around Galen Rupp. Implies Rupp is boring. Says his favorite runner is Ben True.

Ben True has never made an Olympic team. Rupp has two medals. Rupp has rewritten the record books. Ben True nothing.

What the F am I missing? Ben True isn't even mr social media.

I think you are misunderstanding. He said he likes Ben True. He did not say he would build the sport around him. Just because he likes him doesn't mean he was talking about building the sport around someone like him.

Correct. His take wasn’t that complicated. When did he say build the sport around Ben true? Galen Rupp is a drip and has made US marathoning pointless to follow. There’s no competition at the top of US running but Rupp isn’t good enough to actually complete against a top international field. Anything he wins is just because of a weak field

Sliding Scale wrote:

Stoppit Smith wrote:

I have a serious issue as to why people don't see Ryan Hall as the standard bearer of excellence for American distance running.

I am not one to downplay Hall's accomplishments; he is one of America's former greats.

But he is formally retired, not just past his prime. Growing the sport requires cultivating a fan base for current athletes.

I don't get the mention of either True or Hall in this. You want to build a sport around someone, retired or not, you go with someone like Meb who has both a great competitive record and is very likable to a whole lot of people. If someone like Gladwell wants to single out Rupp for his perceived sins in terms of marketability why not also mention Bowerman TC? They're collectively hardly more accomplished than Rupp, not exactly a draw on the talk show circuit, and pretty much avoid fan interaction by racing so seldom.

thoughtsfailure wrote:

Kenneth Copeland, verified millionaire wrote:

Malcom Gladwell also doesn't understand why Jeffrey Toobin, the famed New Yorker journalist who was caught on camera in front of his colleagues masturbating during a work meeting, was fired .

https://www.pennlive.com/life/2020/12/malcolm-gladwell-puzzled-by-jeffrey-toobin-firing.html

Malcom Gladwell also thinks Penn State should put Joe Paterno's statute back up because

as "far as he knew," he "never received training on what pedophilia was." Even if this immense BS justification(rationalization?) was true, just a reminder Joe Paterno knew Jerry Sandusky was RAPING kids, yet continued to let him use Penn State facilities with children (where he continued to molest and rape them), and helped cover up the scandal as it would damage their precious football program.

https://www.newsweek.com/malcolm-gladwell-joe-paterno-backlash-1484882

Sorry, but Malcom Gladwell is an idiot.

Agree 100%. Malcom Gladwell is a POS.

Also not a fan. Gladwell's first bestseller promoted enchanting and simplistic messaging that was consistently debunked. Highly educated, clearly, yet consistently shows indication (like the above) of not being fully formed.

true antifa wrote:

Honestly, letsrun is just as toxic force in american distance running as Nike is. Insane right wing politics and conspiracy theories run rampant here. Misogyny and hate towards female and transgender athletes is par for the course on these forums. Racism against African athletes and separating "American born" vs naturalized Americans in terms of running achievements is also rampant.

Almost anyone who becomes interested in or serious about running will encounter this site and will take what they see here and make inferences about what the culture is among serious runners and those passionate about the sport.

There's tons of things wrong with this sport that prevent it from gaining more popularity. This god forsaken website is one of them.

Shouldn’t you be out trashing some small businesses and assaulting some old people with your Democrat buddies you radical leftist punk.

Lol at suggesting that the bottom of the epl, the best league in the world where everyone is making more in a week than most pro runners amke in a year is a 17 min 5k.

I can do that and my career winnings total a single running top

Gladwell has a schtick and he knows it - all of his stuff, to my knowledge follows the same pattern of

"This thing is odd, you would think it would be because of (first guess) or that this is just a random occurence, but it's actually more simple but at the same time a just little more complicated than you'd think." The last time I read anything by him was in high school so this might be a little bit off base.

His writing is designed to make the reader feel smart but it's designed to make them feel smart in a very shallow way. Readers feel smart because they have something explained to them at a level that is slightly deeper than the surface, but not so deep that they get lost in the currents and eddies of the depths. This is a good schtick to peddle if you want to make money! If people feel smart they feel powerful, if they feel powerful they'll buy your books. Thymos can be just as seducing as Eros.

It's sort of the epitome of the midwit/IYI (intellectual yet idiot) way of thinking. This kind of thinking that starts with the assumption (probably implicitly) that the World is simple and can be explained in relatively simple terms. Nonetheless it arrives at simple explanations for everything. This kind of thinking that gets people to say things like 'so we looked at the data' (Sam Hyde 2070 paradigm shift voice) and then talk about the benefits of sterilizing Africans or killing old people (cough bill gates cough). It's no wonder the New Yorker loves him so much.

I'm certain that all of his work could be explained to an idiot in a way that they'd understand but the world is not something and idiot can understand, so he's not really explaining things in a meaningful way. There's a reason why so many great books are "hard to read" - because the truths and beauty that they contain are hard to understand and can't be expressed in simple terms!

This is all to say that his work doesn't add much to the world. Who cares about what he has to say about 'building a sport', that's never going to happen and track and field will (and should!) remain a relatively niche sport. People should stop caring about the state of global track and field and instead try to run fast and run with their friends and build local running communities.

This all being said someone should've asked him why we was on Epstein's flight logs! and what he did on the plane!!

JHB wrote:

Lol at suggesting that the bottom of the epl, the best league in the world where everyone is making more in a week than most pro runners amke in a year is a 17 min 5k.

I can do that and my career winnings total a single running top

Yeah that was an awful analogy to suggest West Ham and a 17 minute 5k are comparable.

Williams Racing F1 wrote:

So actually being 'globally competitive' doesn't seem to be important at all for the fans. This is backed up by Instagram- the most popular runners on there are certainly not the fastest. Ben Parkes is "only" a 2:25 marathoner yet is globally famous.

Ben Parkes is globally famous? I had to google his name to figure out who he was. I bet Callum Hawkins is more famous than him.

And hyping up mediocre runners by focusing on their "characters" would work only if you could exclude competition from faster runners. How do you do that? What if a "boring" guy shows up in a race and blows every one away? Make him ineligible based on his personality?

Hmmm, aside from you being new around here, I think it's fair to say that everyone likes Ben True. We all were rooting for him to be something he wasn't: a medal contender. Which is fine because he gave it a go and that's something well respected around these parts.

In today's world, being a medal contender requires some serious talent and dotting every i and crossing every t. Sure Rupp was groomed and privileged but that is what it took to win medals on the world stage.

There's no denying that Rupp is a badass runner that let his foot speed velocity do the talking. Do I think it would have helped the sport if he had more charisma, sure, but that's not what we asked of him. We wanted him to win medals for America and compete against the Africans.

Not sure why Malcolm thinks that catering to a very, very, small subset of runners, serious hobbyjoggers, would somehow rescue the sport. I'm not sure what the answer is but it ain't that narcissistic viewpoint.

I do believe the biggest problem we have is the dearth of racing amongst our pros. As a young runner I got to run in some of the same races as Shorter/Rodgers/Salazar/Greta/Joan and get their autographs afterwards. I got to see them as relatable humans that loved the same sport I did. Some were quiet, some were gregarious and outspoken, some were funny as hell but all had an aura of greatness about them that I wanted to emulate. I became a fan for life.

I think the path forward might lie somewhere in relatability. Almost every single adult I come across, when they find out I'm still running, would comment that they wished they could run or had run when they were younger. Add that to the fact that runners come in all shapes, sizes, colors, creeds, ethnicities, inclinations, personalities, etc., we are bonded by the trials and tribulations of this sport. This is a very large potential fan base to exploit with the added benefit of how hard it is to get a concussion doing it.

NERunner53 wrote:

It's too bad Rupp has zero personality. Running popularity on the elite side could have gotten more popular if he was any percent more engaging. He just isn't relatable. The doping stuff doesn't help. The secretive nature of everything he does doesn't help. The lack of racing doesn't help.

True isn't Mr. Social Media but, among running circles, he's admired as a blue collar runner. We need some more charisma among our elite ranks.

I don't think anyone in this thread even listened to the podcast. Fast forward to 16:30 in the podcast and he explains the context to the quote that, surprisingly, was posted on the front page without any background. Paraphrased..

"The Tracksmith CEO is going to be involved with runners who have a following on social media--Meb, Mary Cain, etc, and aren't ranked #1 in the world. Even Galen Rupp will admit he's not extroverted. He's quiet and keeps to himself. You don't build the sport with Galen Rupps."

More or less stating that introverted people who don't post all of their training online don't help build the sport. It's not a bad thing, and he's right.