I feel that its a weird and bad outset of a debate that you put words and opinions in my mouth.
How much more interest would they put in the sport if they rather participated in the Penn state(?) record try this weekend(?), rather than try to steal away from them the weekend before?
How good is if or the sport, really, that four runners go for something as obscure as the 4x mile world record, but don't participate in the worlds indoors?
I would wager that they didn't generate any interest for the sport, being competetive internationally however would do a lot more.
Was not mentioned in the WTW recap, but I noticed that Hocker had splits in the 1500 but as a pacer, and went through 3 laps pretty quickly. So in a way he did two races almost as much as Wisner did. He did not show up as a DNF, but I had dropped in when it was live and showing splits as they went. They may have thought the relay would be easier than it was--like all relays one slower split can throw off the final time.