Good thing or bad thing? I'm bulletin board material for Alexis Ohanian

Letsrun is a bigger name than athlos

As how much prize money does Lets Run offer?

Never heard of her

I don’t think you were off-base at all, wejo. I think you should choose to interpret his reaction as being completely sincere: your comment is inspiring him to make improvements to Athlos. Take it as a W, honestly.

I think your article was fair and balanced. If it gives Ohanian extra motivation to improve Athlos, that's a good thing in my view.

Re: your last sentence, "And I think GST was coming along regardless of his meet but maybe I'm wrong on that front," you are not wrong at all. Michael Johnson announced his plan to start a new track league in February of last year.

sportico.com

Michael Johnson, Winners Alliance to Create Fan-Focused Track League

ericpaul729

Winners Alliance, a global athlete licensing and sponsorship firm, claims it has made the single largest investment in track and field history.

Open link

Ohanian didn't announce his intentions until two months later.

sportico.com

Alexis Ohanian to Launch the 776 Invitational Women’s Track Event

Jason Clinkscales

Alexis Ohanian has made another investment in women's sports through new track event 776 Invitational.

Open link

He's trying to build something, you provided feedback that wasn't really super constructive, but he read your feedback and presumably will continue to try to improve. Not sure why you have to make this into a good/bad thing. It's one person's feedback that he appears to be taking into consideration. I applaud him for his openness to feedback, I kind of feel sorry for your desperate 'clout' chasing.

I kind of wish you were still in the phase where you had a goal and were trying to build something positive for the sport. I honestly think that was your intention when you started the site, but it feels like in your weird world, you think you are at the success stage, when the reality is you've created some odd collection of incels and don't really contribute much to the sport or really have any clear purpose beyond protecting the 'free speech' rights of a few super racist and/or neurodivergent incels which I'm not sure does much to promote track & field or road running in general.

Agreed. Athlos was definitely impactful but to be truly transformational there’s a lot more that has to go down. Which seems to be the goal for Ohanian.

Athlos has had zero impact on the sport. Nobody cared about it. They just gave money away

How was it impactful? Literally nobody cared about it

He founded Reddit and he's married to Serena Williams ( you probably never heard of her either). Ignorance is bliss, I suppose.

All the interviews at Athlos they all just kept saying Oh we just want to celebrate how special and amazing women are and pandered making them wear crowns and dance to hip hop. None of it came off as sincere. Just be honest and say hey we see growing interest in women's sports and I am a bored billionaire wanting to have some fun and maybe make a buck too, so lets all have a good time. Literally no one would blame you.

its no kenyan parliment demanding an apology, but keep at it and maybe one day youll match your brothers accomplishments

I wouldn't say we're at the "success stage".

We're give the fans a voice and try and cover the sport fairly. That is positive for the sport in my book. If we become cheerleaders for everything or suppress fans' views we disagree with I don't think that helps the sport or its fans.

I want our sport to be treated like every other mainstream sport and I think lettings fans speak leads to a better sport. The drug speculation is something a lot of people don't like but we've said light is the best disinfectant.

We believe in free speech. We have stood for free speech from the beginning. The "incels" you talk about have been here since the beginning.

Flattered. He seems genuinely interested in upping the prize money to be more competitive with grand slam. I’m sure he’s also aware of the generally positive opinion you guys had of Athlos.

Flattered. Butthurt tastes good

Plus being only a women's meet, it's sort of a circus sideshow. They're free to do that, but it's an exhibition and they can't expect to be taken as seriously as other meets.

I enjoyed watching it - some track where there wasn’t anything but a random Thursday night football game to watch. Wasn’t competitive in the “distance” (Kipyegon jogged a 4:03, I think, for $60k) but sprints were good.

Who's Athlos? Never heard of them.