Nationals in Oregon

Because the fans are knowledgable and care about the sport. Fast times are not the only thing that matters in T&F. Competition and good racing are much more fun to watch than time trials. I bet anyone who has attended the Penn relays can relate to this...not many records set there, but very enjoyable to watch. Once mid June rolls around here in Oregon, the weather improves a lot. The OLY trials will produce plenty of fast times along with some exciting racing. I doubt there are many places in the US that could seel 13,500 tickets for a track meet like Pre does. Hard to imagine, but the meet just keeps getting better and better each year.

get your fast time at Stanford - then finish top 3 at the trials, simple. Trials are about races, not times, esp in the distance events. besides, they ran pretty fast in the distance events yesterday

yeah, fastest mile ever run in the US. american record in the two mile. can't run fast in oregon. impossible. totally not conducive to fast times.

Times in what event? The 100/200m AR will likely never be set in Eugene is true. Eugene in the evening, between June and Sept, has incredible running weather for 800m up.

100 m 9.88 Shawn Crawford, USA, 2004

9.88 Justin Gatlin, USA, 2006

Yeah, they never run fast in Eugene. It's a freakin' waste of time...

Portland is the only big city in Oregon, there's no where else in that state for USA Nationals that is large enough. Seattle, Sacramento, San Diego, Los Angeles, are about all that's left on the west coast. The east and south are too humid in June, Indy was a total disaster last year.

T/F and X/C gets no respect. Big cities all fall over themselves for the NBA, MLB, NASCAR, Pro Soccer, military bases, NASA, Home Depot, WalMart, and Hooters. Cities would rather build a Day Worker Center for illegal Mexican laborers than bid on a T/F meet or X/C race.

nawtyxes1 wrote:

What is the fasination with holding Nationals in Oregon. The weather never appears to be conducive to fast times

The fasination is with running.

Well, the weather actually can result in fast 100/200 times in summer afternoons or evenings, as there is often a breeze coming from the north. But of course, any fast times then would usually not be wind legal. I think Maurice Green ran a wind-aided 9.79 at Hayward a few years ago, for example.

If you did any legitimate advertising you could get 13,500 spectators in New York, Philadelphia, or Boston. 1976 NCAA's at Franklin Field even had decent crowds. The fact remains that Nike is in Oregon, and the Prefontaine Meet is essentially the Nike home meet. Nothing wrong with that, but when Carol Lewis and Lewis Johnson say for the 90th time how "smart" the crowd is in Eugene and how they come to their feet for the last lap - it gets old fast. What crowd wouldn't get excited for the 2 mile that we watched on Sunday ?