return to index wrote:
100% agree with darkness.
I thought that "I'd say ... competitive in his day" and the general tone was pejorative and condescending.
Now DE says it's not, so fine, but it could have been interpreted that way (obviously it was). No need to worry about people's "upstairs" (this is letsrun, so we are all nuts anyway).
Excellent! Take part of what was written and form the opinion around that
Let me try this again. Third time now. What I wrote was:
'He was a 2:12 type I'd say' The meaning being that I believe his marathons were run in the 2 hour and 12 minute range. He ran 25 years ago. I didn't go to any books or video tape to find out Kiernan's times. It's what I remembered. Was I right? I guess so because nobody has written that he was actually a '2:09 type' or a '2:15 type' I still haven't looked it up.
'...competitive in his day' seems to be the part that, for some reason, has folks riled up. Well, that's exactly what Jerry Kiernan was. As far as I know he never won, or placed in the top three at Boston, New York, Fukuoka, Rotterdam or any of the other major marathons of that era. He never medaled in the Olympics or World Championships. Euro Championships? I have no idea. When asked to name the top ten marathoners of the day, few, if any, would mention Jerry Kiernan. However, if he was in a marathon, he was not someone to be summarily dismissed. He was lurking just outside the upper echelon. he was... competitive.
Jerry Kiernan now has a little PR to go along with a stellar running career. Looks like he needed it though. Remember, this thread started out by asking who he was and the LetsRun banner headline originally described him as an unnamed 'Irish announcer.'