The top women at Boston do not deserve prize money today!

It's like running the full mile in 4:43 if you are capable of 4:30.

not a single woman in the field today had a pr of faster than 2:22.

You idiot, you can't just compare times like that... the line is exponential, not linear, so you can't just add minutes to it like that.

Moore OK Runner wrote:

With a time that is nearly 17 minutes off the world record, what justification is there for paying them?

Some of the prize money is for placing in the top 10; some other monies are for record times. These ladies deserve their place money.

If this were a rabbited race I may agree with you, but this is Boston. No rabbits, no pancake flat courses for fast times, no motorcycles handing water bottles to athletes on the run. Its a race, a true marathon and the winner deserves the money regardless of whatever time they ran.

you hurt yourself by making a few dumb arguments, but you do raise an issue. Why do elite female marathons so often turn out this way? The female Olympic marathon was probably the worst professional race I have ever watched on TV.

And the OP was right about one thing, if the men had run a race similar to what the women did today, there would be a huge backlash against them.

It may have not been an honest pace but they still competed and ran hard. For you to think that they don't deserve money is utterly stupid.

You are an ignorant tool.

Moore OK Runner wrote:

With a time that is nearly 17 minutes off the world record, what justification is there for paying them?

Maybe contractual obligation? That sounds like good justification to me. Maybe you aren't so big on the whole following through on legal agreements thing, but those courts are just such a pain in the ass that they still require it.

And as for your analogies to other sports, they don't really fit. Running a tactical race isn't equivalent to playing basketball at less than 100%. Running a faster time is more analogous to scoring more points. Going out with the intent of running a blazing time is like going into a football game with the intent of scoring as many points as you possibly can.

You might say that all teams do this every game, but it simply isn't the case. Some teams base their strategy on possession type offense with long, sustained drives. They run the ball a lot and eat up the clock. They would rather have a low scoring game than a shootout. This type of game is basically like a strategic race. You aren't trying to light up the scoreboard, you're just trying to win.

Did you disqualify your OU Sooners when they only scored 35 points winning against TCU when they had scored 54+ the previous 3 games last season? Of course not.

Lame argument. Cue up Carlos Mencia De-De-Deh!!

ummmmmmmmm, if someone could have gone faster than the winning time, my guess is that they would have, unless people who run Boston are trying to avoid money

Even if we decided to ignore Paula's record time and use Ndereba's 2:18.xx as the reference, the wining time is still about 10% slower than this.

So the OP does have a point about the backlash if the men ran 10% slower than the record... about 2:16.xx.

As for the comments about no rabbits and not a flat course... the men faced the same problems as the women.

Would the women's winning time be within the top 2000 all time performances?

It's not within the top 1500.

http://www.alltime-athletics.com/wmaraok.htm

I nominate this person and post for the stupidest running related thread ever to appear on this board.

Seconded.

i love obscure messages. good one btw.

none other than wrote:

It's like running the full mile in 4:43 if you are capable of 4:30.

You play to win the game.

If the pace was so slow why didn't someone else win?

luv2run wrote:

I nominate this person(the OP) and post for the stupidest running related thread ever to appear on this board.

Well I am glad you thought it through enough to say "running related", because lord knows that you've posted some mind numbingly bad posts on non-running threads (most politics).

Anyway....

The guy might not have expressed himself perfectly, but he absolutely has a point. Oh, and in case you didn't realize it, many top race directors agree with him, and they only pay out full prize $ to runners who make certain cut off times for men and women. It happened in the recent Paris marathon (and I don't think any of the women got full prize $), and in a big half marathon (forget which one).

SO........ the guy has a point, and the trend is going in that direction. I think it is fair. It is absurd to pay the same prize money for 3rd place for a men's 2:05 and a women's 2:36, which I think were the times in Rotterdam. Hopefully they did not pay equal prize $ for those places.

Moore as in Kenny Moore?