U.S. Born and Raised Distance Won No Medals

Rainy Day wrote:

4runner wrote:

Yeah-- stick to the sprints. That'll work.

Except for 400 meter long races for the men and Felix, the Jamaicans manhandled us.

So except for the women's 200, women's 400, men's 400, womens 4X400, men's 4x400, men's 400 hurdles, the Jamaicans manhandled us?

US had 10 golds to Jamaica's 7. 22 total medals to Jamaica's 13.

I thought we were talking about "U.S. born and raised?" Sanya Richards was born in... Jamaica.

There are as many Jamaicans as there are Chicagoans. Anyway you dice it, the sprinters got manhandled.

So ? wrote:

So ? Jamaica has more T&F athletes and fans than the U.S. You don't see Jamaica winning NASCAR, baseball, football, basketball. The stands at Penn Relays and Reebok are 2/3rds Jamaicans too.

So you are saying that U.S. sprinters are our "B team," with he real U.S. sprint talent driving NASCAR?

Shannon Rowbury was born and rasied in USA.

Stop being ignorant.

ISaidIt wrote:

Who Said it wrote:

I give guys like Salazar, Rupp, Ritz, Teg all the credit in the world for mixing it up with the best in the world.

So mixing it up with the best in the world in slow, tactical races and getting our butts handed to us in the last laps is our new standard of excellence?

Excellence is relative. Of course Rupp would love to beat Bekele. Malawi would probably love to have a space program too. Just because it's not currently feasible doesn't mean that their recent economic growth isn't reason to get excited.

4runner wrote:

So ? wrote:

So ? Jamaica has more T&F athletes and fans than the U.S. You don't see Jamaica winning NASCAR, baseball, football, basketball. The stands at Penn Relays and Reebok are 2/3rds Jamaicans too.

So you are saying that U.S. sprinters are our "B team," with he real U.S. sprint talent driving NASCAR?

Are there any black drivers in NASCAR?

Sprinting is a much bigger deal in Jamaica than it is in the US. More fans, more participation, it is very visible.

In the US, one has to set a new WR to get a 10 second highlight on ESPN. Nobody gives a shit unless its the Olympics and we're winning. The US has a bigger pool to draw from, but very, very little of that pool actually participates. And why would they? If they choose football/basketball, they can get a free college education if they're good, or become multi-millionaires if they're really good.

Plus beyond that if the Kenyan government, or Morocco or Bahrain give an athlete a government job where they get paid something like 10,000 dollars a year US this would be a incredibly good living for someone living in a nation like that. In the West most athletes of similar abilities have way more options to make money than the typical Kenyan athlete. The typical athletics athlete in the West is going to college/university so right there they are beginning to compromise with training; they are expected to get a education while training at the same levels as their international competition and race far more often. The difference is that when a Western athlete becomes 23 or 24 years old if they are sub international elite they have far more incentive to become "normal" and use their degree to go make 50,000 a year, get a car and a house than to stick around hoping to breakthrough and get a decent sponsorship deal that would begin to compare to the amount they can make with their education. It’s not just about money but its about incentive and what sports make the necessary incentives for someone to compete.

The math is simple, in poorer nations governments can get thousands of people working their asses off to get a single government "job" (usually a bull job nominally described as being in the military or police) which pays only 10,000 dollars a year and which allows these people to train as a profession and become relatively wealthy in comparison to what they could have done by not making it. A 10,000 dollar job is like winning the lottery in many respects in a lot of nations around the world. In the West the only sports which can offer that kind of comparable wealth are sports like Hockey, Baseball, Soccer, Football, Basketball< Golf etc... we need to pay athletes millions of dollars to equal the same relative benefit that a 10,00 dollar wage would give a Kenyan athlete. I guarantee you that if countries like Kenya became wealthy the draw and performance of their athletes would drop precipitously, the math just works out like that.

You got some great ideas kid! Go out there and tear it up. Really show them all how it's done.

What? Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize you just wanted to talk BS on a lame anonymous message board.

Yours may be the saddest post I've ever read. Poor man, your spirit is sick. Please get well.

are you a "birther"?

runner_pucci wrote:

The math is simple, in poorer nations governments can get thousands of people working their asses off to get a single government "job" (usually a bull job nominally described as being in the military or police) which pays only 10,000 dollars a year and which allows these people to train as a profession and become relatively wealthy in comparison to what they could have done by not making it.

Yes-- what we need is less economic opportunity for today's youth.

Seems like the banks are working hard to make your dreams a reality.

I saw a black man driving a car on my way to work today. He was not going quickly though.

Sigh.....yet another thread devoted to bashing the same team that had the most medals, the greatest depth, and by just about any definition the best overall track team in the world. Its like if a football team won the Superbowl, and the next day there were like 30 threads devoted to how the QB threw 5 incompletions, the defense gave up 160yds rushing, and in general only focusing on the mistakes the team made.

What's interesting is that the bashers love to come on here and talk about how Ritz and Rupp and Teg and Solinsky's performances weren't really all that great because the PRs of the guys in the race are much better then theirs. How LUDICROUS is that? If you look at the people those guys beat, there are 1 of 2 things going on.

1) Our American boys PRs are weak (probably due to a lack of racing well rabitted, European meets)

2) The largely African contingent chokes on race day.

Either way, bottom line is that on the day it mattered most, PRs are irrelevent and place is what is important. 6th and 8th and 3 American's in the 5k final, there with a lap to go, is unbelievably impressive.

There were only 3 guys in the 10k field that were at a different level from Ritz and Rupp. They were right there with everyone else.

Same with Teg and Solinsky. There were really only 2 runners who were head and shoulders above the rest.

One thing I would like to know, though, is what Teg and Chris think about not having the kick this year when they needed it? Closing in 29 really is very atypical for Teg.