Why is there no love for sambu?

I for one am that racist yes

Levins won and is a great story because of his high mileage and how unimpressive he was not too long ago. Derrick is popular because so many of us who are his age remember when he used to post on dyestat before he was all that great. Sambu is another guy who is probably going to go and run for a non-Western country. We're not racist, we just like to see our own do well. I started rooting for Sam Chelanga when I found out he wanted to become a US citizen.

I appreciate that Sambu got second and beat Derrick but I'm not rooting for the guy. Imagine how boring other sports would be if everyone was always just appreciating performances instead of pulling for their own team. In track and field, the closest thing we have to "our team" is people who are from your country(in my case the United States) or continent(Canada and Mexico).

I completely agree. I was rooting for Derrick and Puskedra because they are American. I like Levins because he's a good story of work ethic and guts, and Canadian is close enough to American that I wanted him to win once Derrick and Puskedra got dropped.

Is that racist? No. I wouldn't have been pulling for a Ukrainian to beat Levins either. I'd just like people in the U.S. and Canada to do well because I'm from the U.S. Like the previous poster said, I too started rooting for Chelenga once he decided to come to the U.S. Lagat is one of my favorite runners because he did the same thing. Maybe that makes me xenophobic, but it doesn't make me racist.

Also it's just moronic to immediately jump to racism when somebody doesn't like an African runner. Isn't that racist in and of itself, assuming that because someone is white (which isn't true a lot of the time) they don't like a particular African runner because he's black? I mean, you're making assumptions about their opinions or personality based upon what you assume to be their skin color.

Everyone that says that derrick is the greatest college runner not to win a title is dead WRONG.... he just got beat yesterday by another college runner who hasn't won a title and has better pr's.

1. No one made that claim in this thread.

2. There's another thread where that topic is being discussed.

nice post Vicki!

How is that racist in and of itself? And they are not competiting on the national level they are competiting witin a collegiate system for schools not their nations, and the fact is cam levins is canadian yet he gets major hype over anyone else yet "mileage" is the excuse. When lawi lalang was dominating everyone he wasnt getting as much hype and I gurantee you if lawi beats levins in the 5k it wont be as much hype as levins beating lawi because levins is white and lawi is black.

It's hard to see some of the runners because they're so dark.

No, it has nothing to do with Lawi being black and Levins being white (for most people). It has to do with the fact that people from the US can more easily relate to a Canadian runner than a Kenyan runner, and can relate even better to Derrick. Why wouldn't you root for someone who you can relate to better, or someone from your own country?

Also, don't you remember those 10 page long threads about Lawi's training and the interviews with his coach and stuff after indoor? He definitely got hype.

Also, how do you not think it's not racist to automatically assume someone is racist because they don't like a particular black athlete. I don't know how else to explain it, but I'll try.

You asked, "Is Letsrun really this racist?"

By doing so you assume that the people on Letsrun who didn't hype Sambu are white (or not black) with no evidence to point that way.

Pretty simple. You made assumptions about people's race or ethnicity just by how you perceive their actions or motivations. You implied that "Letsrun" has no black people, because you collectively asked "Is Letsrun really that racist" against an African athlete. This is racist.

And for the record, I was very impressed with Sambu's race. I was hoping that Derrick would beat him because I wanted an American to place as high as possible, but still a great race.

True they're not competing on the national level, but they're not competing on a school level either. I'd be inclined to support a certain athlete if they went to my school but my school cut their men's program long ago. One of the most satisfying aspects about watching competitive sports is rooting for someone based on a classification that relates to you. For football, you root for someone based on their team. The team might be from your city or maybe you have just been watching them since you were a kid. That's just the most natural way for people to be interested in football. That doesn't translate well to running because outside of cross country the team doesn't matter much. So you need some other way to classify the runners to figure out who to root for. You don't have to be the same way but I root for runners from the continent I live on, mainly Americans.

I know some people will try to avoid supporting people based on that because it sounds so xenocentric, which a lot of people incorrectly call racist. But it's so goddamn boring to watch a sport and just "appreciate" the athletes performances. That's why we always end up with a few random runners who people latch onto, like Craig Mottram. He was fast-talking and charismatic so people put their hopes on him. In other sports, you root for a team. That team will win some and they'll lose some. But there's a good chance that team is going to be playing long after you're dead. In running, people root for individuals. These individuals will have a career which will almost certainly seem short and disappointing, like Craig Mottram. If you instead decide to root for Americans, there will always be more American runners. Galen Rupp might fail to medal in London but there will always be more Galen Rupp's coming along the line.

I don't want to root for him because there are already a ton of Kenyans dominating the sport and displacing Non-African runners. I also like to root for the underdog. If US had the depth that Kenya has now and Kenyans were inferior,then I might just have cheered for Sambu.

BUT - this being the real world, Kenyans dominate everything and it's refreshing for them not winning for once.

sambu? wrote:

Sambu took second and handidly defeated chris derrick but people seem to be talking as if cam levins and chris derrick went one two and sambu gets no love. Is this because sambu is black? Are the people on letsrun really this racist?

Do you really need to ask?