cloudy in portland wrote:
What does ANY brand have to do with the sport of running?
Good for Oiselle.
They pay the athletes that run, so they can run.
That being said, I haven't worn Nike shoes in over a decade, and have very little Nike gear in my possession. However, what Oiselle did was stupidly immature. Seriously, we get that a lot of companies don't particularly like Nike. If they REALLY want to do something about it, then put some damn money where their mouth is to provide some support for the sport. Go buy the rights out of them. But if I remember correctly, Oiselle couldn't even offer Goucher a particularly good sponsorship deal, so I doubt that's going to happen.
As it stands now, Nike is the reason Lagat, Solinsky, Tegenkamp, Rupp, Bumbalough, Cain, Flanagan, Hill, Jager, Centro, Hasay, Ritz, Lomong, Heath, Leer, Rowbury, and until recently, Webb can even make a living as runners. Minus a few big names like Symmonds, Solomon, Simpson, Martinez, etc. that's almost every active US distance runner who has successfully DONE anything in recent years.
I seriously doubt that all of the other "running" companies together would be able to put in the same monetary support for our top runners, at least without bumping out their entire present rosters.
Either the US needs some sort of government-sponsored support like China and a number of other countries (which won't happen), or the other running companies need to pull their own damn weight.