Why is Boston a World Marathon Major?

Are times run on pancake flat courses with rabbits to 30k recognized as world bests?

$$$

1runnerboy wrote:

How is it Boston is a world marathon major event? Paris, Rotterdam, Seoul and several others have far more competitive fields and depth of top finishing times, both men and woman.

I disagree on the women's side. Depth is just not there.

Boston in never rabbited so it's unfair to just compare finishing times to other rabbited races.

There is something to be said for having a mix of rabbited and unrabbited (and geographic diversity) to make up the WMM Series

1runnerboy wrote:

How is it Boston is a world marathon major event? Paris, Rotterdam, Seoul and several others have far more competitive fields and depth of top finishing times, both men and woman. Wind aided times are not recognized as world best, of which Mutai's 2011 win in 2:03.

False.

Did you read our Paris/Rotterdam previews from last week? Rotterdam's men's field was somewhat close to Boston's on the men's side (Paris wasn't even close - zero sub-205 guys) but the women's fields there were a joke.

Get educated.

Boston just seems weak becasue London is the Secretariat of Marathon running. London's field is amazing.

-Rojo

Maybe in the WTW we'll recap Boston versus Tokyo, etc.

History.

"Get educated."

LOL!

For the past 10 years, Boston has spent all their money on domestic runners in order to bring home an American win. That's why they spent top $ on Ryan Hall and Kara Goucher and cheaped out on Kenyans. Except for last year with Mebs win, that hasn't worked too well. London is now the clear number 1.

Nutella1 wrote:

For the past 10 years, Boston has spent all their money on domestic runners in order to bring home an American win. That's why they spent top $ on Ryan Hall and Kara Goucher and cheaped out on Kenyans. Except for last year with Mebs win, that hasn't worked too well. London is now the clear number 1.

That is a stupid statement. London has always been #1and they have far more money to bring in the best in the world than Boston.

Boston's fields are not London's but they are clearly legit.

The fact that Meb beat one of the best Boston fields ever last year kind of disproves your whole point.

nobody showed up to run a real race last year which is why Meb won.

Boston doesn't have pacers. It's a competitive race. So many of those other ones with pacing are just time trials on the big stage. I love that harder courses like New York and Boston are included in the WMM without pacers.

MarathonMind wrote:

nobody showed up to run a real race last year which is why Meb won.

Which goes on to prove OP's point. That would never happen in London.

MarathonMind wrote:

nobody showed up to run a real race last year which is why Meb won.

Well it didn't help that the best two guys in the field (Desisa and Kimetto, who are both studs) both DNF'ed.

Because its guaranteed hurricane tailwinds produce fast times every year. Hurricane.

I love Meb, but his win seemed and seems dubious to me. Tom Watson almost won the British, but running is different. I hope I'm wrong. Boston had allure when Billy ran against Seko.

Now it's just a destination race for the last corral.

runnerwhoprofesses wrote:

I love Meb, but his win seemed and seems dubious to me. Tom Watson almost won the British, but running is different. I hope I'm wrong. Boston had allure when Billy ran against Seko.

Now it's just a destination race for the last corral.

The only good thing about this remark is that it is so misinformed, and ticks me off so much, that I might successfully break myself of the LetsRun habit and finally read War and Peace.

Meb's win dubious? Let me guess you are also looking for the studio where the moon landing was filmed? The winning time was well within the average winning time on the Boston course, which ranges widely due to Boston's highly variable weather, it's undulating terrain, and the fact that there are no pacemakers. Meb had a great day, and the young and relatively inexperienced lions got caught napping. No smoke, no mirrors.

How is it that running fans are so hell bent on undermining the marathon's that are still trying to actually have competition. For the four years that Gebrselassie won Berlin, he had an exclusive contract that prevented any real challengers. I love Geb, but that sort of thing is not much fun to watch. Boston and New York, while never allow this to happen. The World Marathon Majors is going to be continually dominated by the time trials in London, Chicago, Berlin, there is no reason we can't also have championship style courses without pacemakers in Boston and New York. Paul Tergat, who set a world record in Berlin, still regards his victory in New York to be his crowning achievement.

Tom,

You're right about everything you wrote about Boston, which all make the fix unlikely. But Meb winning is also an unlikely event. You're underselling how strange it is for a 38 year old to beat a bunch of much faster runners in their primes.

Let's apply Bayes rule and try to imagine which world Meb winning is consistent with. On the one, there's everything going wrong for everyone except Meb -- two DNFs by the strongest runners, and everyone else making a rookie mistake in letting him get so far. It's not impossible, and the evidence is consistent with it. Here's another though: The year after the bombings, one or more sponsors realizes that there are literally millions of dollars on the line in advertising revenues here if an American wins, and they get word from insider channels that Meb is in the shape of his life. They contact the top 10 or 15 Kenyans and say, we'll pay each of you $100,000 if A) Meb gets ahead B) you let him win and C) you make it look believable. Once you start putting big money on the table, agent X might prefer a sure payout of 150k vs say a 1/5 chance of a 400k payout. They agree to the deal, Meb wins. Meb's win is also consistent with this story.

Adjudicating between these stories is tough. Evidence for the fixed story, to me, is how improbable that an American wins a competitive marathon and how disneyesque it seems that it happened the year after the bombing. Evidence against is how freaking hard it is to coordinate a conspiracy like this and how there's usually at least one pair of loose lips.

But this is just to say that the story that the race was fixed isn't so ridiculous that you should give up the boards. I mean maybe you should give up the boards but probably not because one guy thinks something is fishy. Sporting matches get fixed. Here's a paper Steven Levitt wrote about it in Sumo

http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/DugganLevitt2002.pdf

.

$$$$$$Gee, I don't know $$$$$$

$$$$$$Good question$$$$$$$

"You're underselling how strange it is for a 38 year old to beat a bunch of much faster runners in their primes"

Carlos Lopes won the 1984 Olympic Marathon at age 37 (he also won the World XC that year.)

Constantina Dita Tomescu won the 2008 Olympic Marathon at age 38

And if we move to the track - Bernard Lagat, Kim Collins and others. And if we move to the field, there was this guy by the name of Al Oerter.