Why is it that there is only one Galen Rupp in the US ?

I'm saying there are about 35 million men in the US aged 18 to 35. How many of those men have actually given distance running an honest try? A few million? It should be patently obvious there are scores of perfectly built runners among the 30+ million able bodied men in the US that just never ran.

Galen Rupp is really good. He is among the best we've ever had.

But don't get fooled into thinking running is anything like basketball or football where you have massive rates of participation. It's just not a widely popular sport that consistently attracts the best. There are all sorts of talented skinny kids that do soccer or swimming or tennis or whatever instead of running. Rupp was actually very lucky to get into running. It was pure luck that his freshman HS soccer coach happened to know Alberto Salazar. He easily could have fallen through the cracks.

Agree^^^drives me crazy to think of all the people out there are gifted but circumstances of their life will never be able to try running.

Grant Fisher will surpass Rupp. He recently took down Rupp’s NCAA American indoor 3k record.

With the right training and focus on his running once out of Stanford, Fisher will be it.

Yeah but wrote:

The thing is that being Galen is not that easy. Talent is important but so is the willingness to jump when Alberto says, including accepting the unethical side of Alberto. It was the perfect storm of home grown talent, smart training and shady shenanigans.

You have some proof of shady shenanigans ??

Alberto was a great runner in his day and probably could still be you.

He is the best coach the U.S. has.

So please STFU.

The question should be: where are all of the Bill Rodgers's, Dick Beardsley's and Phil Coppess's

Remember, Salazar once held the AR in the 5k, 10k and the Marathon in the early 80s and those times were close to the best in the World at the time. Salazar had Americans that were in the conversation with him. My view is that Rupp is Salazar-ish decades later but did not burn out and was able to stay relevant with Africans. The Africans kept progressing and the Western born runners did not. Who is the last fast American marathoner that came out of nowhere?

Pretzel Man wrote:

Yeah but wrote:

The thing is that being Galen is not that easy. Talent is important but so is the willingness to jump when Alberto says, including accepting the unethical side of Alberto. It was the perfect storm of home grown talent, smart training and shady shenanigans.

You have some proof of shady shenanigans ??

Alberto was a great runner in his day and probably could still be you.

He is the best coach the U.S. has.

So please STFU.

He is a good coach but I doubt he is beating many folks running this days . Saw him running in Central Park on the day of the Milrose Games a couple years ago . All that pounding has caught up to him .

Track has the highest rate of participation of any sport in the US.

"Rate of participation" has nothing to do with talent. It's not what most the talented kids are doing. Literally anyone can do track. There are no cuts. If you are insinuating that because it has the greatest participation, it is the most popular, your head is in the sand. It's not the most popular sport and it's not even close.

75 boys showed up for my high school's freshman basketball team tryouts when I was in HS. only 12 made it. So Participation in Basketball at my school was very low...obviously not because there wasn't interest. Because only 12 were allowed on the team. Our track team ended up having 30 freshman boys. Most of them had no talent at all.

Probably because Galen is not a common name. LOL

wqqqqqqqq wrote:

Asking the wrong question. Why is it that there is only one Alberto Salazar? If Alberto lived somewhere else, would he really have found no one of similar physical and psychological talent? Is it that big of a coincidence? Or is it more likely that talent like that mostly goes untapped in the US? I hope this isn't considered a slur on Galen, he's the one that actually went out there and DID IT, but:

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Not really. If there was something special about salad bar he would have a stable of Rupps. If there is nothing special about Rupp, it should be easy for salads to replicate success with a whole bunch of athletes.

There’s a lot of reasons but the biggest is because the youth, high school, and college “systems” suck in America.

God hates the US.

Same reason there is only one Lance Armstrong.

Internetsherlock wrote:

US has a fairly high population.

What does that tell you ?

track and field is behind football, basketball, swimming, baseball, etc in the United States

Why is it that there is only one Evan Jager in the US?

ric flair woooooooo wrote:

Internetsherlock wrote:

US has a fairly high population.

What does that tell you ?

track and field is behind football, basketball, swimming, baseball, etc in the United States

None of those sports were an option for Rupp. He would be destroyed had he tried to play football. His only chance in basketball would have been to be a guard and it's likely he wouldn't had the first step quickness to do so. Swimming is not a more popular sport than T&F and its limited to kids that started competing long before HS. Rupp absolutely does not have a good body for swimming. Rupp would have had minimal physical strength for baseball and might, or might not, have had a good throwing arm or coordination. It would have been a long shot for him to make the HS team.

Your premise is that kids talented in running choose to not participate in HS sports at all. Can you name any kids with Rupp's talent that sat out sports in HS? Why do you think running is such a repulsive sport? I ran in HS - did you?

I would say because those who have the talent do not have the combination of incentive and work ethic to cache out on the talent. Also because talent is undermined by our lifestyle - the parents that might have been able to pass a running gene have ruined the expression of that gene with their lifestyle even before the child is born, or perhaps once the child is born, the genes become impossible to realize again due to lifestyle reasons. Also, we are simply just not having the children. There are things we can do to fix it:

- Get married, and have children

- Be committed to a healthy diet and exercise, and pass on those values to the children via example and encouragement.

- Have a system when parents can provide for their children while being able to spend enough time with them and invest into their development.

- Know how to stay happily married when things are rough. Divorce of the parents often will thwart the development of children's talents.

- Teach the children to be healthy achievers who can tolerate failure while dreaming and working towards success rather than "everyone is a winner". This is best taught in the family.

- Have a system that rewards success in distance running enough so that those with talent do not have to live in poverty to achieve success in the sport, and where running is viewed as a sport you do throughout your life rather than just a tool to impress peers (high school), or get a college scholarship.

If Galen hadn't been playing for a soccer team coached by Alberto's friend, we might have zero Galen Rupp's right now.

There are undiscovered Galen Rupp's around working their nine to five jobs telling people about their glory days as a D2 soccer player.

Who knows wrote:

If Galen hadn't been playing for a soccer team coached by Alberto's friend, we might have zero Galen Rupp's right now.

There are undiscovered Galen Rupp's around working their nine to five jobs telling people about their glory days as a D2 soccer player.

Do you know if he was a good soccer player? A lot of runners played other sports before they discovered their talent for running. And other than the kid's leagues, soccer is not a popular sport. I'm a big sports fan, but I can't name one professional player or team in the U.S.