Jonathan Gault caught up with the people's champ who ran a massive nearly 6 minute pb of 2:18:40 to win the wave 1 race and qualify for the Trials in the process.
https://www.letsrun.com/news/2019/04/meet-stephen-vangampleare-the-2019-boston-marathon-open-division-champion/
The only question I have is should I change the Boston Marathon wikipedia page? It has a list of Boston Marathon open winners and it lists Lawrence Cherono as the 2019 winner. Shouldn't I Steven in there as the open winner and then put an * and put Cherono as the winner of the elite race.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_winners_of_the_Boston_Marathon
Lawrence Cherono beat less than 70 men to win the Boston Marathon, Steven VanGampleare beat more than 7k to win the open race
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Very nice story, I am happy for this guy, great race. I think in the future Boston should let any runner with a time under 2:30 start with the elites, there will still be relatively few runners there and will allow runners who have run in the low to mid 220s a chance to make a jump to the next level.
It is even more impressive that he ran 2:18 without a group to run with the last 11 miles or so. -
broken arrow wrote:
Very nice story, I am happy for this guy, great race. I think in the future Boston should let any runner with a time under 2:30 start with the elites, there will still be relatively few runners there and will allow runners who have run in the low to mid 220s a chance to make a jump to the next level.
It is even more impressive that he ran 2:18 without a group to run with the last 11 miles or so.
Sounds good, until you think of the 2’30’15 seconds guy who still has to lead out the masses and miss his chance to jump to the next level. -
So, what would have happened if Steven's actual time was FASTER than Cherono's time, but, given that he started 2 minutes behind, crossed the line after Cherono?
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Alternate Reality wrote:
So, what would have happened if Steven's actual time was FASTER than Cherono's time, but, given that he started 2 minutes behind, crossed the line after Cherono?
95 % of you would have assumed he is on PEDs or pulled a Rosie Ruiz. -
vertical j wrote:
Alternate Reality wrote:
So, what would have happened if Steven's actual time was FASTER than Cherono's time, but, given that he started 2 minutes behind, crossed the line after Cherono?
95 % of you would have assumed he is on PEDs or pulled a Rosie Ruiz.
And the other 5% of us would have to see the strava of both guys in order to make a informed judgement on the situation. -
broken arrow wrote:
Very nice story, I am happy for this guy, great race. I think in the future Boston should let any runner with a time under 2:30 start with the elites, there will still be relatively few runners there and will allow runners who have run in the low to mid 220s a chance to make a jump to the next level.
It is even more impressive that he ran 2:18 without a group to run with the last 11 miles or so.
Did you read his story? He went out slow and moved through his group. By the time he was in first he started catching the guys that were fading from the group that started 2 minutes in front of him.
It could be argued that he benefited by not getting drug out too fast by starting with the elites. -
Honestly. He sounds like an entitled jerk.
Enjoy your 15 mins dude. No one will know who you are next year. -
Creighton coach. wrote:
Honestly. He sounds like an entitled jerk.
Enjoy your 15 mins dude. No one will know who you are next year.
This. Mediocre in college (article says 39th or so as his best), now posts a solid (but not elite) time with Vaporfly's and thinks he is the big deal.
Also he is lucky that he works in Colorado Springs, one of the best training locations in the US. Super high mileage guy (all his runs are on Strava for the past 6 years or so), so he is probably pretty close to his genetic limits by now, I doubt he will even break 2:14. -
LateRunnerPhil wrote:
Creighton coach. wrote:
Honestly. He sounds like an entitled jerk.
Enjoy your 15 mins dude. No one will know who you are next year.
This. Mediocre in college (article says 39th or so as his best), now posts a solid (but not elite) time with Vaporfly's and thinks he is the big deal.
Also he is lucky that he works in Colorado Springs, one of the best training locations in the US. Super high mileage guy (all his runs are on Strava for the past 6 years or so), so he is probably pretty close to his genetic limits by now, I doubt he will even break 2:14.
You mad bro? -
fewer
Cherono beat fewer than 70 men to win the Boston Marathon.
And you write for a living? Sheesh. -
p.n. wrote:
fewer
Cherono beat fewer than 70 men to win the Boston Marathon.
And you write for a living? Sheesh.
And 55 of those 70 had form (previous results) faster than all in the next wave -
Creighton coach. wrote:
Honestly. He sounds like an entitled jerk.
No he doesn't. -
Glad to see he still had a good race, but GEEZ this guy needs to let things go. I can KINDA understand why he felt the need to continue to tweet at the B.A.A. complaining about the men’s start, but if you look at his Twitter it looks like he just uses it to rant to the B.A.A. (he did this in 2017 over his bib number.. ya he was given a high number but still wave 1 corral 1 so GET OVER IT).
I don’t understand why he needs articles written about him or it written he was then “open” winner.. what about the first non-elite female?
And no, I don’t really see why this discredits what the baa did for the elite men. He didn’t place in the money.
Being a female that just missed the elite cutoff, I understand what the B.A.A. did. Guy had a breakthrough race CONGRATS, the race didn’t take anything away from him. -
To clarify, I do understand the difference that a woman that misses the elite cutoff has people to run with in the race. We also have to deal with a bit more crowding those early miles and the guys that go out too fast and walk thru water stops 🙄.
I don’t really care much about how the baa starts the men, at all. I just don’t see a point in complaining. The highlighting that a guy won the open start (and saying nothing about the female) makes me thankful for the benefits of the pros that the baa starts the elite female before then men.
I’ll just run faster to get that elite start!! -
Get over it wrote:
I don’t understand why he needs articles written about him or it written he was then “open” winner.. what about the first non-elite female?
The BAA made a bad decision so LetsRun reached out and interviewed someone negatively affected by that decision. You're welcome to ignore it if you don't care. -
You should also write an article about the winner of the women’s open race. Why did you just talk about the male winner?
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LoneStarXC wrote:
You should also write an article about the winner of the women’s open race. Why did you just talk about the male winner?
+1. That this article was written this year—the first time we had a men’s “open” winner who wasn’t in the elite start—and wasn’t written about the women’s open winner not only this year but also in numerous past years (last year’s monsoon notwithstanding) highlights exactly the sort of implicit bias that makes it necessary for the BAA to both have the women’s elite start separate from the men’s and also the men’s elite start be separate from the wave 1 corral 1 start. The women deserve the same attention as the men, but we all-too-frequently only notice when we’re not giving them deserved attention when a man is put in the same position (and sometimes not even then). -
What a dumb subject headline.
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Not An Expert wrote:
LoneStarXC wrote:
You should also write an article about the winner of the women’s open race. Why did you just talk about the male winner?
+1. That this article was written this year—the first time we had a men’s “open” winner who wasn’t in the elite start—and wasn’t written about the women’s open winner not only this year but also in numerous past years (last year’s monsoon notwithstanding) highlights exactly the sort of implicit bias that makes it necessary for the BAA to both have the women’s elite start separate from the men’s and also the men’s elite start be separate from the wave 1 corral 1 start. The women deserve the same attention as the men, but we all-too-frequently only notice when we’re not giving them deserved attention when a man is put in the same position (and sometimes not even then).
The reason why only did Steven is mainly because he was the only one impacted by the BAA's decision to separate the elites from the masses. We've been focused on the 2 minute start controversy.
But if you want to get technical, Steven won the whole corral 1 start. If say Paula Radcliffe in her prime had started in Wave 1 and won the whole thing, we would have written about her as well.
Look, you say they deserve the same attention as the men. We 100% agree but you can't treat both sexes exactly the same if you are going to give the women a 28 minute head start. That's just reality. The only reason why we have these problems that you are complaining about is because women are biologically slower than men and people were upset it was hard to cover the women's race when everyone started together. So women were given a hard start.
Women deserve the same attention as the men? We agree. They certainly get that. They get 28 minutes of uninterrupted coverage that the men don't get at the start of the race. Once the women's race ended - there always are replays, interviews. Even on NBC gold which doesn't have commercials, that took up a bunch of time and they didn't go back to the men's race until 8 minutes were left in it. So the women get 28 minutes of uninterrupted coverage at the start and the men get 8 at the end. My god the men are being shafted.
If you are looking to be a victim, it's easy to find something to complain about.
Or I could have just saved myself a bunch of time and written what NotThatHardToUnderstand wrote.
NotThatHardToUnderstand wrote:
The BAA made a bad decision so LetsRun reached out and interviewed someone negatively affected by that decision. You're welcome to ignore it if you don't care.
PS. The one grievance that I think is somewhat legitimate that people don't complain about - is how poorly the African runners are covered. I'm serious. I heard them on NBCSN say they didn't even talk about Cherono in the broadcast until the very end. Is that true?
Maybe talk about that.
