Allie O speaks out against ESPN's commentating

Kid to kids wrote:

I just showed my 16 year old daughter thinking kids can always guess kids. She said 14. She didnt even realize Boise was a college.

Is your daughter a professional sportscaster?

the question isn't whether she looks young for her age, it's about the professionalism of the comments ESPN made about it.

one question wrote:

Kid to kids wrote:

I just showed my 16 year old daughter thinking kids can always guess kids. She said 14. She didnt even realize Boise was a college.

Is your daughter a professional sportscaster?

the question isn't whether she looks young for her age, it's about the professionalism of the comments ESPN made about it.

To build off this, the comment was made during NCAAs. To say that about a college student, who clearly is over 18 if they're competing, is incredibly unprofessional. That's Allie's point. I've said this already, but there was another thread with people bashing ESPN's broadcast and commentating. Yet somehow the people of LetsRun are trying to defend this.

let us be honest she does look little wrote:

Who can blame ESPN?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DB42H7kXUAEG0bS.jpghttps://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTxoaCZ_6WkUMu7zmZQwHfTw2F955nPeoqKveRgOc5qaoRz1WPkyghttps://themw.com/images/2017/10/1/Allie_Ostrander_CROPPED_FOR_WEBSITE.jpg

Ask random people who don't know who she is to guess her age.

Imagine that, compared to Huddle and Houlihan, she looks younger than her older competitors.

I think she is roughly the same height as Kelati.

It's unfortunate the idiot commentators can't talk about her winning that Mt Marathon event in Alaska.

Totally disagree. Boise State isn't popular.

Hobby Yogging wrote:

one question wrote:

Is your daughter a professional sportscaster?

the question isn't whether she looks young for her age, it's about the professionalism of the comments ESPN made about it.

To build off this, the comment was made during NCAAs. To say that about a college student, who clearly is over 18 if they're competing, is incredibly unprofessional. That's Allie's point. I've said this already, but there was another thread with people bashing ESPN's broadcast and commentating. Yet somehow the people of LetsRun are trying to defend this.

Someone looks like they are around 13-14 years old. She is almost a decade older than that. We are supposed ignore this? If someone is seven foot tall walks into a room, you're not going to mention it to your friend?

what is your problem? wrote:

Someone looks like they are around 13-14 years old. She is almost a decade older than that. We are supposed ignore this? If someone is seven foot tall walks into a room, you're not going to mention it to your friend?

difference between mentioning and being mean or over-the-top about it. i remember them saying that she looked like she played with barbies last year -- it's just an unnecessary and over-the-top comment.

especially when you consider that they only show ~5 minutes of a 9-minute steeple race, the comms need to focus on the things that actually matter -- namely, race tactics, with the color commentary being history of performance or a human-interest story involving the runners if it exists. anything else is a waste of time, there's just too much going on at NCAAs to dally around on comms yet that's all they seem to do.

mentioning her size might be situationally relevant to explain if she weaves through traffic easily, for example, but if that's all you can say during a 3000m race, you shouldn't be commentating it.

what is your problem? wrote:

Hobby Yogging wrote:

To build off this, the comment was made during NCAAs. To say that about a college student, who clearly is over 18 if they're competing, is incredibly unprofessional. That's Allie's point. I've said this already, but there was another thread with people bashing ESPN's broadcast and commentating. Yet somehow the people of LetsRun are trying to defend this.

Someone looks like they are around 13-14 years old. She is almost a decade older than that. We are supposed ignore this? If someone is seven foot tall walks into a room, you're not going to mention it to your friend?

Right, because making a comment to your friend is the same as broadcasting it to hundreds of thousands of people as part of your paid professional job.

As a professional broadcaster, you probably shouldn't be saying things on air that you wouldn't be comfortable saying right to their face. Would you feel comfortable walking over to the seven-footer you don't know and start making weird condescending comments about how tall he was? I mean you might, but that doesn't mean it's not rude and out of place.

exactly. It's the difference between mentioning where someone was born and saying 'They probably just crawled out of a mud hut last year.' One is potentially informative for the audience, one is just disgusting. The Barbies comment was the latter.

what is your problem? wrote:

Hobby Yogging wrote:

To build off this, the comment was made during NCAAs. To say that about a college student, who clearly is over 18 if they're competing, is incredibly unprofessional. That's Allie's point. I've said this already, but there was another thread with people bashing ESPN's broadcast and commentating. Yet somehow the people of LetsRun are trying to defend this.

Someone looks like they are around 13-14 years old. She is almost a decade older than that. We are supposed ignore this? If someone is seven foot tall walks into a room, you're not going to mention it to your friend?

Did you know that some people look a lot younger than they actually are? Crazy isn't it. Doesn't mean it's right to comment about it on live television. To say she looks like she still plays with barbies is insulting to her given that she is an adult and a college student.

I can only hope that we can find ways to talk honestly — even in the media, and even on the internet? — without unofficial gag rules.

For whatever reason, i keep thinking of the british commentators of the olympics, (no idea what year i was watching clips from, but i think late 70s or early 80s), where the announcers kept up this polite chitchat about the “talented young ladies” from the Eastern Bloc countries.

I mean, the women were taking so many anabolic steroids in that era (shotputters and such) that they could’ve lifted a honda overhead, while shaving their five o´clock shadow.

But the commentators kept up this delightful commentary about, Where DO they keep getting such talented ladies?

When there are athletes nowadays that have walked that fine line of being extraordinarily thin at times — which is a difficult thing to do, by the way, for male or female — i hope it can be part of the dialogue, both about them and including them.

I always want to talk about things like that.

Just, let’s get on with it, and say, “wow, she’s competed at excruciatingly thin weights before, but at this meet, she looks a little more nourished, and i wonder if that’s intentional”.

Making it all taboo just goes nowhere!

I’m guessing this was an attempt to get likes on a post.

Wasn’t there a (male) bank robber called baby face. Seriously who cares. We all know the commentators are crappy. Let it go and don’t get hurt over every little thing.

This, especially the last sentence is so true.

Guy here - I grew late. Voice did not change until a month before my 17th birthday, and at 16 I looked 12-14, at 21, I could pass as a 16 year old.

Have also followed AllieO's career for awhile. Barbie comments were not appropriate. Mentioning that she's small for a college steepler is fine. Speculating on any EDs is not cool and not appropriate. In fact, watching that race, she's not as slight as a couple years ago. Looking healthy/fit and running fast and most of the discussion should be focused on those aspects, not the other stuff.

Some letsrunners are so stupid - I think we should have more discussion of that! Would love to see the IQ score and Asperger's spectrum rating from some of you, and we can publish it on the web for the rest of us to discuss at length for days at a time.

TheGoldenMonkey wrote:

Just, let’s get on with it, and say, “wow, she’s competed at excruciatingly thin weights before, but at this meet, she looks a little more nourished, and i wonder if that’s intentional”.

yes, if the commentators said anything even remotely that intelligent, it would have been OK. the problem is almost nothing they say connects back to the race or the sport, and the fact that they're mean or stereotypical is only icing on the cake of irrelevancy. i don't think it's a gag so much as people being upset that the commentators are not talking about the sport.

If you're obsessing about being able to get all frothy about a woman looking young, the ONLY think you should be discussing is your own issues with a therapist.

People creepin' me out here

I would just like to see her bone density scores.

1) “Baby Faced Assassin” would make a good indie band name. However, until she kills someone during the steeple with her cleats then we should probably stop.

2) She does look young. Our college interns at the office all guess wrong when I asked to guess an age.

3) I’ve always thought someone’s height and weight was a weird thing in sports, like you’re looking at buying a prize race horse. And especially with women.

4) ESPN sucks at every event they cover.

no mo baby face wrote:

Hobby Yogging wrote:

It's talked about more in those sports because each position has "standards" for height and weight.

There is probably just as much correlation of height and weight to performance in running as in basketball and football. When Solinsky stepped on the track you better bet the commentators were talking about it.

No, there is not as much correlation between height in running and height in basketball. That is ridiculous.

The real problem is how little ESPN commentators know about the sport. It's no wonder they have to resort to talking about pointless things, because they haven't followed the sport at all and they need to come up with stuff to say. NBC is just as bad, unless it is NBC gold which often has Steve Cram and Tim Hutchings.

Wish we could have Ryan Fenton, Chris Chavez, Jon Gault, or Gordon Mack and Lincoln Shyrack do the commentating. People who have followed the sport for years and know everything about it. Sometimes even professional athletes don't make good commentators because they don't fully follow the sport, just their particular event(s).