Shame on the Nike Oregon Project: Team members Donavan Brazier and Craig Engels go AWOL instead of representing Team USA

It's Pan Am games. Who cares.

They are professional athletes. Their first consideration is what is in their financial best interest. It is how they make a living. There simply is a bigger payday at the Worlds.

How can anyone who knows just a little about track and field believe that these two or anybody at their level would go to Peru? Somebody at the administrative level should anticipate this outcome and have alternates ready, press ODP to withdraw...not that hard

olyrun wrote:

They are professional athletes. Their first consideration is what is in their financial best interest. It is how they make a living. There simply is a bigger payday at the Worlds.

True, no pay at all for Pan Ams

bloviating wrote:

How can anyone who knows just a little about track and field believe that these two or anybody at their level would go to Peru? Somebody at the administrative level should anticipate this outcome and have alternates ready, press ODP to withdraw...not that hard

We talked about this on the weekly call.

1) This year is unique as Pan Am team had to be selected BEFORE USAs.

2) However, USATF should put in some sort of penalty if you accept a national team spot and then do not compete without an injury as you are depriving another athlete from competing.

At the very least USATF could have advised athletes, "they is a unique year if you tell us you're competing at Pan Ams, we expect you to compete even if you make the Worlds team."

3) If #2 is done, there is no need from shaming, athletes won't accept team spots and then pull out.

Brazier and Engels being NOP athletes presumably knew they would make the Worlds team or had a good shot. Thus, I personally feel they shouldn't have told USATF they'd go to Pan Ams and then not go. They clearly had the right to do so and USATF is focused on medals in Tokyo so they won't care, but other athletes get deprived of a national team spot because of this so situations like this need to be avoided.

Do we have a comprehensive list of how many athletes did this?

Translation of thread: Letsrun is mad that Mexico did better in the distance events than the US.

I agree with you. It's incredibly selfish of them to accept the spot and no-show. There's probably someone a few spots below who may never make a worlds or olympic team who would have loved an opportunity. These two selfish dopes robbed those people of a great opportunity.

Lopez Lomong did this at USAs, declaring to run the 1500 and then scratching at the meet.

So did a few others.

Deprived the next guy on the list the opportunity to compete

I don't watch the Pan Ams because it's a nothing burger. Always has been. I will watch as much of the World Championships as possible. I didn't tune in at all for the Pan Ams.

Professional athletes are just that - professional. In many other countries, athletes are financially supported by the state. In the United States, athletes foot the bill, with some assistance from the USATF and USOC. How much do sponsors contractually pay athletes for a Pan Am medal versus a World Championship medal? I would hazard a guess that a World Championship medal pays a bit more. Maybe a sponsor would be more incline to renew a contract for a WC medal versus a PA medal. Just maybe this new contract would see a pay raise and better incentives.

Once the athlete is competitive enough to be selected to represent the United States, training is at the very highest level. One wrong step and your running career is over. Just ask Chris Solinsky. Chris accidentally tripped over his dog and he ripped his muscle off his butt. My point is that truly elite track athletes must be strategic in the races they choose to compete. I feel for Nijel Amos who pulled his hamstring a few weeks ago at the London diamond league meet. At the time, he had just 70 days to recover to compete at the World Championships. Before this injury, he appeared to be the gold medal favorite, posting an eye-popping time of 1:41.89 in Monaco the week prior. Now, I highly doubt that he will be fit enough to race in the final.

For some athletes, the Pan Ams will interfere with their training for the World Championships. Elite athletes are laser focused for the World Champs and want desperately to peak for it. The World Champs is no diamond league race. Not only do track athletes need to be in peak performance, but must also be strong enough to race the rounds.

Some athletes could possibly medal in both the Pan Ams and World Champs. But, everyone is different. Some athletes can't physically handle three or four championships (with rounds) over one season. Some athletes, like Dathan Ritzenhein get injury quite frequently. And some great athletes, like Ryan Hall, are forced to retire early, while other runners, like Haile Gebrselassie, seem to never retire. Elite athletes need to be smart and pick their poison. Many, many athletes have a short shelf life before they retire for that 9-5 job. Stop being a backseat driver.

Uh, ever been to Peru?

Your "analysis" is why the sport is on life support. Fans want to see the athletes perform, not just at the major meets.

Worlds and the Olympics are the goal. Why not put them high up on the priority list?

I think USA champs feels like a JV meet from an fan/entertainment perspective. I enjoy Payton Jordan and Diamond league meets more than USA's......

I think everyone on this board would skip Pan Ams if they were athletes and had a chance to do well at the World Championships like Brazier and Engels. Especially after having recently prepared for the USA champs meet. It doesn't make sense to race this meet physiologically, which is really important at the elite level. Weren't guys talking about how Gebriwet was racing too hard too much before worlds - is this much different?

Salazar knows what he's doing and in the end it's USA athletes thath we want doign well at teh WC's and Olympics, not JV meets. It sucks, but peaking in top form at WC's is critical

Perhaps they could go and run it like a workout, but that seems more disrespectful than declining to compete. It isn't the priority and I totally get it. We used to skip lame meets when we competed in high school to save our legs.

2/10 troll by Rojo trying to stir up traffic in a dead time.

Also, Nigel Amos faked his injury at London as he was seen pulling a weight sled on Instagram 4 days later

wow21 wrote:

rojo wrote:

[quote]rare wrote:

In actuality, they should hold this meet in off WC year and make it like our Commonwealth Games. It could be really big.

Yeah, that seems like an obvious thing to do -- why isn't it done that way?

Pan Am Games are more than just track and field/athletics. Also Rojo referring to our Commonwealth Games?

Worlds is almost two months away. This doesn't seem like a legitimate excuse to me.

Seems like you enjoy picking on NOP, because there are plenty of other US champions that didn’t go who aren’t from NOP (or aren’t Nike athletes). I don’t see you ripping on Shelby Houhihan, Emma Coburn, Ajee Wilson, Paul Chelimo etc for not going. Plus, the best in the US barely ever show up to Pan Ams. This meet is a tier below the level of Brazier, etc. Most of the athletes (not saying all) that ran Pan Ams probably wouldn’t make a global final.

T&F Nut wrote:

Your "analysis" is why the sport is on life support. Fans want to see the athletes perform, not just at the major meets.

The sport is not on life support. Get a gripe on reality.

Of course it is. Someone might step on a dog or eat some bad ceviche in Lima, game over man.

GrammerPolice wrote:

Shame on you for not knowing how to spell peoples names

Shame on you for writing "peoples" in stead of "people's"

If you were the REAL grammar police, you would have known that.