Mr. Reasonable speaks up wrote:
Absolutely no one in the stands; stadium more than half empty; crazy (dangerous) weather conditions for a marathon that was held on the most boring course ever; and some very suspect (PED) performances. Nice job, IAAF!
Oh yeah, the NBC coverage sucked too, but that's old news.
How to ruin the sport of T&F . . . . .
Yo momma sucked!
I did like the men's high jump. Fun to watch.
Well, the stands were really empty.
Someone said that stands were empty in Iowa as well for US Champs. So what? Shame on the IAAF and the USATF both! Put these events in cities where people will come to watch!
Epic performances? There were some super fast times, but seriously, what % of the athletes are doped to the gills?
Please don't say that Hassan is clean! No f&^% way.
The marathon course was *boring* ! ! !
And did 40% of the female field drop out? Yeah, that's fun to watch.
Yes, the indoor stadium was air conditioned; how energy-inefficient was that?
I know there are a ton of climate-change deniers on these boards; that's the level of stupidity that is going to destroy the planet as we know it.
Peace.
agreed 100% wrote:
Yes, very boring to see fast times. Please bring Mo Farah back so I can watch more 27:40 10k races!
Faulting Mo for being too good? His competition didn't bring it him. Admittedly because they weren't capable of it, but still. When you know you can't break someone, then there is no incentive to go fast. You'll blow yourself up and lose your chance at a minor place.
Thus, everyone did sit and kick. No more Mo, everyone feels they can win and thus tries some different tactics to deal with 'lesser' kickers.
I thought it was amusing how the longer distances like the 10,000 and 5,000 received more crowd support than usual. And Bashmin's high jump was also a nice change for the crowd support
Mr. Reasonable speaks up wrote:
Absolutely no one in the stands; stadium more than half empty; crazy (dangerous) weather conditions for a marathon that was held on the most boring course ever; and some very suspect (PED) performances. Nice job, IAAF!
Oh yeah, the NBC coverage sucked too, but that's old news.
How to ruin the sport of T&F . . . . .
Okay - I know I am feeding the troll but let's look at these criticisms one by one taking the perspective of someone who is watching the meet not participating (a completely different thing)
1) Attendance: Yup definitely an issue up till Thursday then it was packed. However, since most people (esp on this msg board) will not attend in person don't really see how this impacts the meet especially since 99% of all track meets are far less attended than this one. That said the graphics and atmosphere they created was really pretty cool for those that did attend and the noise level certainly was supposedly really very good in the last 4 days.
2) Heat for Marathons: Not good for the runners but great for the drama - you never knew if someone was about to blow up or not. And since when does anyone watch a marathon for the interesting course?
3) PEDs: As someone mentioned this has been an major issue since the first one in 1983. And If it bothers you that much, you have not liked at track meet since about 1960. You should also never watch a NFL or College football game either. Part of the problem of the improved (though certainly not perfect) testing is that more people get caught which raises more doubts - that's always a risk over limited testing (like say the aforementioned Football - in which there is way more money and way higher incentive to cheat but nobody cares except on the odd occasion when your fantasy pick gets a 3 game suspension) . I believe there are fewer people cheating and they are cheating "less" in T&F then probably anytime before the rise of state sponsored doping in the old GDR and USSR (which gave rise to more cheating in the good ol' USA) - primarily because testing is better (though so is cheating), the cost of getting caught is higher, and with improved training techniques (altitude, nutrition, etc etc) lowering the absolute benefit of cheating - the economics is less skewed towards cheating than anytime in the last 40 or so years.
Considering you can only play the cards you are dealt, and once the IAAF chose Doha (which I disagreed with), they had to do the best with what was there and I thought they played those cards about as well as you can. And considering all the scintillating performances on the track and in the field - if even 40% of those were PED related - that left 60% that were not and that's still a pretty good meet.
So blame the IAAF for choosing Doha - fine , you were never going to like the meet anyway - but beyond that the meet had a whole lot more good than bad.
Oh and you are right NBC is crap.
The choice of Doha screams corruption. 97F and 75% humidity many days this time of year, an athletic competition? Absurd. Between the obvious corruption that would make that happen, plus the dopers running with their hair on fire, just the image of a world gone mad.
May the oil money run out soon for the desert nomads...
The first few days of the meet seemed to point to the end of TandF as we knew it. Not sure what the exact turning point was but it got better and better and ended up as a great meet. Kudos to the light shows and kudos to the great performances.
It was also great not having to see males in female events.
Alabama BSS wrote:
The first few days of the meet seemed to point to the end of TandF as we knew it. Not sure what the exact turning point was but it got better and better and ended up as a great meet. Kudos to the light shows and kudos to the great performances.
It was also great not having to see males in female events.
agree-it was better as the meet went on and my expectations were not high to start with but it was pretty good considering!
Agreed. It was an exciting meeting.
Mr. Reasonable speaks up wrote:
Absolutely no one in the stands; stadium more than half empty; crazy (dangerous) weather conditions for a marathon that was held on the most boring course ever; and some very suspect (PED) performances. Nice job, IAAF!
Oh yeah, the NBC coverage sucked too, but that's old news.
How to ruin the sport of T&F . . . . .
Yup, and I say good! No one in the stands and poor viewership. The less that watch this phony shytshow the better.
The meet itself was fine. They put on a fun meet with the exception of the marathon. But it's just a horrible location for a worldwide sporting event. No one in the stands. No one wants to go to a place where women are treated like crap and you can only drink in a handful of places. The World cup will be an epic disaster since there is only one air conditioned stadium.
you mean DOPE-ha.
Whiner and complainer wrote:
I must have watched an entirely different meet than you did.
Me too. Loved every minute of it.
me too. Loved every minute of not watching it.
Distance running has had a doping problem since the early 70s, but it reached farcical proportions in Doha. It's at the point that I hardly watch anymore, but I was at the gym on the treadmill when the men's 1500 came on. Talk about the theatre of the absurd. It was just so unrealistic, like something you'd see in a movie where the director doesn't know anything about the subject he's filming.
I enjoyed nearly all of it. The empty stands were disappointing but not unexpected.
Thinking about who's doped and who's not is like worrying about who's a sinner in your everyday life. Assume it's everyone and carry on. It's not your job to judge them.
I liked watching the competitions in spite of the obvious drug influences.
Beating a dead horse, I DVRed most everything and fast forwarded through everything but the actual competitions. This amounted to about 10 minutes for every hour of coverage. I do not care to watch WWF introductions, Rai Benjamin and Michael Norman make a baloney sandwich, or Allison Felix talk about how her child spits up. The common fan they are trying to attract IS NOT WATCHING.
My opinion is T&F coverage went bad years ago when they decided to follow the NBA model of hyping 8-10 athletes be it hell or high water instead of covering each event objectively and let it play out establishing the current drama and stars.
Only T&F fans are watching so why not talk about PEDs when a two-time violator is competing or when someone missed time due to a suspension? Those that they are afraid to turn off ARE NOT WATCHING.
Even though demographic ratings should steer them otherwise, we are stuck with the same ole sugar coated rambling of talking heads and ramming a handful of pre-determined stars down our throats.
The competition itself did not suck in context of what T&F is in 2019, but it is getting farther and farther from clean, solid competition and harder and harder to embrace.
i was just about to start a thread about why i thought Doha was great :
many fast times and records, really fast finals (Lomong was 7th with 27:04)
People really went after it in the finals unlike many other meets. I mean, 3:29 in the final when front-running...brave
Sydney ran a 48 split and Noah lyles helped get an American record in the 4x100 just today. Kerley led off in 43.mid
kmaclam wrote:
Whiner and complainer wrote:
I must have watched an entirely different meet than you did.
Me too. Loved every minute of it.
Same here, my only complaint was having to listen to Jenny Meadows commentating on Eurosport.
Hopefully next time they'll get someone who talks like an adult as she was excruciatingly painful to listen to.
We can discuss any topic here on this open forum called LetsHate. I might say, "I think xxx was the greatest." In no time, there will be a response, "I think xxx was the worst."
It applies to every single subject -- politics, religion, world championships TV coverage, weather's effect in Doha, so-and-so's a doper, etc.
It just doesn't matter what the subject is on this forum!
Certs is a breath mint. NO! It's a candy! Trump for Prez. NO! Trump for Prison! NBC's coverage sucked. NO! It was superb! The brutal Doha weather destroyed the World Championships. NO! Only the marathons were impacted in a negative way! Centro and Engels are clean. NO! They're dopers because they are/were associated with AlSal and/or NOP! Etc.
My high school physics teacher used to say, "Pigs is pigs." On this forum, that is debatable, with spite.