Alysia Montaño mad that no women’s races made top 4 in LRC’s race of the decade

wejo ]

It's interesting how with Brigid Kosgei's run didn't receive a lot of support because of the shoes and what not but people are in love with Kipchoge's run which another guy has come within 2 seconds of.

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Can you describe what "What not" is?

The final 4 was decided by popular vote... every single person on planet Earth had equal voting right. The results obviously are not sexist... ?‍♂️

wejo ]

It's interesting how with Brigid Kosgei's run didn't receive a lot of support because of the shoes and what not but people are in love with Kipchoge's run which another guy has come within 2 seconds of.

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I thought about that, too. Kipchoge’s run is probably considered “greater” because of who he is... people just got excuses to see the Marathon GOAT finally take down the world record. Not that Brigid isn’t great. She just isn’t Eliud.

That’s just my thoughts on why the voting went as it did, but I agree that it is interesting.

People got *excited* that should read. Jeepers creepers, typos on LRC are scary!!!

At least LR's list had an international field. Alysia can't name anyone but (US born) American women? Geez get a clue on this inclusiveness stuff before you go getting feathers all ruffled.

It was as in "Caesar had the gaul to cross the Rubicon". Alea iacta est.

sanchobaile wrote:

Maybe y'all feel misogynistic is too strong a word here, but it's at LEAST unconsciously sexist that there are no women's races in the final four.

Masculinity is so fragile. Get over it.

(I'm a man.)

Lol sure you are.

jhand366 wrote:

wejo ]

It's interesting how with Brigid Kosgei's run didn't receive a lot of support because of the shoes and what not but people are in love with Kipchoge's run which another guy has come within 2 seconds of.

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I thought about that, too. Kipchoge’s run is probably considered “greater” because of who he is... people just got excuses to see the Marathon GOAT finally take down the world record. Not that Brigid isn’t great. She just isn’t Eliud.

That’s just my thoughts on why the voting went as it did, but I agree that it is interesting.

Race was overshadowed by Ineos AND the shoes. I do feel it could have received much more recognition but all anyone wants to talk about now is Kipchoge unfortunately lol.

Once a week I legitimately have a old friend or teammate telling me Kipchoge is the greatest runner of all time. He somehow has just skyrocketed in popularity with the more mainstream audience over the last year.

mar828 wrote:

I'm female and love this site. I think that you have to be a slightly more obsessive fan of running to come here, male or female. There may be fewer females in the "obsessive" category, for whatever reason.

A very good point. The reality is for whatever reason there are way more men that are into sports as fans than women. My buddy's wife watched football with my brother and her now husband nearly every Sunday in the fall for 4 years in college. Senior year, someone realized didn't know how the game worked. We couldn't believe it. She said, "I don't care. I just like to socialize and watch you guys go crazy."

As I said on our podcast, I was aware there is a tendency to have a male bias. So I actually counted up the # of women's races in the first round and took out a few men's races and added in a few more women's races. In the Bolt bracket, 9 of the 16 races were female.

If I could do it over again, I'd maybe have the staff change the name of the Lagat region- the one for US distance runners - to a woman's name. I'd change it to Simpson or Coburn. Well actually now that I think about it Matthew Centrowitz deserves it more than them as he won Olympic gold but whatever.

But for road races - KIpchoge is appropriate. For sprints, there is no one bigger than Bolt and Rudisha is more appropriate than Semenya. How ironic would it have been if we named a region after a woman with internal testes?

Is Montano going to tweet out her disgust today that the World Atheltics Moment of the year finalists are the same as ours?

As for having a women's only bracket, I think that is pretty sexist. I wanted them to go head to head.

Just a heads up, highlighting your coed bracket with exclusively men is as ridiculous as highlighting it with exclusively women. It's like promoting the Oscars with exclusively men and men commercials. It's confusing. *And offensive to women* !

I understand that you feel you aren't biased, it's just those 4 (maybe 5 with the hypothetical switch from Lagat to Centro) men's performances are just objectively better than the women's and therefore should be the headliners. Most women disagree with you. So maaaaaaybe just MaaaaYbe your idea of "being objective" is a little biased?

It kind of reminds me of Texans. Texans think their state is the best state. They are so sure their state is the best that they think all the other states think Texas is the best state. But really, all the other states are like: I mean, Texas pride is cool, but Texas is most certainly not the best state. (I know, why drag Texas into this fight, ammiright?)

Do you have any women on staff? I'm happy to vet some of your stuff for $20/hr. And I'm from Tennessee and am pretty moderate on deciding what is offensive.

PS: I have no problem with the results of the vote. It's a vote. That's how votes work. Just the promotion/marketing of the vote.

Phoebe

Missing:

Almaz Ayana vs Genzebe Dibaba - 5,000m Beijing 2015

Almaz Ayana vs Vivian Cheruiyot - 10,000m Rio 2016

Almaz Ayana vs Vivian Cheruiyot - 5,000m Rio 2016

Almaz Ayana vs Hellen Obiri - 5,000m London 2017

All these were better than the American steeple win in 2017 everyone keeps mentioning.

El Keniano wrote:

Missing:

All these were better than the American steeple win in 2017 everyone keeps mentioning.

That’s the great thing about opinions, it’s OK to be wrong.

rojo wrote:

[quote]mar828 wrote:

I'm female and love this site. I think that you have to be a slightly more obsessive fan of running to come here, male or female. There may be fewer females in the "obsessive" category, for whatever reason.

A very good point. The reality is for whatever reason there are way more men that are into sports as fans than women. My buddy's wife watched football with my brother and her now husband nearly every Sunday in the fall for 4 years in college. Senior year, someone realized didn't know how the game worked. We couldn't believe it. She said, "I don't care. I just like to socialize and watch you guys go crazy."

That football example has a great correlation to this contest, interest in Letsrun, interest in results and stats in Track and Field, etc... In general, men are so much more interested in understanding every nuance of a sport, how it works, times/stats, etc... Women might like a sport in a general sense, compete in it, but very very few have any interest into digging into it at a fundamental level like so many of us men do. Is that a problem? Absolutely not, just a display of the differences in a typical man and a typical woman. Women have tons of interests and skills that on average are stronger than men's interests/skills, it just so happens in this case that men's performances and interest will dominate.

This contest's results are a function both of the interest overall of men in sports, men having stronger opinions on sport, and of course, the absolute superiority of elite men in sport. Women do amazing things in track/road running and I voted for several women's performances in the first 3 rounds or so. But once you get the very top of the performance scale, it's no surprise that men's performances took the Final Four spots.

Feel4Her wrote:

Fact of the matter is women aren’t as entertaining to watch in sports. Just look at the WNBA v NBA or the WNFL v NFL or WMLB v MLB or or or or.

I’m trying to think of a really exciting women’s race. Had Montaño beat Semenya then yeah I’d say it would have been super exciting, but then again there would be a biological man in the race so same problem exists.

In the last few years, i found myself paying much more attention to women’s track than men’s. It’s more entertaining, more grit, less theatrics. I find myself respecting them more.

Same with women’s tennis and women’s soccer. Prefer them FAR more than their men’s counterparts.

However baseball and basketball, idk, but I only watch men’s.

As suggested on Twitter, bring her on the podcast, have her involved with a few things around the website. Get a female involved here. It wouldn't be to have a token female, this female will certainly add to your website in a positive way. Have some articles written from a female perspective. This is the way.

El Keniano wrote:

Missing:

Almaz Ayana vs Genzebe Dibaba - 5,000m Beijing 2015

Almaz Ayana vs Vivian Cheruiyot - 10,000m Rio 2016

Almaz Ayana vs Vivian Cheruiyot - 5,000m Rio 2016

Almaz Ayana vs Hellen Obiri - 5,000m London 2017

All these were better than the American steeple win in 2017 everyone keeps mentioning.

I think Alyisa tried to point out the Ayana 10,000m race was missing as well in a tweet. It was not. It was a #6 seed (which means we ranked it at the 6th best long distance international track race of the decade) and it lost to the #11 seed (Jager's steeple fall) in the 1st round.

I think if anything people could criticize our format. We didn't got with the 64 best races. We did 4 regions. So 16 best US races, 16 best marathons, 16 best sprint races, and 16 best long distance track races. That isn't a lot of races to include. I still can't believe Brazier's American record 800 World Championship win didn't make it. But was it one of the 16 best international distance races? I get how it and Simpson's world championship win weren't included.

And then a few say it was sexist not to name a region after a woman. I understand that argument but I also see how it was logical. I saw the regions names and was confused "Why aren't the regions named after the #1 seeds." which would have been Wanjiru, Solinsky, Van Nierkirk, and Rudisha I think. I think Jon said "I named them after the most prominent athlete in each region." So Bolt replaced Van Niekerk and Kipchoge replaced Wanjiru. Seemed logical and that was it. Was it unbiased sexism? I have no idea. Should I really spend a lot of time worrying about this? I don't this.

The reason more men's races won out is people thought they were more interesting and voted for them. Maybe because more men come to this site or men are more interested in sports, but I really don't think it was because 2 regions weren't named after women. Maybe an oversight by us, but the results I think would have been the same as this site is mostly visited by men. Beyond the initial blurb on the homepage where someone would have to read the fine print and see the regions were all men and then make the assumption it was only men's races, it was clear to anyone this was men's and women's races. We tweeted out matchups that showed clearly women's races were involved.

More people voted for men's races, I don't see it as big deal. Carry on everyone.

I think it is a valid point we might want to be conscious if we're being inclusive in our headlines, etc but is it sexist not to include a women? I don't think so. Solinsky got plenty of votes for his race and he was snubbed as a region name despite being the #1 seed.

I was thinking of reaching out to her.

My main beef is she labels something was with great intentions, that put men’s and women’s running as one category as misogynistic, or you could say she labeled the site and people here as misogynistic. Much different message she would be sending is perhaps she said there is unconscious bias but instead she used the word misogyny which implies the majority of us are bad people.

ThIs was an end of decade poll with great intentions and it’s labeled as misogynistic. Think of all the real word misogyny out there and bigger problems in the world and yet that is what we are focusing on?

Just not an inclusive message and not likely to win people over when they receive the message they are bad for voting in an innocent poll. The vast majority of people on here are good people, wanting a better world. I think this shows some of the issue with social media is that it caters to the extreme and we can get a much more negative picture of everything out there.

Are you talking about me?

I didn't do those things. So I'm confused.

Wejo,

You've only got to read thru the comments on this thread to see a vindication of her statement. The fact that some of those comments haven't been deleted by the staff is simply astonishing.