Mexican distance running was pretty good in the early 90's. What happened

And of course here's the guy who can address any topic with generalizations gathered from Fox News.

Solares will rule the 1500/full mile in North America in a few years.

Tex-Mex wrote:

Solares will rule the 1500/full mile in North America in a few years.

Between Solares, Manzano and German, thats a lot of firepower of Mexican heritage.

Here is a brief synopsis of what actually led to the demise of Mexican prominence in road racing and marathoning. The same phenomenon that led to the end of the competitive American professional road racer also affected the Mexicans. There was a time prior to 1992 when both Americans and Mexicans could be consistently successful on the American roads, but following the 1992 World Cross Country Championships, which were in Boston that year, nothing has been the same. I believe that Arturo Barrios was a huge inspiration to a number of Mexicans along with Rodolfo and Jose Gomez. There were races in El Paso, Phoenix, and Florida that were amongst the best in the world at that time and they were easily accessible to the Mexicans, but once the Kenyans started coming in large numbers and staying here in Boulder, Albuquerque, Flagstaff, and other assorted locations, they monopolized the prize money and I think this strongly discouraged the Mexicans, along with the next generation of potential American professional road racers. You couple this with Barrios becoming an American citizen and the influx of Africans into the Mexican and Central American road races, a lot of incentive was lost. The great Mexicans like Marcus Barreto, German Silva, Dionicio Ceron, Amando Quintanilla, Salvador Garcia, etc. unfortunately are stars of the past. Another factor was the Polish coach Kepcka who was the Mexican National Coach may have retired leaving a big void in coaching knowledge. Another key factor that bolstered Mexican running was the number of foreigners that would go to train at the Desierto de los Leones (Desert of the Lions) near Mexico City. You don't hear about world class runners going to train there anymore. This is just my take on the demise of Mexican running. It may or may not be completely correct.

Back in the late 80's I was speaking to a Mexican coach who was traveling with some top runners in to run a marathon and, being a college coach, I asked him about college scholarship prospects. His response was more or less there aren't (m)any. He said that there were a small number of educated runners, but the majority of those who ran were not academic types.

One of the things that motivates a lot of runners is a college scholarship. But this didn't seem to apply to many of the young Mexican runners. That is a factor that also must hurt the development of talent there.