We need to rethink how to develop distance running talent in the US. I am depressed watching US stink up the Olympics

rmickle wrote:

There are not a lot of kids with the talent and commitment needed for the US to be competitive over the the critical phase of these negative split races that require good speed to finish. The Ingebrigtsens have given a blueprint on how to do this but not many want their kids to specialized as as distance runner at 8 yo -10 yo, especially given other, more lucrative options.

There is still scant support for post-college development of our runners. So even if someone is talented and wants to train it's challenging to make a living as a runner.

Also, as much as people want to dump on Brooks Johnson, he had it right that if you don't have the speed to run the last 400m in a low 50 sec male/ low 60-sub 60 sec female then you are probably going to be off the podium.

You mean the Brooks Johnson who never coached an Olympic medalist in a distance event? Is that who you're talking about?

It’s either PEDs or genetics. I think it’s genetics. East Africans dominate the distance events. All you have to do is look at the number of caucasians that have run sub 2:05 in the marathon vs the number of Africans.

Our white athletes don’t stand a chance genetically and our black athletes play basketball, football or sprint.

Yes, there is a cultural aspect to it, but the numbers defy the odds when it comes down to the times posted in distance events.

A dangerous post here on the lily white LRC board but I think Blacks and Hispanics should be steered towards distance running instead of maligning them all the time. This country isn't tapping into it's complete potential. Remember McFarland? And it's a potential win-win situation if it keeps young kids involved and not in gangs. But no one will try it...it's too liberal.

BekeleKip wrote:

I am biased as US runner but we should have world records from the 800m to the 10000m. We should be winning gold in every single middle and long distance events. The probabilities that this can happen with a population of 332 million are too high for this not to happen. We need to strive for excellence and not just "happy to be here" BS.

We have the largest farm system in the world with highschool athletes, USATF, etc... yet we still suck at championship meets. We have the best facilities. The biggest budgets. Best social media presence to attract more athletes. The best olympic kits (as shown by multiple US athletes on Youtube). Much larger pool to pluck talent. Best everything but results in races that matter.

We just don't have the depth in the few events we have a shot.

Fool. By that logic China and India should be on the top all the time. Obvious troll.

Troll score: 3/10

The answer is import more East African immigrants.

This ^

We’ve only witnessed the 10,000m and steeple. Fisher’s 5th place was a welcome surprise and we still have the 15 and 5k to go.

Have you considered how many sport options there are in the US? And it’s not like there’s a lot of money in long distance running. A lot of these other countries do not have the wealth and resources like the U.S. so running naturally becomes a quick option. I’m hopeful with the young talents of Fisher, Hocker, Kessler, Young that we’ll be able to compete for a while.

BekeleKip wrote:

I am biased as US runner but we should have world records from the 800m to the 10000m. We should be winning gold in every single middle and long distance events. The probabilities that this can happen with a population of 332 million are too high for this not to happen. We need to strive for excellence and not just "happy to be here" BS.

We have the largest farm system in the world with highschool athletes, USATF, etc... yet we still suck at championship meets. We have the best facilities. The biggest budgets. Best social media presence to attract more athletes. The best olympic kits (as shown by multiple US athletes on Youtube). Much larger pool to pluck talent. Best everything but results in races that matter.

We just don't have the depth in the few events we have a shot.

JohnR wrote:

So far in this Olympics, American-born U.S. distance runners have been as good as European, Latin American, and Asian distance runners combined. So the question should not be "Why are Americans failures?" but instead "Why are East African distance runners so much better than the rest of the world"?

But I guess there's no fun in making posts that aren't insults.

Karissa got smoked by Nadia Battocletti at these olympics her PB coming into the games was 50 seconds slower then Karissa's.

I wouldn't throw in the towel just yet. Schweizer and Cranny are relatively new to international championship running. This is Cranny's first world event and Schweizer has only been to the WCs in 2019. Shalane did not medal in the 10k until her second OGs in 2008. Coburn also wasn't really competitive at world events until she had two WCs and an OG under her belt. Schweizer and Cranny have real talent and will continue to improve.

You can quibble all day about college athletics and training groups, but the fact of the matter is that the E. Africans are always going to dominate the rest of the world when it comes to distance running. It takes very little in terms of investment to develop top talent in Kenya and Ethiopia. You can get hundreds of runners turning up to train just in exchange for some running gear, a bowl of ugali at each meal and a cot to sleep on. For what it costs to sponsor Cranny or Schweizer, you can fund a training group of 30 runners in Ethiopia and Kenya.

And that also goes to the cultural aspects of distance running in the US v. E. Africa. In the US, dedicating yourself to be a distance runner is essentially a sacrifice. You are giving up running around going to bars with your friends and getting a good job out of college or going to grad school. For E. Africans, they can be a professional runner or farm potatoes or be a prison guard. Taking a shot at being a professional runner has no downside. Everyone and anyone who can run fast will show up in Iten or Addis to take a shot at it. There is nothing we can do about that dynamic.

high school xc coach wrote:

Also, our best coach, one of the best in the world, is ostracized and basically kicked out of the sport for saying mean things.

We had a guy that could actually produce winners and look how we treated him.

Shameful.

We need a sports dictatorship agency to evaluate youth talent and tell them and their parents what sports the youth need to focus on.

Most of the great distance talent plays soccer but not well enough to make a living at it. Some try at FB or BB, but let’s be honest potential distance runners aren’t thriving there.

Meanwhile, most of the great soccer talent is playing football or basketball, but also not well enough to make a living.

Find the almost great kids in sports and send them in the right direction.

I think we are on the upswing but there are many things that could be improved, primarily in coaching. Our improvement since the 90s is all from better coaching but there's much more work to do.

We now have multiple kids in high school running low 8:40s every year and collegians running in the 13:15 range. When we have several high schoolers mixing it up in the mid 8:20s, and several collegians in the high 12:50s, our pros will be able to punch it out with Ethiopia and Kenya. Our national federation should be figuring out how to close this gap, because taking a post-college guy from 13:15 to 12:40 is a big ask, as is getting a high school kid from 13:50 to 12:55 in college. They have to start at a higher level, which means the improvement has to come at the youth level. Our pros have great support systems and there are diminishing returns there, so a national training center, while nice, is unlikely to make a big difference. I'm sure the Nike campus in Beaverton has some of the best facilities in the world. If this made a huge difference, the Africans would all be training there. Most of them are training on dirt roads and dirt tracks in the middle of nowhere.

The talent is there, look at Hobbs Kessler. There are more Kesslers out there that need to be found, recruited, and developed. The desire is there. How many people still come to this website in their 40s and 50s because the sport grew on them? You think this passion is any less for our young athletes than it was for us? The passion has to be nurtured by good coaching because nobody wants to give the effort that track requires if they don't see results. Most runners never see a dime of income from the sport and yet we're able to turn out hundreds of thousands of kids every year who just want to see how fast they can run. Many of them stick with it as long as they keep getting faster.

The majority of our running programs at the youth level are still awful and don't develop their kids at all. A large number of our collegiate programs are abusive meat grinders. We can do much better, and when we do, we'll get better results.

decaman track club wrote:

high school xc coach wrote:

Also, our best coach, one of the best in the world, is ostracized and basically kicked out of the sport for saying mean things.

We had a guy that could actually produce winners and look how we treated him.

Shameful.

Salazar's 4 year ban had nothing to do with being mean to people and the ban effectively ended his coaching career. If he was now available to coach, only an idiot would want to have a cloud put over any success by being involved with him. Mo Farah has said he regrets having been coached by Salazar.

Sure, because Germany, Spain, France, and GB have just been killing it in the distances at the Olympics for the past 30 years. It's really hurt Japan, by comparison, as well.

SDSU Aztec wrote:

Yes, they do. The depth in HS distance running is incredible and puts to shame the level of competition that existed during my era.

I rarely see an obese kid at the schools my children attend and if there were any, it wouldn't be an athletic kid that would go out for a sport, anyway.

A friend of mine has daughters competing in youth soccer he told me the participation and competitiveness is off the charts. The participation and talent in my son's Little League puts the one I played in to shame.

You have a point here. While the U.S. leads the developed world in obesity and childhood obesity, youth sports programs today are far more organized and at a far, far higher level than when most of the population was healthy and active in the 1960s and 1970s. Those are probably related to some degree because kids aren't allowed outside without adult supervision nowadays and it's easier for the adults to put them on screens than to go outside and exercise with them. So, in some cases, they put them in sports and the mostly private programs keep their athletes only by coaching them a lot and having a lot of travel games to increase competition. The public urban high school soccer teams here aren't even remotely competitive with the suburban ones because the latter have club teams from an early age. It's excluding a lot of real talents because money and parental attention and opportunity availability shut out the city kids for the most part in soccer and distance running at least, the two sports I've observed. But those kids are really good. I'd think that our international results will get better, because this was done much earlier, in the 1980s by Bela Karolyi and disciples, in gymnastics, and the country now dominates gymnastics, with a few hiccups. We were deep enough to replace the world's best gymnast for the past seven years and still have the world all-around winner and the floor exercise gold. Women's soccer in the U.S. is almost always the best in the world for the same reason. Men's soccer faces tougher comp, but has a young generation that has beaten Mexico twice this year and risen to the top leagues in Europe, and World Cup improvement is surely on the way.

Exactly. Medaling at an event that happens once every four years or any other external outcome/reward isn't an indicator of potential fulfilled nor personal fulfillment. Not even for malcontented fanbois, as even multiple medals wouldn't be good enough.

Gentleman Savage wrote:

vaccinated wrote:

The University model is terrible for training elite talent. Clubs do a better job. So do national organizations. An academic institution is a weird vehicle for training distance runners ...

Sure, because Germany, Spain, France, and GB have just been killing it in the distances at the Olympics for the past 30 years. It's really hurt Japan, by comparison, as well.

I think your post has merit, but in the past 30 years Germany has a gold at 5000m, Spain has a gold at 1500m, and GB has had Kelly Holmes' 800m/1500m double, and Farah's utter dominance at 5000m and 10000m. As far as golds, we have only Centro.

Rather than a state of the art training center, how about a non-state of the art set of cabins on back roads in the mountains? The fewer distractions the better. Go "Once a Runner" or go Kipchoge/Cheptegei. Don't go Colorado Springs.

Another key to our international failures is the way that our college development system with its perverse incentives tends to ruin the distance talent it gets. Sprinters can race a lot without problems, not distance runners. You really need to free distance development from the incentive to win conference, which leads coaches to overrace athletes, to push their mileage and workouts up very rapidly upon entrance to college with scholarships in very small numbers and thus precious to the coaches, leading to injuries and burnout. They get them sub-4 quickly and then that's usually it, none of the kind of major development we see in other countries.