Discussion of Week: No Bowerman TC athletes will be at Diamond League finals; what can sport do to make athletes compete more?

Terrebonne wrote:Not only do I dislike the limited running, but I also really dislike when the pace is so slow (Olympics marathon in China, if I recall correctly) that they are running MY pace which means I could be running with the lead Olympic group. That is truly and utterly ridiculous, and I usually stop watching. Not only does having more engaging events inspire interest, it inspires. Seeing top athletes run my pace is not inspiring at all.

This is not a diss on Matthew Centrowitz, who ran the smartest race of the day to win Olympic Gold in 2016. I do remember though that the winning time was 3:50:00, significantly slower than the global qualifying time to even be in the preliminary rounds. Things like that are embarassing when you talk to fans of other sports. We've seen similar things in the 5000. There should be no medals handed out at all if the winning time is slower than the B-standard.

1. Put it in their contracts that they have to race more. Nike already does this. Idk how BTC gets around this with Nike.

2. Require athletes to hit the WC/OLY standard multiple times to qualify, not just once. Maybe once for 10,000m. Twice for 5,000m. Three times for everything else.

The top athletes in the sport do race frequently when healthy. Barega, Kejelcha, Cheptegei, Muir, Hassan, KoKo, the Ingebrigtsens, Cheruiyot, Manangoi (when healthy), Souleiman, Lewandowski, Lyles, Wilson, Murphy, the list goes on. This idea that BTC has that you can’t race to be the best at worlds is wrong. Most, if not all, of BTC will be beaten badly at worlds by athletes that race 3-4x as many races as they did.

What Nick would say wrote:

have beer at meets that seems to the what people here think will solve all the problems of track in the USA. Sell beer

WEBB IS BACK, BABY!!!

Never forget:

Alan Webb Runs 1:49, 3:42, Brings Keg to Race 5/8/2004:

Fronde wrote:

Dan Pink's work on incentives is a really useful research-based insight into why prize money is probably not the answer to boost participation (or performance)

https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation?language=en

I suggest you'll get better athlete buy-in paying athletes to participate, no matter their placing, then step aside with the incentives and just let them race for the joy of competing.

A pro tour with salaries.

Have Prize Money be the MAIN SOURCE of Income, Let The Shoe Companies give free shoes and apparel and pay the athletes plane and hotel fare to meets with a small amount for meal money (No More than $30 Dollars a Day) and Instead give the Money to Meet Directors for LARGER PRIZE MONEY, and put Minimum Time Standards to Collect Money based on the ALL Time World list, lets take the 1500 the 100th fastest time is 3:29.91 so you would have to run that to get the Full amount, 3:30. 77 is the 200th fastest time, so if you run slower than 3:29.91 but faster than 3:30.77 you get 90%, the 500th fastest time is 3:31.94 so slower than 3:30.77 but faster than 3:31.94 you get 80%, the 1000th fastest time is 3:33.11 =70%, the 1000th fastest PERFORMER in about 3:38 08 so if you run faster than that, but slower than 3:33.11 you get only 10%

So if the prize for winning the race is 100 Thousand, you would get a lower percentage if you don't hit the times, and that would go for places as well, so if 10th place gets 10 Thousand Dollars and you run 3:31.95 (As happened in Paris last week) you would get 7k, so without the safety net of getting guaranteed money with a shoe contact, it would force the athletes to race more (Though a top runner would be able to live well by winning just one race, if he also hits the time, as 100k is good money to live well anywhere, especially in 3rd world countries where most good runners come from)

This whole thread is a red herring. Everyone who matters competes on the circuit regularly enough. BTC are the big outlier.

BTC dont compete because there isn't incentive, but because for some reason they are scared of over racing (despite none of their athletes being as good as others who race more DLs).

Looking forward to Zurich and discussing top athletes.

Note going by the All Time list's the standards will almost always get faster every year, which INSURES faster times, example if 3:33.11 is the 1000th fastest time in the 1500 near the end of 2019, then by 2030 it may be 3:32.00, which would be required to get 70% this will also stop national records from lasting so, lots of National records are over 30 years old, Like Seb Coe in the 800, Marti Vaino of Finland in the 10000

Athletissimo wrote:

Who cares about American distance runners either way. All the big names will be on a fantastic men's 5k and women's 1.500m. Americans will return from Doha with zero medals in middle/long distance events.

I haven’t read the full thread but I’ll bet you about as much money you want that an American medals at Worlds in the 800 (on up).

This is a fake problem. If the World Championships were held when they usually are in August, BTC athletes would be at the Diamond League finals. It's only because this year, I believe for the first time since Diamond League finals, the World Championships are after the final.

Red herring wrote:

This whole thread is a red herring. Everyone who matters competes on the circuit regularly enough. BTC are the big outlier.

BTC dont compete because there isn't incentive, but because for some reason they are scared of over racing (despite none of their athletes being as good as others who race more DLs).

Looking forward to Zurich and discussing top athletes.

1) Good point. Most top athletes are competing so maybe pretty good incentives are there.

Are you a socialist? wrote:

Private individuals are making decisions that are best for themselves. Who are you to interfere? Are you a socialist?

Nope. I was an econ major in college so I understand that markets and incentives really influence people's behavior so if we change the rules of the system we might be able to change their behavior for the better.

Jo72 wrote:

I think WJ and JG had a good point in the podcast: If you fail at Worlds which could be for some freak accident, esp. in the steeple, you have almost nothing to show for the whole track season. A DL win or good placement or good marks in tough competitions are good publicity and probably also good for the athletes mental strength in general.

Thanks. Seeing if I can embed the podcast here:

Here’s podcast https://www.letsrun.com/news/2019/08/zurich-preview-podcast/

I'm going to use a personal example to explain (my 2 cents) a "problem" with T&F:

I coached a high school team. We had a dual meet against a local rival school. I held out my twp top distance runners and had a sprinter/jumper/pentathlete do 1 event.

We could have had 8-10 wins between the 3 of them and won easily. Instead, we lost and they scored over 110 points on us.

Their coaches were angry, their AD called my AD, my AD called me in- the football coach was there (just happened to be).

He couldn't believe I would lose intentionally.

I said- just watch.

4 days later- we TROUNCED that team in their own invitational. A few weeks later we won the state team championship- those 3 guys were involved in every point we scored.

My AD called me in and said- Ahhhh, I see what you were doing.

Isn't Kate Grace a BTC athlete? She was at Zurich.

HollyTown wrote:

Isn't Kate Grace a BTC athlete? She was at Zurich.

Yes she was. As a pacer...

Kate is in BTC, but she's not running Worlds and ran in a non Diamond League event.

wejo wrote:

Red herring wrote:

[quote]Are you a socialist? wrote:

Private individuals are making decisions that are best for themselves. Who are you to interfere? Are you a socialist?

Nope. I was an econ major in college so I understand that markets and incentives really influence people's behavior so if we change the rules of the system we might be able to change their behavior for the better.

Studied Econ also. This the most intelligent comment I've read on this site.

Do more race breakdown videos please

This whole thread is worthless. T&F really bears little resemblance to tennis/golf/cycling etc. It's a doers activity that rarely lends itself to watching by the gen public. The brojo's (ie media) obviously want more $ in the sport. I believe big money brings zero benefit to t&f and lots of downsides.

Live T&F is really, really boring (even when our heroes are running/jumping). It's too diffuse and confusing even for an enthusiast. Is it any wonder Joe Six-pack goes elsewhere? TV coverage is also difficult to get right, but again it all depends on compelling (not agenda-driven) stories. These are almost absent today.

There has been the fallacy that without money, you cannot grow any youth programs. Nonsense - ever heard of putting in volunteer time? True enthusiasts would do that and if, as now, there aren't enough volunteers, let participation find it's level that there are. Running nuts will always be there even with zero dollars support.

Someone tell me what money has done to improve the sport in the last, say, 50 years. That's how long I've been in it and I have a hard time thinking of anything (except comfier running shoes).

I was thinking about this thread with regards to marathon running, where things are sort of the reverse of T&F.

The marathon majors (and Dubai if it's not a major yet) are the biggest events on the marathon calendar. These days I think people care more about London and Berlin than they care about the World Champs, and maybe the Olympics, depending who shows up. Spectators care less about the WC or OG because the competition is weaker; some runners care less because the pay is lower.

There's a lot of money in marathon running (per event, at least), and some of the pay is guaranteed, in the form of appearance fees.

I don't know what lessons we can draw from this -- marathon racing is pretty infrequent, but at least you don't really have top runners saving everything for zero or one race a year -- usually it's two per year, and it's well-planned, so that's a little better.