necking broads wrote:
fan of US distance running wrote:It is not Centro's responsibility to act in "the best interest of the sport".
It is in his best interest to act for himself.
Why should he care about the expectations of fans whom he has never met have placed upon him? Answer: he shouldn't.
Because without fans, he has no endorsement money. If people don't see Centro race, they don't see the swoosh on his chest and shoes.
I would think Centro winning USAs is much more valuable to a sponsor (especially a US-based sponsor of a US-based runner) than running a 3:32 in Lausanne.
Now one could argue that there are more eyes on Lausanne than USAs, and that may be true, but Centro would be a star at USAs while at Lausanne he's a back in the pack schlub.
Claim: the kind of people who watch USATF nationals in an off year are also the kind of people who follow the DL races [and hang out on message boards like this one.] People who aren't already pretty hard core T&F fans are paying attention to either meet. Among us T&F fans we can argue about what we'd rather see Centro, but neither decision is going to move the dial on interest in T&F in the US among the general public.
Broader claim: If every healthy, qualified US T&F athlete had participated as fully as possible in this year's nationals, the live attendance and TV/web audience numbers wouldn't have been much different from what they actually were. In other words, T&F's problems as a spectator sport in the US run way deeper than who happens to compete at nationals. And I don't think the big problem is doping either.
Right now the Olympic Games is the only major elite T&F competition that the general public takes seriously. The athletes take Outdoor Worlds seriously, so an obvious first step to building the sport in the US would be to find smart ways to market track worlds here. Then you could build on that interest to start creating additional competitions in the US that both the athletes and the general public take seriously.
This can be done, but the starting point isn't USATF nationals in a year when it isn't a qualifying meet.