Paul O'Shea who has contributed many book reviews and journalistic pieces to our little blog has this past week had an opinion published in the Washington Post. Remember when track and field used to have regular coverage in most daily newspapers?
Here it is.
Keep up with a local runner
American track and field athletes set three indoor world records and there were 11 national marks set at the New Balance Indoor Grand Prix on Feb. 13 in New York. Unfortunately, the news didn’t crack The Post’s sports section in this Olympic Games year. In addition to these noteworthy performances, missing was coverage of Noah Lyles, who won the 200 meters at the meet. Lyles, the world champion in the event, won national acclaim at T.C. Williams High School and is highly favored to win a gold medal at the Tokyo Games. The failure of The Post to provide results about the New Balance meet, in an Olympic year, with a locally raised athlete, is deeply disappointing. Going forward, Post readers would be well served by extensive coverage of the world’s leading track and field team, the United States and Lyles.
George,
Paul can chide the major papers all he wants, but it will be to no avail.
the reason the newspapers and media do not cover track and field anymore is because we left the general public behind when we adopted the stupid metric system. I was Jimmy Carne‘s assistant head coach at Florida when he and Olan engineered the switch over from yards, feet and inches to those Mysterious meters, centimeters and micro grams.
Nixon had vowed to take the whole nation metric and we were the only institution fool enuf to do so when we converted all our tracks to 400 meters.
I would challenge most hard track coaches to instantly convert a 7 meter long jump into something any of the two fans in the stands could understand.
We left behind the 60’ shot put, the 4:00 mile, the 16’ pole vault, the 9 sec 100 yd dash. Those were iconic figures every American could relate to.
Now, if the whole country had gone metric (Detroit said, “Are you out of your minds.” Etc), maybe by now we could appreciate what our athletes and the rest of the world’s T&F community was accomplishing.
Olan and Jimmy bought into the myth because they wanted the TAC (remember that sorry organization) to have our performances comparable the European ones and the rest of the metric countries.
Well, wonderful. But what the hell is a 3:59 time for the stupid 1500m?
Roy “Geezer” Benson
Ps. Why the hell do we run road races over everything from 5k and up and offer splits at the mile marks? What’s wrong with a 3 mile race?
I agree with Roy Benson that metrics hurt T&F coverage in the US, but not especially the running events - only the field events. A 400 can be appreciated just as much as a 440 but a 2.14 HJ is not as interesting as a 7' high jump. For American meets I suggest we keep the races in metrics which really means using the same minutes and seconds which is basically no change, but reporting the field events in feet and inches. After all we are still in the US, an imperial country. However, if there is a significant worldwide field event mark, for goodness sake also measure it metrically so the person can get international credit. Incidentally, the imperial measurements allow for more precision than the metric ones since a centimeter is approximately 1/2" and many of the field events are measured in 1/4".
However, that is not the reason T&F has diminished in coverage in the US. With ESPN every game of every pro sport is on TV, creating almost no time for anything else. In addition, college football and basketball is the same way with about 30 games on TV every Saturday. So many sports have gone by the wayside, most notably horse racing, boxing, and T&F. What was sold as allowing all sports to be televised has turned into just a few being emphasized. In addition there is no team concept promoted anymore in our sport so it is primarily Nike sponsored athletes, all wearing the same uniform, most being suspected of drug use, devoid of college or hometown affiliation, performing in front of mostly their coaches and teammates, with little importance in their efforts other than to qualify individually for a future meet. We can't change all of that but we can change some of it.
Bill
Great item George and others-lest we forget!
I just read a telling article in our Globe and Mail ( Canada) about our athletes attempting to qualify for the –shall we say putative Tokyo Olympics. All athletes are undergoing stringent restrictions in trying to reach the standards but it must be especially difficult when you have a border that is firmly closed with The United States. Featured is our veteran 800m runner Melissa Bishop who was a big recipient of negative results from the Semenya et al turmoil. She was 4th in the Olympics behind three athletes who benefitted from the rules ( I will not say unfairly because that is not clear). Recently married and a mother at 32 she is in her twilight years and somehow has to generate a sun 2 min 800 while trying to find competition and then facing a full 2 week quarantine if she has to go abroad to find it ( likely). I know she is not alone but in Canada we have few world class athletes . On top of that is news that former HJ Champ Drouin is attempting to qualify and De Grasse and our strong 4 x 100m relay may have trouble making it-we will be woefully short if the games actually take place,.
Much as I love and revere the Olympic Games for what it has achieved for many sports I seriously question whether it should go ahead. It would be interesting to hear from your stable of experienced International athletes as to how they feel about this.
On a totally different subject my best school friend from UK emigrated to the USA a few months before I came to Canada in 1959. I visited him first in Berkeley before he went on to a career as a Geog. Prof at Maryland. I visited him a few times in Washington DC and benefitted greatly from his knowledge and love of the city. The final visit was in 1997 after going to Toronto to see my first grandson. Regrettably he died a few months later. He had a noted career and I wonder if any of your correspondents would have known of him- Prof. Paul A. Groves. Not likely I know but worth a try.
Best wishes.
Hope all is well.
Geoff
Also noted in another unrelated piece was the passing of Tony Trabert, former tennis great who was in the original professional tennis tours sponsored by Jack Kramer. Few will remember that Trabert also played basketball at the University of Cincinnati.
