They ran the Boston Marathon 112 on Monday (04-21-08). The win was Robert Cheruiyot (try to say something like Cherry-ott) from Kenya winning his 4th Boston Marathon. The tragedy was that the United States hardly noticed.
Cheruiyot won the 26.2-mile race in 2 hours, 7 minutes, and 45 seconds. He ran alone for the last few kilometers. Cheruiyot won the Boston Marathon in 2003, set the course record by winning in 2006, and won in 2007, making this year’s win his third in a row and fourth in 6 years.
Excuse me while I inhale deeply due to boredom.
Two boys from Morocco finished 2nd and 3rd and two boys from Ethiopia finished 4th and 5th, all of them with unpronounceable names. Imagine a Nike ad that says, “Run to victory with Nike. Just like Bouramdane, Boumlili, Asfaw and Adillo do!” Take a look at how American that sounds and appreciate how difficult it can be to market foreign brokers under foreign names in America.
No one seems to have the clarity to acknowledge it or the nerve to say it, so let me be the first: America’s national track meets and famous marathons have sunk to a new low in interest because America can’t seem to produce runners born in the United States who can currently win exclusive events.
This is the brief evolution of the oldest continuous running marathon in history:
American Clarence DeMar won his first Boston Marathon in 1911 and his seventh in 1930. American Bill Rogers won his first in 1975 and his fourth in 1980.
A Kenyan – Ibrahim Hussein – won in 1991 and this year Robert Cheruiyot won. Between Hussein and Cheruiyot, the Kenyans have won the race 14 times in 16 years and 16 times in 18 years, losing only to a South Korean in 2001 and an Ethiopian in 2005.
This year, when an American finished 10th, it was called a miracle in some racing circles. Americans haven’t squatted in years.
Among the 32 elite runners anticipated as possible winners in this year’s competition, not a single American was mentioned as a possible winner in our wildest imaginations. Over 25,000 runners qualified for this year’s race and 98% finished.
If you’re wondering, an Ethiopian girl, Dire Tune (I swear I didn’t make her name up), won the women’s Boston Marathon. The first 5 women to finish were from anywhere but the United States.
Cheruiyot collected $150,000 (the most) in prize money. Cheruiyot is a super boy and a world class runner. His main concern on Monday was to run 2 hours, 7 minutes and change because he wants to represent his country, Kenya, in the Olympic Games this fall of 2008.
Just because he won in Boston doesn’t mean he’ll be part of Kenya’s three-man team. Four other Kenyans have run UNDER 2:07 this year in major competitions. Oh! This just goes to show how dominant Kenyans are in the world marathon competition. Interestingly, no Kenyan has yet won gold at the Olympics, although it is his specialty.
Unfortunately for Cheruiyot and American track and field, foreign dominance in winning here has created a marketing nightmare. It is downright difficult, not impossible, to market world-class foreign athletes on American soil, no matter how much they win or how many records they set. Nobody in America seems to care.
I found the USA Today coverage of the Boston Marathon buried on page 7 in the Sports Section on Monday. Frankly, there were 6 pages of sports news more interesting to read than a foreigner winning the Boston Marathon again.
There are no longer any major athletics events on prime-time television, only the Olympics get major coverage. By comparison, venues that used to attract thousands of fans are now empty. There is little or no coverage. The big sponsors run the other way when the competition directors arrive.
It happens because America can’t seem to produce runners worth shit anymore. They just aren’t competitive and can’t win events like the Boston Marathon if their lives depended on it.
Don’t blame foreign runners who were once poverty-stricken and then found a way to win in America and return home a newfound millionaire. The foreign runners were hungry. Making a living in the United States is easy. There doesn’t seem to be any runner left who is hungry enough to train harder and smarter and beat the foreign runners.
It also doesn’t seem like we have a coach in America who can motivate our runners to get up from the dead end and do something spectacular. Currently, there is no broker in the United States that can handle a lot of marketing and promotion because there is no one who can deliver when needed.
The fact that the Americans think they can’t beat the Kenyans is nonsense. They once thought it was impossible to run a mile in less than 4 minutes too. Kenyans BELIEVE they can win; Americans don’t think they can win. I just want to stand up and slap our American runners and coaches in the face.
We didn’t become the greatest nation in the world because we had our eye on second place, or because we wanted to make a big deal about finishing in the Top 10 in Boston.
I really think this is not about raw talent. We must have at least a dozen talented runners out of 300 million people. I think our lack of world-class American racers is due more to a lack of desire and determination. The marketing problem isn’t going to go away, and fans and sponsors aren’t going to come back in a big way until America produces American-born racers who can win against the best the world has to offer.
As a lifelong runner who enjoys running for running’s sake, I am distraught that our runners have become such colossal failures on the world stage.
Copyright © 2008 Ed Bagley
