PERHAPS OUR MOST FAMOUS (or was it infamous?) cover ever was May of \u201991, which featured a starkly empty LA Coliseum and asked the question, \u201cWhat If They Gave A Track Meet And Nobody Came?\u201d Twenty years down the road, the potential for an even scarier headline is there: \u201cWhat If They Didn\u2019t Give Any Track Meets?\u201d<\/p>\n
Oh, I don\u2019t mean high school or college meets\u2014those continue to roll along, as do big meets in other countries.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m talking about that incredibly endangered species, the U.S. meet for athletes of international caliber.<\/p>\n
Do you realize that the month of May has come and gone, and on none of the four Fridays or Saturdays in the month was there a meet that would have stirred the souls of the ticket-buying public? But the lack of options for fans is only a small part of the problem. Athletes are also getting short shrift. A poster who goes by \u201cWest Coast Tiger\u201d had this to say on our message board recently:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile the elite fields for Pre are a great feast for the American track fan\u2014as are no doubt similar fields a week later in NYC\u2014we have a major downside to this for American track athletes.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith more spots going to international athletes that leaves far fewer lanes or entry spots for other U.S. athletes. This particularly hurts pros getting ready for the Nationals with no domestic meets to run in. With the death of the Home Depot meet, Modesto, and others, we have a developmental issue that needs addressing.<\/p>\n
\u201cToo much of our domestic schedule is tied too close to the collegiate system and once they enter Conference and National meets it eliminates competitive opportunities for too many. Sure, some can go to meets outside the U.S. but many of these meets cap the number of Americans they want in the fields so it realistically only serves a couple dozen or so US athletes who mostly would prefer to be at home training and racing close by leading up to Nationals.\u201d<\/p>\n
If this doesn\u2019t sound like the kind of problem that USATF\u2019s Project 30 should be addressing, I don\u2019t know what does. The pumping up of Penn with the USA vs. The World relays is fabulous, and I\u2019d like to see more meets enhanced that way. Trouble is, where do you even start in the crucial month of May? What meets are there to enhance, what with the NCAA now locking collegiate competition into a pretty rigid schedule, and people taking off weeks before the Conference and Regional weekends?<\/p>\n
With USATF apparently kissing off Millrose (see p. 47), allow me to suggest that Indy needs to talk to prime sponsor Visa and simply forget trying to stage any kind of \u201cseries\u201d indoors and toss all those resources into the important side of the sport, and generate significant outdoor opportunities.<\/p>\n
There was a pleasant surprise in late May with USATF\u2019s High-Performance meet at Oxy (see p. 26). We need more of those (like Tucson\u2019s Elite Throws meet the same weekend), but why was Oxy such a well-kept secret? Not only was there a lack of buzz leading up to this meet, it was positively in stealth mode. Early in the week we were sent a set of the entry lists, but told that it was \u201cabsolutely not for publication.\u201d<\/p>\n
Please don\u2019t make us print a cover asking why there are no meets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"