Why Can’t Road Racing Get it Together?
“The Diamond League is the most auspicious change to one-day invitational meetings since I have been a meet director,” said 27-year Prefontaine Classic organizer Tom Jordan of Eugene, Oregon to Reuters. “It gives a coherence to what otherwise was a series of individual events.”
Coherence! It is the key word in presenting any sport to the general public, and it is the one thing running and track have failed to achieve over the last 30+ years. Now, the Diamond League attempts to cohere around a schedule of 14 world meets as it replaces the six-meet, Euro-centric Golden League in 2010 beginning in Doha, Qatar May 14th. Competitions in Shanghai, Oslo, Rome, New York, Eugene (Oregon), Lausanne, Gateshead, Paris, Monaco, Stockholm, London, Zurich and Brussels on August 27th will follow Doha. That’s 14 events in 15 weeks, creating the crtical mass necessary to achieve momentum and a seasonal feel to the new league.
A structured presentation on a fixed calendar is how every rational sport presents itself. It makes one wonder why road racing can’t seem to find enough partners to build a similar staging structure during its major seasons in the spring and fall - which would fit nicely alongside the summer Diamond League track circuit.
The World Marathon Majors series made their attempt to create a unified road effort three years ago, but that construct has proven untenable. The last two cycles have ended with one of the gender winners not even participating in the final event, and the rolling two-year cycle - where a single event counts toward two yearly point lists - is beyond confusing.
On top of that, the series hasn’t sold a single sponsorship, because the five stake holding events - Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, and New York City - still see their individual events and sponsors as more important than the WMM series. Dave Bedford in London has been particularly averse to allowing the series to expand to shorter distance events where it might be able to build critical mass and support structure. Perhaps a successful Diamond League inaugural year may wake up the roadees.
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April 1st, 2010 at 7:59 am |
No matter how successful the Diamond League turns out to be, I don’t see the WMM races changing in response. The problem is that they are all doing “well enough.” The races are often are pretty good, the media coverage kind of there, the money… enough to keep the organizers all happy. While the biggest races are all doing “OK” I don’t understand why people “leading” road racing don’t demonstrate any aspirations towards NFL-type money. Really, at any given moment, each race is one presenting sponsor away from folding.
April 1st, 2010 at 9:23 am |
Interesting, Jeremy. I had a TV producer tell me one time, “I don’t see anyone in your sport who is on their way toward becoming an NFL owner. Someone who can walk out of a meeting with a seven-figure check.” But is it as simple as the soft impediment of low aspirations?
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