America’s Marketing Nightmare: Foreign Runners Dominating the Boston Marathon

They ran the 112 Boston Marathon on Monday (04-21-08). The triumph was that Robert Cheruiyot (try to say something like Cherry-ott) from Kenya won his 4th Boston Marathon. The tragedy was that the United States barely 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 victory his third straight 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 with unpronounceable names. Imagine a Nike ad that says, “Run to victory with Nike. Like Bouramdane, Boumlili, Asfaw and Adillo!” Notice how American that sounds and appreciate how difficult it can be to market foreign brokers with foreign names in the United States.

No one seems to have the clarity to admit it or the nerve to say it, so let me be first: America’s famous track and field nationals and marathons have dropped to a new low of interest because America can’t seem to produce native-born runners. United States that you 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 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 running circles. Americans haven’t done squats 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, Dire Tune (I swear I didn’t make up her name), 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, at the 2008 Fall Olympics.

Just because he won in Boston doesn’t mean he’ll make Kenya’s three-man squad. Four other Kenyans have run LESS than 2:07 this year in major meets. Oh! This just goes to show how dominant Kenyans are in world marathon competition. Curiously, no Kenyan has yet won gold at the Olympic Games, 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 earn 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 more interesting pages of sports news to read than a foreigner winning the Boston Marathon again.

There are no major track and field meets on prime time TV anymore, only the Olympics get major coverage. By comparison, venues that used to draw thousands of fans are now empty. There is little or no coverage. The big sponsors run in the other direction when the competition directors arrive.

It happens because it seems that the United States can no longer produce runners worth shit. 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 newly found 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 pick themselves up from deadlock and do something spectacular. Currently, there is no broker in the United States that can handle a large amount of marketing and promotion because there is no one that can deliver when necessary.

The fact that the Americans think they can’t beat the Kenyans is nonsense. Ever thought it was impossible to run a mile in less than 4 minutes too. Kenyans THINK they can win; The Americans don’t think they can win. I just want to get up and slap our American runners and coaches.

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 of finishing in the Top 10 in Boston.

I truly believe 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 runners stems more from a lack of desire and determination. The marketing problem isn’t going 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 the sake of running, I am distraught that our runners have become such colossal flops on the world stage.

Copyright © 2008 Ed Bagley