It Keeps You Running (2)

[libertango]

Following up on yesterday's post about the Nike Women's Marathon...

Nike just sent me an email:

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Hello,

Nike is announcing today that it recognizes Arien O'Connell as a winner in last weekend’s Nike Women’s Marathon with the fastest chip time, completing the full race in 2:55:11. She shattered her previous time and achieved an amazing accomplishment.

Arien will receive the same recognition and prize, including a Tiffany bowl, the full marathon elite group winner received. Arien was unfortunately not immediately recognized as a race winner because she did not start the race with the elite running group, which is required by USATF standards. Because of their earlier start time, the runners in the elite group had no knowledge of the outstanding race Arien was running and could not adjust their strategies accordingly.

Learning from the unique experience in this year’s race, Nike has decided today to eliminate the elite running group from future Nike Women's Marathons. Next year, all runners will run in the same group and all will be eligible to win.

Nike has a proven track record of supporting athletes and we’re proud to be able to honor Arien and other athletes who surpass their goals and achieve great accomplishments.

Sincerely,

Nike+ / Nike Running

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"...could not adjust their strategies accordingly."

Hm. This assumes the Carl Lewis in 1984 approach -- don't do your best, do the bare minimum required to win.

Ah, well. At least Ms. O'Connell is being recognized for her achievement. Kudos to Nike for going that far, and letting concerned parties know directly from them.

UPDATED TO ADD: At this writing (7:23a, PDT), there's nothing confirming this at sfgate.com. If nothing else, we can see how long it takes for the older media to catch up.

UPDATE SQUARED: Here's the Comical's post -- at "12:18 PDT San Francisco." So, just short of a five-hour scoop on my part.

Comments

[tylik.livejournal.com]

"...could not adjust their strategies accordingly."

Hm. This assumes the Carl Lewis in 1984 approach -- don't do your best, do the bare minimum required to win.

Marathons are in part about endurance and pacing yourself. So in that sense, interactions with the other runners could be pretty darned important. I think Nike deserves some criticism for their slow reaction, but dissing the "elite" runners (who ran good races, if not excellent ones) doesn't really seem fair.

Pronoun trouble

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

My point was that implicit in Nike's statement is one particular assumption. So I'm not dissing the runners as such, but rather Nike's model on how they run, and how they uniformly have the same method. I suspect it's a thin tissue of rationalization on Nike's part.

I didn't notice Constantina Tomescu play to the peloton in Beijing, f'r instance. So neither approach is universal.