The race is not always to the swift

[pecunium]

Picture the scene. You've just run the best race of your life. Not just a good race. Not just every ounce of energy, and wrung out like an old mop at the end.

Not just the best race of your life, but a personal best you've never run this fast before an incredible 12 minutes better than any other time you've done the distance.

They start to call the winners. Third place didn't run as well as you did, Neither did second.

First place came in eleven minutes behind you.

Why? Because Nike thinks there were two races.

There were over 20,000 competitors in Sunday's Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco. And 24-year-old Arien O'Connell, a fifth-grade teacher from New York City, ran the fastest time of any of the women.

But she didn't win

Jim Estes, associate director of the long-distance running program for USA Track and Field, did his best to explain the ruling. He's had some practice with the issue. The Sunday before last, at the Chicago Marathon, a Kenyan named Wesley Korir pulled off a similar surprise, finishing fourth even though he wasn't in the elite group and started five minutes after the top runners.

In that situation, and in this one, Estes made the same ruling: It didn't count. O'Connell wasn't declared the winner and Korir didn't collect fourth-place prize money.

"The theory is that, because they had separate starts, they weren't in the same race," Estes said. "The woman who is winning the elite field doesn't have the opportunity to know she was racing someone else."

Right. The Olympics don't have this problem. My high school didn't have this problem. When I was running a compeptitive 2-miles we didn't have it either, nor yet when I was doing the Mud-Run at Cp. Pendleton.

See, it was the same race. Same day, same course, same distance, same weather, same everything. Each heat started at different times, but all the rest was the same (Pendleton was different, because there were three classes, "Open", BDUs and running shoes, and "Military" which was BDUs and boots. 10K in BDUs and boots over mixed terrain and obstacles was "fun", but I digress).

But same day, same name of race, same chance to win. If the best time came in from the last heat... the person who ran it won.

If Nike want's to have charity races, where selected people are given preference for winning, let them have invitationals. If it wants to separate the people who are after prizes from thos who are just running for the sake of running, let them inform people of it.

Because what happened is Nike ran a private race, and then piggybacked the good-feeling and reputation boost of a non-prized race run at the same time; and not differentiated. One of the things which make marthons like LA, Boston, etc. so popular is the idea that everyone is competing on fair shot. Anyone can win.

Only Nike doesn't believe people should, "Just do it," or rather, they think the vast majority ought to be willing to just do it, and the selected few can win the prizes.

Comments

[calimac.livejournal.com]

So if they really believe this bizarre theory that it's two separate races, then give her a prize for winning the other race. At the very least.

Blippin' morons.

[grum]

I doubt the "other race" had prizes for winning. And if that's the case, then why should she be entitled to receive something that she did not expect to be able to receive when she entered.

And though I agree that it was probably not made clear enough ahead of time, I always interpretted the triathlons that I worked as having different races for each start. (that said, each start had distinctly different demographics (usually determined by age) and the lower levels had different courses to run, so it's a lot more obvious that there is no expectation of comparison between the various competitors)

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

All the races I've been in which had different categories made it clear there as some qualitative difference (age, equipment, team status, somthing).

Nike, it seems, made no such distinction plain to the participants.

[wetdryvac.livejournal.com]

*nods*

Just got a reply from the folks at Nike regarding my email to them. I've posted it in full in my journal, and it looks like Nike has recognized the error (at least so far as this instance is concerned) and has acted upon that, awarding and recognizing the actual first place time.

Not clear if this means things will be explained more clearly and heats run in balance in the future, with team/age/etc explication, but it's a start.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

If you're going to hold multiple races together, you should give similar honors for winning each. That's the only sensible thing.

And clearly, she did expect that the fastest runner would win first place. Otherwise she wouldn't have been so surprised when the fastest runner (which happened to be herself) didn't.

And since Nike has now reversed itself under protest, they've clearly realized they were wrong.