It seems like an idea whose time has come, playing “Beat the Clock” for $1 million as a lure to recreate the glory days of U.S. men’s marathon running.
The problem is, even if some man collects the bonus being offered by a shoe company for a U.S. record, it will never seem like old times. That was when Frank Shorter and Bill Rodgers and Greg Meyer and Alberto Salazar could lead the world on the not-so-merry chase of 26 miles 385 yards.
In fact, offering a bonus for the relative mediocrity of setting a U.S. men’s record may have just the opposite effect New Balance intended when it concocted the short-term, attention-getting deal.
After all, when Bob Kempainen set the current mark of 2 hours 8 minutes 47 seconds at the 1994 Boston Marathon, it got him only seventh place. And Kempainen’s U.S. record time ranks only 46th on the all-time world list.
“Americans have gone down since they started offering separate prize money for U.S. runners (in U.S. road races),” said Joseph Kamau, one of 12 elite Kenyans in the field for Monday’s 101st Boston Marathon. “They don’t want to beat the best, just to beat the other Americans.
“As a Kenyan, I have to try to do more than what was done yesterday by my fellow Kenyans, and all of us feel the same way.”
The difference between beating Kenyans and beating Americans is the Kenyans have been the world’s distance running leaders for the last 15 years. Kenyan men have won six straight Boston Marathons and seven of the last nine since Ibrahim Hussein became the first African champion of the world’s most venerable marathon in 1988.
Never was that dominance clearer than last year. Led by Moses Tanui, Kenyan men took the top five places, seven of the first eight and 10 of the 15 in the money. Kenyans earned $227,200 of the total men’s purse of $255,000.
“It’s time we took back our place in long-distance running,” said New Balance chairman Jim Davis.
What Davis doesn’t want to admit is that place existed only because others were not ready or able to overrun it. It would take the end of colonialism in the 1960s to change the face–and race–of the top distance runners.
The U.S. heyday ran from Shorter’s Olympic gold medal in 1972 to Meyer’s becoming the last U.S. man to win one of the world’s leading marathons (1983 Boston). Back then, the sport still was dominated by Caucasian runners of European heritage.
“Maybe people in the U.S. have lost interest,” said three-time Boston champion Cosmas Ndeti of Kenya. “They feel now they cannot beat these guys (the Africans), and it is making them despair.”
It’s partly a matter of timing. Races like Boston offered no prize money when U.S. runners were winning, making it hard for young U.S. athletes to see the lucrative possibilities of the sport. Ndeti was motivated by hearing of countryman Hussein’s winning $45,000 and a $35,000 Mercedes in 1988. Tanui and Ndeti are the favorites Monday.
Because of successive Olympic boycotts in 1976 and 1980, Kenya’s runners did not come into full flower until the mid-1980s. Other East African nations–Tanzania, Djibouti, Ethiopia–soon followed the Kenyans’ lead.
Then runners from North Africa, Mexico, Japan and South Korea began moving into the elite. Finally, only five years after the end of South Africa’s isolation from world sports, one of its athletes, Josiah Thugwane, won the 1996 Olympic title.
The only U.S. man to score a major triumph in the last 14 years is naturalized citizen Mark Plaatjes, a political refugee from South Africa who won the 1993 world title. Plaatjes came to the U.S. as an adult.
“I hate to say this with Frank (Shorter) standing right over there, but the competition now is a lot greater than what he had,” said Keith Brantly of Ft. Lauderdale, whose 28th place was the top U.S. finish in the 1996 Olympics.
The fastest U.S. marathoner of 1996, Jerry Lawson (2:10:04 at Chicago), ranked 27th in the world.
“And this situation is only going to get worse for U.S. runners,” said 1976 Boston champion Amby Burfoot, editor of Runner’s World magazine. “You have to believe the African and Asian phenomenon so far is only the tip of the iceberg.”
Shorter, one of three U.S. runners in the top 10 at the 1972 Olympic marathon, is being paid by New Balance to endorse its bonus offer. While lauding the shoe company’s motive–“the bonus could go to someone wearing another company’s shoes”–he remains realistic about its impact.
“We have to go incrementally,” Shorter said. “It’s like a college runner trying to win the NCAA title–not the Olympics or world championships. The goals have to be reasonable and attainable.”
Brantly understood that after being initially carried away by the lure of $1 million, which is being offered only for 63 races in the U.S. in 1997. (The offer also is good for a woman breaking Joan Benoit Samuelson’s 2:21:21 from Chicago in 1995, but no U.S. woman has been within 5 minutes of that mark, and only one within 6 minutes since 1994.)
Since the four fastest times (and six of the top eight) run by U.S. men have come at Boston, Brantly began thinking last November of breaking the record in Monday’s race.
“When I first heard about it, I was like a little kid thinking, `Go for it,’ ” Brantly said. “Since then, I have tempered it with a little realism. My personal best is 2:12:49. I have to get to 2:10 before I can look at 2:08.
“If you told me I could run 2:08:46 Monday, I would pay you $1 million to guarantee it.”
Even then, there would be no guarantee the U.S. record-holder would be more than an also-ran.
