American Marketing Nightmare – The Foreign Runners Who Dominate the Boston Marathon

They ran the 112nd Boston Marathon on Monday (4-21-08). It was the victory that Robert Cherry-ott (trying to say something close to Cherry-ott) of Kenya won his fourth Boston Marathon. The tragedy was that America hardly noticed.

Cheruiyot won the 26.2 mile race in 2 hours 7 minutes 45 seconds. He ran alone for several miles. Cheruiyot won the Boston Marathon in 2003, set the track record while winning in 2006, and won in 2007, making his win this year his third in a row and fourth in 6 years.

Excuse me while I inhale deeply out of boredom.

Two players from Morocco finished second and third, and two players from Ethiopia finished fourth and fifth – all of whom had unpronounceable names. Imagine a Nike ad that says: “Run to victory with Nike. Like Bormdan, Bomlili, Asfu and Adilo do!” Notice how American it sounds, and appreciate how difficult it is to market foreign runners with foreign names in America.

No one seems to have the clarity to recognize it or the audacity to say it, so let me be the first: America’s national track meets and famous marathon have dropped to a new level of interest because America can’t seem to produce native-born runners who can win signature events right now.

Here is the brief progression of the oldest continuously running marathon in history:

American Clarence DeMar won his first Boston Marathon in 1911 and his seventh marathon in 1930. American Bill Rogers won his first marathon in 1975 and his fourth in 1980.

Kenyan Ibrahim Hussein won in 1991 and Robert Cheruiyot won this year. Between Hussein and Cheruiyot, the Kenyans have 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 the American finished 10th, he was called a prodigy in some running circles. Americans have not done squatting in recent years.

Of the 32 elite runners paraded as potential winners of this year’s competition, not a single American is mentioned as a potential winner in our wildest imaginations. More than 25,000 runners have qualified for this year’s Tour and 98% of them have finished.

In case you were wondering, an Ethiopian band Dyer (I swear I didn’t make up their name) — won the Boston Women’s Marathon. The first 5 women were from anywhere but America.

Cheruiyot has collected $150,000 (more than ever before) in prize money. Cheruiyot is a supervillain and world-class runner. His main concern on Monday was to run the 2 hours, 7 minutes and changeup because he wants to represent his country – Kenya – at the 2008 Olympics in the fall.

Just because he won in Boston doesn’t mean he will be part of the Kenyan 3-man squad. Four other Kenyans have run under 2:07 this year in major competition. Yikes! This just goes to show you how dominant the Kenyans are in world marathon competition. Interestingly, no Kenyan has yet won gold in the Olympics even though it is their specialty.

Unfortunately for Cheruiyot and track, field and running in America, the foreign dominance in winning here has created a marketing nightmare. It is utterly difficult, even impossible, to market world-class foreign athletes on American soil, no matter how much they win or how many records they set. Nobody in America seems to care.

I found USA Today Coverage of the Boston Marathon is buried on page 7 in the Sports Monday section. There were honestly 6 pages of more interesting sports news to read than some foreigners who won the Boston Marathon again.

There are no major track meets on primetime TV anymore, only the Olympics get significant coverage. The venues that used to attract thousands of fans are now empty in comparison. There is little, if any, coverage. Big time sponsors run the other way when they call managers.

It happens because America just can’t seem to produce crap-worthy runners anymore. They are not competitive and cannot win events like the Boston Marathon if their lives depended on it.

Don’t blame the foreign runners who were once impoverished and then found a way to win in America and come home like a new millionaire. The foreign contestants were hungry. Making a living in America is easy. We never seem to have any runners left hungry enough to train harder and smarter and beat the alien runners.

We also don’t seem to have a coach in America who can motivate runners to get up from dead center and do something amazing. There is currently no runner in America that can handle intense marketing and promotional work because there is no one out there who can deliver success when it counts.

The fact that the Americans think they cannot defeat the Kenyans is nonsense. They once thought it was impossible to run less than 4 minutes too. Kenyans believe they can win; Americans don’t think they can win. I just want to wake up and throw some common sense on American runners and coaches.

We didn’t become the greatest nation in the world because we had our eyes on second place, or because we wanted to achieve a great deal of finishing in the top ten in Boston.

I really think this isn’t about raw talent. We must have at least ten talented runners out of 300 million people. I think our lack of world-class American runners has more to do with a lack of desire and determination. The marketing problem won’t go away, and fans and sponsors won’t come back often until America produces American-born runners who can beat the best the world has to offer.

As a lifelong runner and enjoyer of running for the sake of running, I am appalled that our runners have become colossal failures on the world stage.