Flashes of Panic

It looks like the Tyson Invitational at least took my advice about the name of their meet (they dropped the ridiculous “Powered by,”) but they’ve found a new way to look silly.

Well, not entirely silly. Just silly for a professional athletic event. According to a press release earlier this week, Tyson is putting up a $25,000 bonus for a world record set at the meet. No, I did not forget any zeroes: twenty-five thousand. You know, just about enough for four years of in-state tuition at the University of Arkansas, with a bit left over for spikes and groceries. Or, to follow my idea from last year, .025 million dollars.

It seems likely that the record will come, which is probably why the bonus is so small. See, they have some World Championships medalists in a 300m race, which is sufficiently odd that nearly every serious journalist covering the meet has added the preface, “rarely run” to “300m.”

I know that meet directors think that “World Record” is a magic phrase that will bring in fans, but I think the fans are bright enough to see this Potemkin distance and laughable bonus and smell a put-up job somewhere on the line.