Flashes of Panic

I’m not going to argue with the many newspaper articles pointing out what a great job the Boulder organizing committee did with this year’s cross country championships. I’m certainly not going to argue with the fact that there were more people out for the race than I’ve ever seen at a cross country meet which wasn’t the NCAAs; this made even World Cross look pretty paltry.

The thing they didn’t get right—perhaps the only thing—was that they didn’t make any provisions for having the athletes talk to the media after their races. The runners were whisked up on the stage for awards, and then they returned to a crush of fans where they could more or less evaporate if they wanted. There was no mixed zone and no media working area, nor any provision for post-race press conferences.

These are hard things to do at cross meets, of course, but the NCAA somehow manages to get it done every year, and brings in the top three finishers plus the winning coach as a matter of course, plus others by request. The NYRR did a fair job of getting everyone in to the tiny little press tent in Van Cortlandt last winter. Even the Portland crew had a post-race pen where the athletes and media could mix, and the crowd at Fort Vancouver was probably less than 10% what showed up in Boulder, so there wasn’t a big crush to contend with. What we had yesterday was a mob and a zoo. It was ugly and nearly impossible to deal with if you expected to talk to more than one or two athletes after each race. (After the junior races, nobody had figured this problem out yet, and as a result I haven’t seen (m)any quotes from any of the juniors, anywhere.)

This is whining, considering what a well-run meet this was, and it worked very well for the athletes, officials, and spectators. In essence, we reporters were the only ones with anything to complain about, and that’s a pretty good job. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have anything to complain about.

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