RW World Cup

[MJR]

Seriously, the times for the Jr Men were actually pretty decent, especially w/ Barron & Forgues getting big PRs.

You call that decent? The best of them finished some 1.5k behind the winner and was over 3.5 minutes slower than the winner of the junior women's race. Americans are never going to succeed in international RW if the US racewalking community is setting its sights so low that they feel this is good enough.

Never said they were good, just decent based upon the results we've had over the last decade. These 2 were among the 5 youngest in the race & they set major PRs in a major Championship. Those are both positive results.

Americans are never going to succeed in race walking until the feeder systems (NFHS, NCAA, USATF, USOC) get off their collective duffs and put more than $50,000 a year in total expenses for an event to develop elite athletes.

The reason that other nations are so damn good is that they invest $ and people into making it work. Cheboksary has a dedicated training center for Russian walkers. There is another in Italy, Spain, Mexico, China, Australia & Ecuador. Gee whiz, look who won all the medals! If we spent 1/10 of the money on walking that we did on the 100m alone, we'd be getting performances equal or better to that of what LDR has produced in the last 5-6 years. Heck, we had a half-a$$ed program in Chula Vista for 5-6 years and got a medal (& another near miss) with only 5-6 f/t athletes training there! Imagine what we could do with just 100 f/t race walkers in this country.

No one is the RW community is satisfied. We do see this as a positive, though. 2 young kids are making progress toward a goal of be very competitive in 2012, which is the plan w/ them.