Hand-me-down uniforms still an issue for USA masters
Got your USA uniform? Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you. Under WMA rules for the world meet, you have to wear a USA top. Anything for bottoms is OK. But those who want to look spiffy representing their country are finding themselves shitouttaluck — again. One athlete writes: “For myself and all other newcomers, USATF does not have full sets of uniforms. You can purchase a singlet, a shirt, etc. in limited sizes. As you can unitards (if and when they mysteriously appear on the website, of course). Forget about essentials like Running Shorts or Half Tights, they are available in the smallest size and in XXXXX, maybe.â€
The athlete continues:
As we are representing our country, I feel we should also be ambassadors of our country. That is part of the Team USA Code of Conduct and Waiver. So is the requirement to dress appropriately and respectfully, wearing the official USATF uniform TOP during competition. See, it even says TOP in the Code of Conduct, not full uniforms. Other nations allow a wide variety of uniforms but they insist on uniforms, not just singlets.
I’m not very happy about this at all. Why don’t we have access to other and more recent USATF uniforms? At least, we would show up with full uniforms and not with a replicate singlet and comfortable running shorts/half tights/full tights or whatever when we represent our country.
It might be just me, but I take my participation at the World Championships seriously. I train hard and prepare as good as I can. I don’t see my participation as a tourist trip to Italy with a little athletic activity on the side. If I take it seriously, I want my association to take it seriously as well. We masters are not the illegitimate children of the USATF family, forced to wear the leftover clothing of the legitimate children, tops only, mind you. Or are we?
Of course, this is old news.
We’ve raised this issue before. Nobody in Indy heard.
So it goes. (Sorry, Kurt.)
6 Responses
There are NO WOMENS SINGLETS available this year – for 2005 the singlets that were available sold out quickly and no replicas were made. I was sent a Medium one – that came to my knees – lovely – just lovely – so I had it hacked off -women who do not own a singlet and want one – well just tough luck ladies. You can buy a crop top – has sleeves or a unisex (ie male sized) throwers shirt, or a unitard – and just hope it is not hot. This is pathetic and it also says that after Italy USATF will be looking into the warehouse to see what is around that they can make us buy for future WMA meets. My bet is that we will all be forced to buy a different uniform top in 2008. By the time of the WMA indoor meet next March – “wanna bet”!
Masters are viewed as an unending supply of buyers for the cast offs – not as valued members of USATF. While I do not agree with those who think we should up and quit and joing ranks with the National Senior Games, I do think that the masters leadership must pressure Indianapolis to allow masters to take charge of uniform selection.
I have a sprint suit that I wore in the world games at Puerto Rico in 2003. I is a small (I am a size 38). If someone wants it, contact me. It is dark blue with USA on the front.
When a situation is as pathetic as THIS i find it hard to find an APPROPRIATE comment. Ill tell you one thing i would love to have customers for my business that accept ANYTHING i give them. As a business person i have to accomodate the BUYER not the other way around.
So if I decide to go to Italy, where do I find the required attire?
Mary(Harada) hit the nail right on the head. it might not be by 2008, but you can be sure that within a couple of years at most, we will be told that we have to have a different sytle of uniform so as to conform to WMA’s demands. I would think by now there are people out there with three or four different USA styled singlets. Do they need more? I think not. However National seems more then willing to help Nike(or whoever it is that supplies the Olympic uniforms) to get rid of their excess.
Question. There is no way that every person could have the exact same singlet. Does that mean that those without the most recent, approved singlets, can not, will not be allowed to compete in world events? Unless National supplies the uniforms for those who are running for the Red, White and Blue, I don’t see now we can be told what exactly to wear, as long as it is a USA singlet that had been just fine in the past.
I was unable to find any singlets on the USATF site, and while Wayne’s offer to loan a sprint suit is generous, I don’t think it would be appropriate for a 10k. Do the singlets have to be “official,” or can we set up an order with one of the many places that makes high quality uniforms for teams? I also find it troubling that the USATF would require us to buy our own singlets when we are spending money and vacation days to represent the US. I would think this would be a perfect opportunity to allocate some of the ~$8k they’ve set aside for master events. The wholesale price for a custom singlet is less than $10, so even if there are 100 of us, it’s only a small dent in their budget.
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