Can’t wait for this movie.
As we wait for
“Race†to show up in movie theaters, check out Sunday night’s documentary on
Jesse Owens. As Variety (not your usual source of track news)
reports: “NBC Sports continues its efforts at releasing documentaries with the debut of ‘More Than Gold: Jesse Owens and the 1936 Berlin Olympics.’ The one-hour documentary will debut Sunday, February 14, at 12:30 p.m. on NBC. The program will examine Jesse Owens’ historic performance at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany. Actor
Morgan Freeman does the narration….The documentary also features archival footage from the 1936 Berlin Games, including restored elements from ‘Olympia,’ the official film of the 1936 Olympics by German director
Leni Riefenstahl.†The movie won’t make track great again (as some candidate likes to say), but it won’t hurt the sport’s popularity. Meanwhile, T&FN editor
Garry Hill thinks our salvation is sexifying events for sake of spectator pleasure.
Check out his column. The truth? The sport hasn’t had legs since we lost the Soviets as geopolitical foil, and it doesn’t pay like MLB, NBA or NFL.
11 Responses
What do you mean track has NO LEGS!! In 2012-13 580,672 boys and 472,939 girls participated in high school track and field. The boys ranked 2nd to football in the number of participants and the girls ranked #1. Because of the head injury problem in football, boys track should soon over take football in the number of participants. Because Track and Field is encouraging kids to run jump and throw it will always rank #1 in my book regardless of what is happening on the international level.
I was in the crowd at the 1962 US vs Russia Track Meet held at Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto, CA. Many consider this to be the GREATEST Track Meet of all-time. 72,500 people showed up for the first day and 81,000 people for the last day. It was the greatest two day crowd to witness a non-Olympic track meet. Why did so many people show up to this track meet? It was the news media. The meet was front page news for weeks and on local television sports reports daily. Local sports pages and sports reports today are dominated by the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL. If you are lucky you will find results of a track meet buried on the last page and you will need a magnifying glass to see them.
Steve, you’re #1 comment is spot on. My friends have moved their kids over to track because of the concussion issues (actual and/or prevention) in football. My kid’s are small, so football is out for now, but everyone is on equal footing in track. You find an event(or events) to your liking and do what it takes for self-improvement, and you are still part of a team. All upside!
Track and Field can stand on it’s on popularity in high school, college, open and yes even masters. Maybe we don’t have the participation levels in masters that we would like to see, but it is still growing in participation.If you look at meets like the Senior Games and State Games you see a lot of interest. USATF does a poor job promoting masters track and field for their events.
Running in general is very popular! Just check out the number of road races and trail races every weekend. I run a lot of trail races and they draw between 300 and 600 runners a race and there are large numbers of over 40 to 70 age male and female runners.
That movie poster, with the hand in front of the face, reminds me of Gianmarco Tamberi. I’ve been watching too many HJ videos.
Jesse Owens is one of the greatest athletes of all times.
And athletics (T&F) is the “Queen of Sports” – starting from the ancient Olympic Games, till nowadays.
“Citius, Altius, Fortius”.
Sport for idealists.
“Athletics is luxury”, said Roger Bannister.
Waiting impatiently for this movie. Hope it will be as inspiring as “Chariots of fire”.
I agree, track & field is a great sport and very popular with kids for all of the reasons mentioned in the first six comments but overall, the sport has not done a good job of promoting itself. As a result, the media is only interested in covering a few “big” meets and spectator attendance is poor except for at a handful of places. Along with USATF and other groups we need to learn to work together to promote our sport so it can grow and get the same respect and support that the “major” sports get.
Luckily, they were able to find a Canadian runner to play Jesse Owens in “Race” .
Response to #2. Lucky spectator, but there is more to the story of how the Stanford TRACK team saved the Stanford FOOTBALL program with the US/USSR track meet.
See: http://www.ortmanmarchand.com/fsh.html
I did get to hear Jesse Owens speak at our 1971 National Jaycees Junior Champs T&F meet banquet in Bowling Green, OH, and also saw the 1936 Olympic stadium in Berlin, as well as the 1972 Olympic Stadium in Munich (in 1973, drats, missed it by a year).
As for Leni Riefenstahl, it is well worthwhile to watch her film “Olympia.” It is remarkably well crafted, as well as surprisingly balanced in its coverage of the US track team including Owens. Hitler can’t have been totally pleased with the result.
Payton Jordan hit the nail on the head as far as the problems facing “professional” track and field here in the USA. Speaking of Payton Jordan he was one “class act”. He lived here in Santa Barbara with his wife for awhile. He was a volunteer coach at SBCC and helped coach a number of masters athletes including myself.
I don’t know any sprinter that stands like that. That stance is irking me..LOL
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