There’s no easy way to put it, so let me just begin by offering a profuse, sincere apology to my faithful followers (are you still somewhere there?) for keeping to myself since… since… November 2023!
On the positive side, an eleven-month break may represent a sort of record, and a BIG one at that, so far as the forumbloggen is concerned. It’s also true that not much seems to have happened since my last observations almost a year ago. Israel is still waging war, Russian athletes are still being discriminated, and the progressive-minded sports community is still awaiting the inaugural edition of the Enhanced Games.
Yesterday’s sad news finally prompted me to break the radio silence. In fact, an even sadder news item was published the same day: an elderly (Finnish) marathon runner died in a race held in Romania. While marathoners have kept collapsing and even dying since the invention of the 40-plus-km event, surely a line must be drawn, the sooner the better. You see, yesterday’s other marathon news was… sorry, I mean, it should have been a rather wonderful piece of news: a Kenyan female athlete smashed the world record by two minutes! Ain’t that great, as they probably put it in Chicago. Consider, by contrast, yesterday’s ‘Super Hot’ gossip on an American ‘World Famous Message Board’ – the Kenyan runner ‘just ruined the sport of marathon.’
Yes, that’s correct. Instead of praising the truly extraordinary performance to the heavens, dozens or even hundreds of self-appointed track experts chose to anonymously heap drug-related filth on the runner who dared to be better than, say, any Finnish male marathoner ever. Admittedly, ugly rumors scatter the history of athletics, but what’s the use of winning major races in a BIG way if you are automatically considered a lousy cheat? Conclusions ought to be drawn, at last – drastic conclusions, in my not-so-humble opinion.
Scrap the marathon! Scrap it as a universally accepted reference point for human endurance! Apart from being an unnaturally long and therefore unhealthy endeavor, especially when run on asphalt, the marathon is burdened by imperial and, by extension, racist heritage, as any amateur historian of the 1908 games can attest to. Why should the distance between the Windsor Castle and the White (sic) City Stadium still dictate anyone’s race plans?
While my private plea may well go unheeded, many of today’s road-related troubles will hopefully soon be swept away by the Enhanced Games. Winners will be justly celebrated, no-one will fall by the wayside, and the obsession with certain numbers will become obsolete as women too will routinely dip under 2 hours.
