Biggest example is the “Ban Kenya” argument I’ve heard even from people that spend their entire lives researching doping, yet, won’t even take a second to wonder “hmmm, why *is* that number so high?” their brains just lazily refer to them as cheaters and not the likelihood of other factors.

When in reality they’re just reinforcing flawed beliefs towards specific countries/athletes, and that they should be acknowledging that the problem lies on a much more systemic level, educating (especially) children who should be aware of what to expect if they ever want to become a pro athlete.

Yet, they have no idea what the root issue(s) even is nor are they interested in stripping nuance from the research they do. Instead of modeling their suspicions based off of incentives that cause T&F to be a microdosing PED-fest, they’d rather lazily hinge on overused statistics to push narratives

But the bigger outlets that identify as “clean sport” supporters are either so needlessly radical or simply don’t know enough about their own topic to where they shut down the moment you call them out on their flawed rhetoric. They seem so passionate about making elite sports a “better place” (3/?)

The concept of clean sport is inherently virtuous and in theory should be encouraged when it comes to any level of sport. However, not only is enforcing clean sport effectively unviable at the hyperelite level (yes, HS and College included) imo due to a ton of factors.

T&F just has a chronic archival problem in general. So many great races, results, etc you just can't access unless you cough up a fee, and only recently have some companies *finally* gotten around to uploading races that should have been accessible for years now.

It sucks that outlets like Runnerspace, FloTrack, and LetsRun have all gone of out of their way to show that they're not meant to be taken seriously as trusted media outlets, and that their bizarre biases and lack of journalistic integrity create this further distrust the public has for them.

It really is by every metric one of the weirdest scandals I've come across, not just because of Shelby herself, but the almost unanimous support she's received from the greater running media scene as well.

I would wager Katie Ledecky is arguably the best endurance-based athlete to ever exist; reasonably better than Jakob frankly speaking.

Not just by medals, but she possesses the top 19/20 marks in the 800m freestyle and 20/20 all-time marks in the 1500m free.

Quite literally unheard of stats haha.

(Basically) Scammed $16k on GoFundMe, used an (at the time) minor's platform to manipulate public perception of her, got multiple local outlets to write fluff pieces for her, and overall continues to spit in the faces of everyone as if they don't know anything about the sport in the first place.

Seriously, what athlete has her aerobic engine while simultaneously being capable of outkicking someone like Faith Kipyegon in an Olympic final? She's also comically good in XC too, like the woman has no flaws in her running style atm.

So in a way, I feel almost compelled to step up and do the talking/research, but it genuinely just feels like it goes to waste every time, and I just get sad/unmotivated until I work on a project I actually enjoy working on again lmao.

I think the other part is that I'm someone who mainly likes to make documentaries/pieces on weird/interesting things in the sport, but I also noticed there's just this giant void what it comes to actual, insightful criticism on parts of the sport that can really use a reality check fwiw.

Same thing happened with my FloTrack vid too tbh. Barely reached a notable audience and had 0 impact/responses from the greater running scene on social media.

Genuinely not sure what it takes at this point to get the right eyes on these messages, but I'm starting to just give up entirely on it ngl

I thought about adding a section about Ruth Chepng'etich's marathon record, but I think for focus's sake, I'll just save that for another time.

I think we're in an era right now where more people than ever are trying to grow Track and Field, which is great! However, there seems to be a lot of overthinking/misdirection, and I feel like that's just going to cause more questions than provide any answers down the line.