The oldest track & field blog on the internet

Thursday, February 07, 2008

Millrose thumbs-down

Earlier this week Let's Run gave a thumbs down to poor attendance at the Millrose Games:
Nice fields were assembled and yet only some 12,000 odd fans bothered to show up. Maybe New Yorkers were too busy getting ready for the Super Bowl but it always is mind-boggling to us that so many track fans will say track isn't popular. The same people who complain about it are the same people who won't pay to go to Millrose.
In a response, Jeremy Mosher at Runnerville posted under the headline "Horses Not Lead To Water Unlikely To Drink":
A point raised in the course of that down-turned digit: lots of events at Millrose that have little appeal = 5-hour trudge-fest. What other (popular) professional sporting event lasts 5 hours? Even baseball thinks that’s an unwieldy length. Here are some salient numbers, based on the schedule posted on the Millrose website: 5-hour event. 97 minutes of scheduled professional events on the track. That ain’t right. I am a track fan. A big fan. A Wake-Up-At-Ungodly-Hours-to-Watch-Meets-Live-on-WCSN fan. But I hate Millrose. Because it is boring. And I probably will not go back a 4th time after 3 straight stinkers.
This same complaint is why I rarely attend college invitationals. Too long, too pointless. I too have gotten up at 3 a.m. to watch live track from the other side of the world, and if I'm not willing to drive an hour down the road...well, we have a problem.

1 comment:

Track Evangelist said...

Uhhh...PGA events like numerous day and about 5 hours on Sunday. The difference is the event is entertaining especially the large championship events. Like what you've done with your blog. I'm a fellow track blogger. There aren't very many of us, email me at trackevangelist@preracejitters.com