It Had To Happen

Some yahoo at CNBC.com named Darren Rovell, who writes their Sports Biz blog, put up a short post titled "Marathon’s headline win is empty". Noting that Meb was not born in the USA,

Keflezighi’s country of origin is Eritrea, a small country in Africa. He is an American citizen thanks to taking a test and living in our country.

Nothing against Keflezighi, but he’s like a ringer who you hire to work a couple hours at your office so that you can win the executive softball league.

As someone at Let's Run pointed out, this is jingoistic, not racist. It's also ill-informed. Track fans know that Meb emigrated at the age of 12, hardly a ringer, and had all the "benefits" of US society.

I'm willing to bet the house that Rovell didn't know the previous American (male) NYC champ, Alberto Salazar, was also not born in the USA and is a naturalized citizen. Heck, for that matter the last American male Olympic marathon medalist before Meb, Frank Shorter, wasn't born in the USA.

And the American medalist prior to Shorter? Johnny Hayes in 1908. Born in New York City...to Irish immigrants. Dirty foreigners!