Daniel
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You may have read the headlines: Meb Keflezighi became the first American to win the New York City Marathon since the great Alberto Salazar did it in 1982. Almost instantaneously the naysayers jumped in to the conversation. "Keflezighi isn't really an American" they said, "because he wasn't born here." In fact, Keflezighi (I'll just call him Meb from now on, that's what his racing bib reads afterall) was born in Eritrea, a small east African nation who's southern border wraps itself around the northern border of distance running giant Ethiopia.
Darren Rovell of CNBC wrote that Meb is
like a ringer who you hire to work a couple hours at your office so that you can win the executive softball league.
Granted, Meb was not born in the United States, but neither was Salazar. A similar point of contention has been pointed to in the case of Bernard Lagat, the Kenyan-born athlete who gained American citizenship just in time to win two gold medals at the 2007 world track and field championships, but that's a little different since (and this should be big for any detractors) Meb moved to the States as a child and never did any running before he came here.
Here's a quote from the Washington Post article covering Meb's 2004 Olympic silver medal (also in the marathon):
Washington Post:
Keflezighi is one of a handful of U.S. medalists who were born in other countries, including gymnast Annia Hatch (two silver medals) of Cuba, and swimmer Lenny Krayzelburg (gold) and synchronized swimmer Anna Kozlova (two bronzes) originally from Russia.
In 2004 Meb became the first American to win an Olympic medal in the marathon since 1976. And people had a problem with him then (note Runner's World cover story in September 2005 discussing the aftermath of the Olympic Games) but it didn't seem quite as biting then. One difference could be that in 2004 the next closest American was 12th place and a solid four minutes back. In the New York Marathon the next closest American was Ryan Hall (who has become this country's distance running darling over the past year or two). Hall was only 1:21 back of Meb and was part of the lead pack for most of the race, whereas in 2004 Meb was essentially in a four-man race from around mile twenty on.
Hall's race was indeed impressive despite the fact that his 2:10 was roughly four minutes off of his personal best time. In the marathon, the race is so long and each course is so different, anything around 2:10 or better for someone with Hall's experience can be considered a success. That said, the US had a good day all around. Not only did Meb win and Hall come in fourth but Americans finished 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 12th, 14th, 15th, then held every spot but one from 17-33 (with the vast majority of the post-Meb finishers being white guys). Even for a race run in the states, that's exceptional. And as such, I can't help but read the comments of people like Rovell as something along the lines of "but why aren't we talking about the WHITE GUY?!. There must be a way we can highlight his performance by knocking down the guy that won." That seems a little oversensitive, let's look at it another way.
Most members of the media aren't as outwardly mean toward athletes the way Rovell was. But most people can't really help acting upon their social "racist training" that informs their actions. My point is that the ideology of this country (and this is certainly global to a certain extent as well, though that notion is a bit Euro-centric in itself) is such that the white male must be the hegemone. Now we all know that this is a construction. By sheer numbers white folks are not the majority, but the System is set up in such a way that he is the dominator of power. We can look at some less obvious examples than Rovell to point to the fact that distance running in America is purposefully set up as a white-dominated institution. Whether this has been set up so for profitability alone or the perpetuation as white, heterosexual, male as the norm in this country to further hegemony is up to debate (of course the two are probably linked), but let's look at some examples so we can understand this better.
Take magazine covers from the popular running magazine Runner's World, a publication geared toward the casual jogger and the running fan (though not really the fanatic). In other words, RW targets as wide of an audience as it can. The vast majority of cover images are of distance runners, the one exception to this was Lolo Jones in February of 2009, when she was featured for her recommendations for getting "Great Abs." Considering the number of successful American distance runners (since this is an American publication, it makes sense that the covergirls and coverguys would be Americans most of the time) of color (like Bernard Lagat, Meb, Abdi Abdirahman, Khadevis Robinson) one would expect to see a significant number of people of color appearing on Runner's World covers. This is not the case.
Here's how the numbers break down. Since January 2006 - GoogleBooks goes from then until December 2008, and my own collection fills it out until the present - there have been only three people of color appearing on RW covers. Meb appeared in September of 2005, as mentioned above, and again in November 2007. Meanwhile, America's distance running goldenboy Ryan Hall has appeared on two covers (September 2008 and November 2009), the same number as Meb, despite being a professional less than half as many years. Kara Goucher represents this phenomenon similarly. She burst on to the scene at the 2007 T&F World Championships and has appeared on two RW covers since (June 2008 and May 2009). These two are also overwhelmingly the most seen faces in internet banner advertisements on popular running websites and the pages of RW itself.
This is clearly political economy at work. Those in charge of choosing these covers or spokespeople are influenced by the market, who are influenced heteronormativity and the normativity of whiteness. In this way, I feel that distance running as a sport is marketed as a white-dominated institution and reflects the general hegemony of the System we live in.
