Meb and American T&F as a Hegemonic Institution

Happy Friday everyone! The following post is a brief preview of what I'm working on at the moment. Depending on how well this piece goes it may be used as my portfolio entry for the MA portfolio. In any case, these are my initial thoughts on the matter, well, some of them at least. One thing to keep in mind is that this is not complete (on a couple of levels). As of November 6th I have not punched in that data the supports my claims. Hopefully that will be up by Monday morning. In the mean time, enjoy!
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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.

He's since posted an apology of sorts entitled "What I Got Wrong About Keflezighi" but his original post still highlights the issue at hand

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.

It seems from my memory and my research that no one had a problem with Meb being the first American to win an Olympic medal in the Olympic marathon since 1976. So what's the difference? Well 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."

I know what you're thinking, and I'm not trying to be the racism police here, especially because there are only a handful of ignorant media types that seem to be holding this idea. 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 of the two most popular running magazines in the US: Runner's World and Track and Field News.