no visa championship series indoors ?

[tm71]

the usaft website has no mention of a visa championship series for indoors. i guess with no world class meets besides boston and usatf there cant be a "series". so much for the olympic development of the young talent !

[ATK]

What happened to Tyson and MSG?

[guru]

What happened to Tyson and MSG?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/08/sport ... games.html

[Marlow]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/08/sports/espn-will-show-millrose-games.html

The Millrose Games will be broadcast on tape delay on ESPN in February

Cuz we know how excited people would be to watch a Bowl Game that they had already read about in the paper that morning! Oh wait, there won't be any print coverage, so it WILL be 'virtually' live (thanks NBC for THAT novel idea!).

If we want to wring our hands about T&F's place in the public consciousness, I'd be much more concerned with this than whether or not Sports Illustrated included one of our athletes in one of their articles . . . Getting rid of high-level indoor meets and then not broadcasting (live) the few that remain IS an issue! Indoor meets serve an important role in keeping our sport visible and viable.

[gh]

and if you read the story in its entirety, you'll note that it's being televised only because USATF is shouldering the production costs. Unfortunately, this doesn't reflect any sea-change in attitude by the gods of TV-land.

[guru]

It will be available live, as it was last year.

[MJR]

I think the Visa sponsorship may have ended. At very least, it has been altered. For the 1st time, you can use any type of CC to pay your membership dues & that was one of the major points to the old contract.

[Master Po]

Here is a link to USATF's page for the indoor series, with broadcast dates/times, meet web sites, etc.:

http://www.usatf.org/Events---Calendar/ ... /Home.aspx

Using my "track is declining if not dead/keep already low expectations low/anything is better than nothing" standard of evaluation, I guess this 3-meet series could be OK, if well-presented and well-attended. And, using my "keep hopes for anything at a minimum" set of expectations, it would still be nice to have one more meet in this series, so that the indoor season at this level in the USA would be all of one full month.

[polevaultpower]

What happened to Tyson?

I wonder which events will be offered at which meets? Sucks to be an athlete whose event is only being offered at USAs, especially if you live in an area of the US where indoor meets are scarce or where colleges are not friendly to letting in post-collegiate athletes.

[lonewolf]

What happened to Tyson? .

I have Tyson on my schedule Feb 8-9, 2013

[ATK]

What happened to Tyson? .

I have Tyson on my schedule Feb 8-9, 2013

As in the USATF classic from last year.

[tandfman]

There's been a two-day meet in Fayetteville in February for quite a few years. I believe it was there before it became part of the USATF's series and I'm not surprised that it will be there even it no longer is part of the USATF's series. But if it isn't, the professional fields are not likely to be quite as good, especially sandwiched as it is between Boston and Millrose. Back in the day, runners thought nothing of running every weekend in the indoor season, sometimes more than once. You don't see that much lately.

[gh]

.... Back in the day, runners thought nothing of running every weekend in the indoor season, sometimes more than once. You don't see that much lately.

Back in the day, forget more than once; how about more than twice!

I remember a legendary trip which found a large group of us at Millrose on Friday night around 1980, flying to Montréal on Saturday morning (w/ Jean Beliveau on the plane!), riding a bus to Ottawa for meet there on Saturday night, then Sunday morning bus back to Montréal for a meet in Montréal on Sunday afternoon (at which the Walker/Bayi "rematch" finally happened 5-6 years too late).

Nobody thought much about it.

I do remember when we got to the stadium in Montréal on Sunday afternoon it was -17F (c-30C).

[tm71]

thanks for the replies and discussion guys. when i checked the usatf site yesterday morning it had not updated the indoor schedule yet. so just three big meets and just like last year some of the coverage is taped delayed, but with live internet coverage. i watched the espn3 coverage for the ncaa indoor last year and their coverage was quite good, plus the picture did not freeze that much as it did on u tube or universal sports.com in the past. overall it is disappointing to see only three big meets on the us circuit. some of it might be the post olympic malaise, some of it the declining interest in indoor meets in general and some it the tough economic times world wide.