It is time to do away with national teams for individual sports and let the athletes run, swim, bike, ski, jump, box, skate, etc… for themselves or their club teams rather than for their countries at Olympics and World Championship competitions.
Either way…bad ass race for Lagat. Now to see if he can take the 5000 as well.
The answer to your question is yes, if he’s a citizen he’s american. But…
I have always believed there should be no countries in the Olympics. You don’t do it for your country you do it because it’s what you do. I also believe there should be no team or judged sports. If it’s not Higher, Faster, Stronger it’s out.
Were the 1500 finals aired last night or are they tonight? I’ve been watching, but missed most of last night’s coverage.
Edit: sorry, I mean in the US on the Versus network.
and who’s funding the guys at the olympics?
was great to see lagat win despite (because of?) that nasty push from webb with 100m left. they must really like each other. go lagat!
They should be aired today.
Were the 1500 finals aired last night or are they tonight? I’ve been watching, but missed most of last night’s coverage.
Edit: sorry, I mean in the US on the Versus network.
It must be tonight because I watched last night and no 1500. That women’s 100 finish was amazing. I personally think they gave the gold to the wrong woman.
There’s a fantastic, crystal clear live web stream here:
http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/29082007/58/osaka-2007-osaka-live.html
LIVE video
Coverage of the 1500m final was perfect.
Thanks for putting “spoiler” in the title, some of us were planning on watching when we got home from work this evening.
depends where his citizenship is.
Its pretty ignorant to assume every American is white.
Equally as ignorant to assume every black person is African.
Lagat is a naturalized US citizen and will continue to compete as a member of USATF.
They’ll air tonight. For $4.95, you can watch the meet live in almost entirety at wcsn.com.
And still an American win. He’s hardly the first east African runner to move himself and his family to a country where he feels like there’s a better future (who was the guy who ended up running for Denmark for years?).
If it was only about money, the paycheck would have been way, way better if he’d taken Qatar citizenship like others have.
DAMMIT!! Don’t put a frickin’ spoiler in the title itself!! This was the one race I’ve been looking forward to the most!!!
ARGH!!!
define “American”
.
What about the foreigners who all went to American schools and competed for American colleges before putting on their country’s flag?
Eh. Citizenship is good enough for me.
I don’t think it’s ignorant to assume that someone who was a Kenyan citizen until 2005 is African. I could, however make a case for you making the assumption that the OP was referring to color.
In any case I think it’s a valid question. In a case like this one Lagat’s performance is not an indication of the United States athletic program because he was born, raised, and started his athletic career in Kenya.
I guess I need to put more thought into it but my inclination is to agree with some of the other posters here that “national teams” are outdated.
Steve
I know Canada has fast tracked a number of foreign athletes through the immigration process so they can compete as Canadians. While legal, I question the ethics of this.
I agree that it would be nice if nationalism was down played at the Olympics.
There are two scenarios at play.
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Foreign national comes to US, for some reason decides to stay (gets married to American, has kids, goes to US college, home country is in civil war, etc. etc)…they become US citizen and race under US flag. PNF is a triathlete example of this. Meb Keflezigihi is a distance runner example.
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Foreign national come to US, lives here, trains here…but still races for home country. Lots of Aussies, Europeans do this.
Do either of these scenarios occur with the same frequency in other countries?
“Do either of these scenarios occur with the same frequency in other countries”
I’ll guess that scenario #1 happens elsewhere frequently.
A lot of the scenario #2 people are probably in US colleges under the scholarship programs. This is more of an American phenomena than elsewhere.
I was not referring to color. As I mentioned, my opinion is that the “national team” concept is indeed outdated.
Despite Lagat competing for the Kenyan national team until 2004, he was actually an “American” for practical purposes. He graduated from Washington State Univ in 2000, and has lived in Arizona since 2002-with a coach who was born and educated in China.
Sports, like nearly everything else, has crossed international borders and therefore it seems that a rah-rah for the flag every few years at a world championships or Olympics seems a bit arbitrary.