A few days ago Elliot Denman made a comment about Gary
Smith calling our sport oddball.

While the article on Al, which I thought was very
good, was not exactly a positive billboard for our
sport, it clearly brought race walking to the masses
unlike we have seen in recent times.

I wondered what the impact would be on the hit count
to my site. (My site comes up first in google under
race walk, so I figure its a reasonable measure of
interest) During the last week, the hit count only
went up about 10%. In contrast over the Olympic
Trials it went up 300+%. (Yes I will get the video up
eventually)

While this is completely unscientific, it doesn't
paint a good picture. It tells me people who are not
already interested in our sport will not easily be
convinced to take an interest.

Elliot commented on the other less popular sports.
Hammer throw, pole vault, etc. I don't believe they
are in any better shape and probably are in worse
shape as there is no base for there sport to support
it. At least we have the health benefits and masters
movement.

So what does it mean for our sport? Who knows. I
think we have a small nice little sport that has some
wonderful people in it, ok and a few oddballs ;). I
reluctently question if there really is anything we
can do to massively grow the sport.

Just some thoughts,
Jeff Salvage
www.racewalk.com




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