Hicham El Guerrouj – why is he becoming a sensation? | running race

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Hicham El Guerrouj – why is he becoming a sensation?

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Question:

I must admit I haven’t been following the Olympics, but it seems news sites on the web are getting crazy over El Guerrouj; what’s the big deal? El Guerrouj seems to have captured minds and hearts all over the web. Yes I know he won two olympic gold medals, but that swimmer guy Phelp won a handful or more the other day and yet there wasn’t as much sensationalism over him. Is it that its the first time to be done in 80 years?

Response:

I guess you haven’t been following the Olympics, newspapers and TV ads and why your puzzled. Phelps has already done some commercials. These two plus others have done very well. I would guess the degree of sensationalism is proportional to the sport’s popularity. Since your probably into running because you are reading and posting here, you would most likely hear about El Guerrouj more than Phelps. The newspapers and TV were loaded in particular with Phelps after his ballsy statement about getting more gold than Spitzer before the Olympics started. There was so much Phelps hype that I was almost rooting against him, well almost; it was the daily, hourly media push that pissed me off. As for publicity look at basketball, we sent some boys to do a man’s job and did not once again swoop down for the gold. Sure we medalled, but we put a very poor team together for international style basketball. I wonder if the NBA will learn much about the value of the 3-point shot or continue to play for the stuff? Some minds seem to think we can take just about any 12 pro players and win. Personally I’m glad to see better quality in the game. As for El Guerrouj double it was a remarkable effort and not done since Purmi(sp) is along time. And the 1,500 had to be one of the most exciting running races of the Olympics. I thought the 5,000 was going to have an excitingly close finish until El Guerrouj turned on the afterburner. -DougF

Response:

There wasn’t ? We mustn’t have been watching the same olympics. Medal count doesn’t in itself mean a whole lot. There are some sports where it’s possible to enter several sports that have similar physiological requirements (e.g. 100m, 4×100m, 100m hurdles, 200m) and competing in one does not have too much impact on the other. In distance racing, you don’t have all these subtle variations, and each race takes a lot out of the athlete, so one can’t enter 6 events and win 6 medals. In part, I think the above mindset reflects what’s been going on in the press and it’s very misguided. The idea that the best athlete is the one who wins the most medals is fundamentally flawed, because some athletes can win several medals by entering half a dozen subtle variations of essentially the same thing, whereas others do not have that option (e.g. how many gold medals can a basketball player, a weightlifter, or a wrestler reasonably hope to win ?) Is it that its the first time to be done in 80 years?

Well that’s part of it, but the real point is that it’s a very impressive achievement, because the events are not that close together on the scale. It’s like a sprinter winning gold in the 100m and the 400m. Cheers, — Donovan Rebbechi http://pegasus.rutgers.edu/~elflord/

Response:

I must admit I haven’t been following the Olympics, but it seems news sites on the web are getting crazy over El Guerrouj; what’s the big deal?

He’s much cuter than Phelps (and he’s a damn fine runner). Tim —

Response:

Only the 2nd runner in history that has doubled on the Olympic 1500m and 5000m, convincingly sprinting past a great runner on the last 100m? Yeah, I’d say that’s sensational. —

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