Team USA track takes backseat in American interest

Bobby Poynter remembers a time when monitor and subject mattered within the Bay Space.

Poynter was on the scene when San Jose was generally known as Pace Metropolis. Now Poynter, 83, can’t title the athletes competing within the Tokyo Video games because the Olympics draw to an in depth with monitor and subject competitors all week.

Poynter isn’t alone.

Invoice Toomey, the 1968 Olympic decathlon champion, mentioned Wednesday the Olympic monitor occasions don’t really feel the identical as a result of he doesn’t know any of the names.

A sport that when had dominated headlines not enjoys the recognition it did with earlier generations of American followers. Whereas it stays an integral a part of the Tokyo Video games, the diversified Olympic program has created a subtle viewers at a time when the USA not guidelines a few of the marquee monitor occasions.

“For many who love monitor, it’s robust to see,” mentioned Steve Filios, longtime meet director of the Central Coast Part highschool championships.

It has nothing to do with the drama on the monitor, as illustrated Wednesday when Canadian Andre De Grasse gained the gold medal within the 200-meters dash forward of People Kenny Bednarek and Noah Lyles. The primary 4 runners broke the 20-second barrier in one other scorching second in Tokyo that features the unparalleled sprinting excellence of the Jamaican girls’s group.

The motion hasn’t been sufficient for Poynter, who gained a gold medal on the 1959 Pan-American Video games.

“The Olympics has gotten to the purpose that it’s a hodgepodge of every little thing,” he mentioned. “Monitor was the anchor sport however has been shoved to the facet.”

Poynter ran with the early stars at San Jose State and later coached a few of the South Bay’s nice Olympians, together with gold medalists Caitlyn Jenner (previously Bruce Jenner), Millard Hampton and Andre Phillips.

He’s a part of a time when the California monitor meets such because the Modesto Relays and Compton Invitational attracted massive crowds.

“Everyone knew who we have been,” Poynter mentioned.

Now, not a lot.

Even an Olympic champion like Toomey, 82, is extra keen on his grandson’s budding highschool soccer profession in Lake Tahoe than the motion in Tokyo.

It’s tough to fathom how rapidly monitor and subject has fallen off the sports activities map. The thrill ought to be constructing for the weekend. Friday, there are eight Olympic finals, together with the lads’s and girls’s 4X100 relays as soon as dominated by the USA.

The U.S.’s 130-member group is the biggest monitor contingent within the nation’s storied Olympic historical past. Outdoors of five-time Olympian Allyson Felix — and perhaps even together with her included — many basic sports activities followers don’t know the names of the athletes regardless of a few of their towering performances this week.

Outdated-schoolers like Poynter and Toomey may be forgiven for not embracing the Worldwide Olympic Committee’s pattern of introducing new sports activities reminiscent of browsing, skateboarding and sport climbing.

“They should cease including on these foolish occasions,” Toomey mentioned. “They want to return to fundamentals as a result of they’re killing the golden goose.”

The marginalization of monitor has been aided by ongoing doping scandals and corruption which have pressured followers to query the superhuman feats they’re seeing.

To this finish, monitor and subject has mirrored biking. U.S. fan curiosity in bike racing fell with the sordid Lance Armstrong drug scandal.

Toomey, who has a grasp’s diploma from Stanford, sees the introduction {of professional} athletes into the Video games as one more reason monitor has misplaced its prominence.

“What the Olympics delivered to your lounge was actual folks doing actual issues,” he mentioned of previous generations.

Toomey competed in one of the important instances in Olympic historical past. On the Mexico Metropolis Video games in 1968, the Bay Space dominated the dash world.

Jim Hines of Oakland gained the 100 meters race.

San Jose State’s Tommie Smith gained the gold medal and teammate John Carlos the bronze within the 200 meters. Through the medal ceremony, they staged a protest in opposition to racial inequality that continues to resonate a half-century later.

One other San Jose State sprinter, Lee Evans, turned the primary particular person to interrupt 44 seconds within the 400 meters to win one other gold medal for Pace Metropolis.

Within the Bay Space, monitor and subject fell by the wayside after San Jose State disbanded its program in 1988. Legendary coach Bud Winter had produced 27 Olympians in his 29-year tenure.

“It killed every little thing within the Bay Space,” Poynter mentioned.

The Bruce Jenner Traditional in San Jose had attracted worldwide stars and media via the Seventies and ‘80s but in addition went into decline after virtually twenty years.

Steve Nelson, San Jose Metropolis School monitor coach, mentioned subsequent got here a lack of youth membership groups all through the Bay Space due to the associated fee to hire tracks.