I've been meaning to write about this for days, since I first read this column by C.W. Nevius.
San Francisco played host last weekend to Nike Women's Marathon. The biggest story out of the race should be that Arien O'Connell won, running faster than the "elite" racers who started 20 minutes before her. But here's the nasty catch: Even after being the fastest female runner in a group of 20,000 women, O'Connell didn't even place in the top four. And Nike dared to only call her "a winner." Get it? She's not the winner. She's "a winner."
The winner was officially 11 minutes slower than O'Connell. That's right. O'Connell beat the official winner by 11 minutes. She flat out passed her. But, the winner was officially part of this "elite" group. And if you don't register as part of the "elite" group of racers, you can't qualify to win the marathon. Why? Because the elite runners don't know that the non-elites are could actually be competitive and try to run a solid race.
Seriously?
Nike, how pathetic. Especially when on this very same day, your press release said that this marathon was "one of Nike's proudest examples of how we're committed to fueling the power of sport in the lives of women."
And forget this business of calling Arien O' Connell a winner. We all know she won the race, fair and square. Sure, she ended up getting a trophy and a prize. But only after Nike was under a firestorm for not doing the right thing (and even this took several days). They were getting a bad PR rap, and they knew they needed to stop it.
And for the love of pete, what a story it could have been if they had declared her the winner from the get go. Isn't that what you'd call good sportsmanship?
Nike, you can take your glossy, girl-power commercials and your swanky stores with women's athletic gear. Take your PR quotes about empowerment and celebrating female athletes. And try to get someone else -- like those elite runners -- to believe you.
I'll take my ASIC running shoes and running cap, my Adidas running pants and random jerseys, and run like the wind.
And guess what? I don't need you to tell me to just do it.
