That American distance runners are not competitive on the international roads and tracks is at this point a given. The last Olympic medal by any U.S. athlete earned at a distance of 5,000 meters or longer was Lynn Jennings' bronze at 10,000 meters in 1992. Before that, go back to Joan Benoit's gold in the inaugural women's marathon at the 1984 Olympics. This year, American marathoners hit their nadir, when only one man and one woman met the Olympic qualifying standard in the men's and women's trials. Many reasons have been proffered as to why Americans have performed so poorly for so many years.
Truth be told, the reasons are many and varied.
Calif. Moore said that Americans' passionate desire to succeed is, in fact, our undoing. We are working too hard, he said, and shouldn't try to imitate the work ethic of the Kenyans. Higdon surely exceeded such limits regularly when he competed as a national-class steeplechaser and marathon runner in the 1960s. Mark, too, Alberto Salazar, who almost literally raced to his death and practically set the standard for what it means to train monomaniacally. Now that he's coaching national class athletes rather than competing against them, Salazar advocates fewer miles, to the extent that Olympic marathoner Anne Marie Lauck felt she wasn't working hard enough under his guidance and changed coaches.