roads, and that’s not something that’s going to change anytime soon. While I don’t offer any long-term solutions, I will offer that it might be a problem that can’t be fixed with a checkbook.

SHOE COMPANIES

Even without American-only prize money, fairness is still an issue. Inmy opinion, over-the-table, out-in-theopen prize money is the best way to compensate athletes. As I like to say, “Put the money at the finish line.”

The running shoe contract is what most runners depend on for income, and it has created a kind of caste system for track and field athletes. On the top are the folks who ran really well in college, who have talent to burn, and get signed up as soon as they graduate. There aren’t too many of these people. They are Bob Kennedy, Adam Goucher, Suzy Hamilton, and the like. I know I just said this problem might not be fixable with a checkbook, but not having to work ata “real” job a single day in your entire adult life has to make some kind of difference.

Alisa Hill, a national-class 800meter runner, who once had to go on Medicaid, was once asked about income disparities in the sport. “I don’t like to say disparaging things about other runners, but the fact that they have good deals has a lot to do with what keeps them on top.”

In other words, it’s like a “king of the hill” game. It’s hard to rise in the caste. Sure it can be done, but those

who are on top tend to stay there because of the advantages a good shoe contract brings.

Of course, life is like that. The wealthy kid with the good education has a better chance at a good career than the poorer kid without the same benefits. But when you’re in a sport where you’ re always fighting for table scraps, the difference between the haves and the have-nots becomes more apparent, with the have-nots working a day job, getting less sleep, and so on.

Consider the situation of Jason Pyrah, atwo-time Olympian who had this to say after he won the indoor national mile title and was asked about his not having a shoe contract:

Iwas telling somebody that I was the only guy in the field who was unattached. The money’s not out there. I’mnot really willing to run for nothing. I’m tired of the shoe companies wanting you to run for nothing or wanting you to run for a pair of shoes. That’s the way we, as athletes, should treat the sport? We should say just use me as a marketing tool and not get paid for it? …A lot of these other sports are getting paid huge contracts for doing that kind of thing. Why go and advertise for them and get paid nothing? I really think that the money’s out there, and we just got to make them pay for it. Bring some of that money back into the sport… .The rewards still aren’t there like we’d like them to be. It kind of gives us

March/April 2002