From Robert Johnson, LetsRun.com, 8-10-2022:
"Last Thursday evening USATF head Max Siegel held a press conference with Olympic and civil rights icons John Carlos and Tommie Smith, while the competition was going on. And it was announced only 50 minutes before it took place. I still can’t believe it.
Yes, it was ‘only’ the semifinals of the men’s 5000 and the qualifications rounds of the javelin and triple jump, but give me a break. If we are wondering why roughly only 10,000 people worldwide wanted to pay and travel to the Worlds each night in Eugene, isn’t this the perfect example of it? The head of USATF doesn’t even want to watch the competition.
At the same time, he was making it clear that he had zero PR plan to try to use this meet as a springboard to elevate the sports of track and field / athletics in the US.
Shouldn’t Smith and Carlos’ appearance in Eugene have been trumpeted up and promoted to the press weeks or months in advance, not minutes?
That’s not the actions of a halfway competent CEO, let alone a ‘visionary’ who received more than $4.2 million dollars in compensation in 2018 even though he leads a non-profit with a modest budget of less than $40 million. Many SEC Athletic Directors run programs with budgets north of $120 million and don’t even make a million a year.
