Saucony was announced as the official sponsor of the 2009 FootLocker Cross Country championships (http://www.american-trackandfield.com/read_new/saucony-named-official-sponsor-foot-locker-cross-country-championships), in a press release issued October 1, 2009, by FootLocker, the founder and owner of the high school cross country series. For Saucony, one of the premier performance running footwear companies, this makes a huge amount of sense, and gives the keen observer a pretty good read on the future focus of the brand. Saucony, has achieved one of the highest percentages of sales growth in the running footwear biz,in 2008, with a double digit percent increase in running footwear sales. Their cross country racing shoe, the Shay XC, was among the best selling XC racing shoes of 2008. This is the second year of involvement by Saucony in the FootLocker Cross Country series. Saucony has also been a two year sponsor of the Saucony/ATF Summer Cross Country training series, a twelve week training series, produced in print, on the web and digitally, for the high school, college and open cross country enthusiast, which reached over 300,000 athletes and coaches in the summer of 2009.
The fact is that the FootLocker series has had most of the top American distance runners race in the series over the past three decades. From Charles Alexander to Suzy Favor Hamilton to Bob Kennedy to Dathan Ritzenhein to Jordan Hasay. Just on those historical facts alone, the FootLocker is the Horatio Alger story of American distance running. The fact is that if you line up from a little school in Wisconsin, and make the top seven boys in the Midwest race or from a little school in South Dakota and make the top seven girls in the Midwest race, you are going to the nationals. Period. No mathmatical equations, no prognostications, nothing else, but putting one foot in front of the other for 5,000 meters, over some of the toughest cross country courses, dueling with whatever weather one is dealt. No excuses asked and none given.
Congrats once again to the folks at FootLocker, who have kept this series going for three plus decades now, and a tip of the hat to Saucony for staying with the FootLocker Cross Country series.
For more information on the FootLocker Cross Country for 2009: http://www.footlockercc.com
For more on the Saucony ShayXC: http://www.saucony.com/ShayXC
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