Trevor Barron wins 20,000 meter Race Walk, by Elliott Denman, note by Larry Eder

Zillions of Americans walk.
 
A fraction of them run.
 
So just why has running taken over as the sport of choice for so many Americans and the sport of walking been relegated to afterthought status?
 
I’ve been waiting for the answer much of my life.
 
Alberto Salazar was asked why Nike has never thrown its incredible innovative genius into designing shoes that walkers would appreciate – and would surely rush out to buy in astounding quantities ?
 
And they’d be shoes which might also prove to be just the right thing for those who walk for sport?
 
Alberto’s answer was that the walking sport carries so little interest among Americans – and fellow pedestrians everywhere – that the sales of those amazingly innovative and still-to-be-created shoes some people would like to see would amount to little more than bubkus
 
To this, my feeling is that Alberto’s response amounts to bubkus.
 
It is often said that “The Runnng Boom” began the moment Frank Shorter completed the 385th yard after the 26th mile of the 1972 Olympic Marathon in Munich.
 
That’s bubkus, too.
 
Check out your history.

The first “Running Boom” really began the day after Johnny Hayes was declared the winner of the 1908 London Olympic marathon when Dorando Pietri was helped over the finish and then disqualified.
 
Soon the sports pages of the pre-World War I era were filled with the exploits of all manner of running notables.  Races popped up everywhere.  Everyday folks decided it was cool to run.
 
The running sport zoomed.
 
It began heating up again in the 1960s.  A Minnesota man, Leonard “Buddy” Edelen had the audacity to train hard as any man had ever done, and wound up breaking the world record.
 
But Edelen never did win the Olympics and Shorter did and that’s his why his exploits quickly retreated into the shadows.
 
Fast forward to the final day of June 2012.
 
Just one American has ever won the Olympic 5000 meters (Bob Schul in 1964.) Just one American has ever won the Olympic 10,000 meters (Billy Mills in 1964.) Just one American has ever won the Olympic 3000-meter steeplechase (Horace Ashenfelter in 1952.) And just one American – since Johnny Hayes in 1908 – has won the Olympic marathon (Shorter in ’72.)
 
But no American has ever walked to victory in the Olympic Games (well other than George Bonhag in the 1906 1500 meters….and the 1906 Olympics were strictly unofficial, anyway).
 
So what would actually happen if an American ever walked to victory in the Olympic Games? (At any of the Games’ three events, men’s and women’s 20K, men’s 50k.)
 
Celebrations everywhere? Ticker tape parades? Joy supreme throughout the land?
 
Not very darn likely, mind you, but it never hurts to possess (as every Nike person apparently has) a very good imagination.
 
Just one American walker has ever finished as high as fourth in the 20K at Olympics. That was Rudy Haluza in 1968.
 
Do we have another chance at doing anything like that anytime soon?
 
Well, who in the heavens really knows?
 
But maybe-maybe-maybe the answer happens to be yes.