By Toni Reavis, @ToniReavis

He’s back, or at least trying.  Now 31 years old, two-time Olympian Nick Symmonds is working hard to return to the top ranks of American middle distance running after an avulsion fracture in his left knee kept him on the sidelines throughout last year’s outdoor season. The five-time U.S. 800 meter champion comes into next weekend’s USATF Nationals in Eugene, Oregon light on racing, but heavy on base.  

 

“It took me three months to heal,” says Nick. “I’ve only got about 1 ½ 800s behind me this season, but as in years past, I am trying to peak in late August, and am therefore not fully sharp yet. I would say I'm at 90% fitness at the moment.” 

 

That said, a career-first sub-4:00 mile at the Nashville Music City Distance Carnival June 6^th gives him the confidence that his strength is there for the rounds process in Eugene.  Yet even as he hopes to earn a position on the U.S. team heading to Beijing for the IAAF World Championships later this summer, the reigning silver medalist from the 2013 World Championships in Moscow hasn’t lessened his challenge to the powers that govern his sport.  

 

A noted rebel, best known for taking on USATF at their 2011 annual meeting over sponsorship logo and branding restrictions placed on track athletes, the rough-hewn Boise, Idaho native has never been shy about stating his opinions. At last weekend’s Brooks PR high school invitational in Seattle, Symmonds outlined not just his criticisms, but his vision for how the sport might be best served in the highly competitive marketplace of world sport.  

 

“This sport is packaged so poorly,” said the Brooks Beast team member and co-founder of Run Gum. “The public is force fed the same product as in the 70s, 80s, and 90s when people don’t want that anymore.  (Run Gum co-founder) Coach Sam (Lapray) believes in the team model like MLB and NFL, but my model is tennis and its Grand Slams where every few months the top players fly to Australia, Paris, or London. We need that. We don’t need Bolt and Gatlin and Gay avoiding each other.  We can’t wait every four years for the best to race against each other. We need something that matters and has money that makes people sit up and take notice.”

 

One thing to notice in Eugene is the presence of Run Gum as an athlete sponsor.  The new company created by Symmonds and Sam Lapray has selected 20 athletes from across the track & field spectrum to represent Run Gum, including middle distance stars Katie Mackey, Will Leer and Jordan McNamara.

 

“Our motivation is two-fold. Primarily we want to show just how valuable T&F athletes are in marketing for companies. Secondly, we want to give back to the sport that has given us so much. We don't view this as charity, but rather as investing in athletes and the sport as a whole.

 

“This particular deal is just for USAs, but we earmark 5 cents of every packet of Run Gum sold for athlete sponsorship. We will continue that moving forward. Bonus info: the highest placing athlete wearing a Run Gum singlet will earn a bonus of $2,500 from Run Gum.”

 

Last weekend at Chambers Bay just south of Tacoma the USGA staged their 115th U.S. Open golf championship. 21 year-old Jordan Spieth of Dallas won dramatically over three-putting Dustin Johnson.  The total purse was $10 million, with $1.8m going to Spieth as champion, meaning his caddy came away with $180,000, 10% of the winner’s check.   

 

This coming weekend in Eugene, the USATF Track & Field Championships are being staged at Hayward Field. USATF will award prize money in each Championships event, with first prize worth $7000 and eighth place earning $500 for a total of $19,750 per event, a little over $730,000 for the entire meet.  First prize per event at the end of the IAAF Diamond League tour is $40,000.

 

“The Diamond League is glorified practice,” Symmonds contended in Seattle.  “Rabbited races mean nothing.  It is an antiquated model. We should distance ourselves from the Olympic cycle. To tennis players, the Olympics are an after-thought after the Grand Slams. We need to distance ourselves from the Olympic model, because it is only relevant once every four years, and it’s not a healthy way to run a sport.”

 

When asked his thoughts on the new NCAA format that separated the men’s and women’s competitions into separate days, Nick admitted he hadn’t watched, but “I love that they tried something new. There is a mentality (in our sport), it’s not working, let’s do the same thing over and over. So let that (new format) be an example to others in the sport.

 

“I love straight up finals.  Prelims are the most boring things. Rabbited races are meaningless. I want to see athletes train their butts off for one race with hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line.  Like Wimbledon, the whole world stops to watch.  If we had that, I guarantee you the athletes would pull out of every Diamond League meet, because they are very simple, go where the money is.”

 

This December, FloTrack is planning to stage the second World Beer Mile Championships in Austin, Texas. Nick is anxious to return to better his seventh place, 5:41.71 from December 2014. 

 

“Meet directors who think outside the box serve the new generation better,” Symmonds concluded.  “They have been raised in the digital age, and understand attention spans. Track meets that go on for four and five hours, people just won’t sit through them.”

  

I will drink to that.

 

 

UPDATE: Nick Symmonds won the 800m at the USATF Outdoor Championships on Sunday with a season’s best mark of 1:44.54. He will compete for Team USA at the World Championships in Beijing this August.