Gainesville Sun Ignores Local Running Races

Last week's Tom Walker Memorial Half-Marathon race in Gainesville represented a major sporting event in this community of mine. Promoted in advance in the local papers, nevertheless NO coverage was provided of this event's results. No, not even a flimsy article anywhere indicating the very top finishers. Yet, especially in the Gainesville Sun, we get an endless stream of yawn-inducing drivel about various aspects of the Gators football team. Reality check, Gainesville Sun: there's more to sports than your precious NCAA football and the grossly underachieving and overindulged Florida Gators!

It could well be just that the sports editor has some kind of grudge against the sport of running. Maybe he was a nonathletic or out-of-shape little kid and the other kids laughed at his meager attempts to run back then. Yeah, I bet he hated that aspect of physical education class. Maybe at least with football, he was good at just standing there on the line and blocking. Or maybe he WAS a good runner once and was slighted at some time in the past, holding onto a grudge all these years. Or maybe he just can't get along with the Florida Track Club, the organizer and promoter of this event. No, that can't be it: the Gainesville Sun is an equal-opportunity ignorer of all local running races (unless they are officially affiliated with colleges or high schools).

Then again, it might not be the sports editor at all.

Maybe it's just that my hometown Gainesville Sun sucks, pure and simple. But no, that can't be it either: sometimes they do come out with some interesting articles. So then what is it they have against running?

Running is very popular here in Gainesville, with many people engaging in the activity on many levels. It's a shame that those "running" my local newspaper, which does have some positive features, seem to think that this sport isn't important enough to report...