By David Melly
February 26, 2025
Hobbs Kessler didn’t just make a statement on the oval this weekend. He also made a statement (or a few statements, really) about his focus this season on head-to-head racing over chasing fast times.
The most unintentionally inflammatory quip was his assertion that “I think what we should be focused on is titles, big meets, and not running fast at BU” in reaction to the news that he wouldn’t face the likes of Grant Fisher, Cole Hocker, and Cooper Teare after the trio prioritized a pair of weekends at Boston University over showing up at the U.S. championships. Fisher is a slightly different case, as the Olympic medalist over 5000m and 10,000m did shut his season down one weekend before USAs, but the optics of Hocker and Teare choosing to run the 5000m at the “BU DMR Challenge” one day before a national championship is… not great.
Kessler’s comments reignited, for the umpteenth time, a time-old debate over where, when, and how some athletes—mostly distance runners—choose to allocate their hard efforts. Hocker and Teare did race head-to-head, after all, crossing the line 0.15 seconds apart after Hocker edged forward on the final homestretch. But the primary goal of the effort was to secure a 5000m auto-qualifier for the World Championship this fall (mission accomplished). And with Hocker and Teare both securing the standard and the American record out of reach, their order of finish was stakes-free, aside from bragging rights between training partners.
To be fair, there is a certain irony to Kessler becoming the mouthpiece for the “show up and race” crew right before he ends his indoor season early and skips out on World Indoors. Kessler, Hocker, and Teare are all essentially making the same choice: structuring their year’s schedule to optimize their chances of medaling at Worlds in Tokyo in September. But because Kessler has his 1500m standard secured and no apparent desire to move up in distance, he can be less judicious about chasing fast times.
But inherent to that logic is a small fallacy: that pursuing a fast time and competing for national titles are mutually exclusive. Josh Hoey, for one, would probably take issue with that argument, given that he lowered his own American record in the 800m with a wire-to-wire run at USAs. With the aid of a pacer at the Millrose Games, Hoey ran 1:43.90… and then two weeks later, with no pacer to be seen and Brandon Miller breathing down his neck for 700 meters, Hoey ran 1:43.26. The longer the race, the tougher a task this becomes (you don’t see many records being set in the 10,000m by runners leading from the front), but it’s certainly not impossible.
The galaxy-brain solution to this problem is to do away with auto-qualifying entirely and simply select teams based on rankings and championship performances. But that doesn’t feel likely, and it wouldn’t change the reality that some athletes will ride a skinny schedule toward Olympic or World gold while minimizing disruptions to training—in essence, racing as little as possible with as little effort expended as possible to get to the start lines that “really matter.” And if, and when, those athletes come home with the spoils of victory, they (and their rivals) will buy into the feedback loop that the path of least resistance is the most rewarding one.
Another possible option is blackout periods around championship races, an effort to cudgel athletes into showing up at their national meets by simply not allowing them to hit qualifiers during key weekends. But it’s hard enough to get top athletes to do any indoor racing whatsoever, and a possible side effect of such enforcement would be heavy hitters simply hibernating through February entirely.
For those looking for a carrot over a stick, the obvious solution would be dangling greater appearance fees and prize money over a small number of desired meets. Which we already do… but money doesn’t grow on trees, especially not in the track and field world, and short of a major rebalancing of incentives (rhymes with “Shmand Shlam Shrack”), a few extra dollars here and there won’t be sufficient to get the most well-heeled pros out of BU and into Ocean Breeze.
The real key may be to turn one of the sport’s weaknesses into a strength. Track and field is subject to rampant gatekeeping because, quite simply, there aren’t that many people with a lot of power. If you add up the agents, coaches, brand executives, and governing body higher-ups who collectively work together (or against one another) to shape the cadence and structure of the track and field season, it’s like… maybe 25 people, tops. And those people all have each other’s cell phone numbers! So consider this a plea to the most influential folks in track and field to hop on a Zoom call, set aside the smallest of profit margins or marginal training benefits, and engage in a little old-fashioned collusion to funnel all the top athletes to the same races at the same time.
The broader track and field community may never say thank you (and more likely, will simply find something else to grumble about), but your service will benefit them. We may never get a world without BU time trials, but at least getting everyone to pick the same set of weekends for running fast and for racing for clout would be a major improvement.
David Melly
David began contributing to CITIUS in 2018, and quickly cemented himself as an integral part of the team thanks to his quick wit, hot takes, undying love for the sport and willingness to get yelled at online.
