This sent to Sacramento Bee.
HARRY WYETH
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Zola Budd running article
Date: Thu, 07 Jul 2011 20:35:14 -0700
From: Harry Wyeth <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Mr. Bennett-Smith;
I enjoyed your article on Zola Budd (Pierterse). I am old enough to
have watched the 1984 Olympic 3000 m run where she and Mary Decker collided.
But...will you and others /please/ recognize that running events (at
least those run on tracks, and lots which are not) are no longer
measured in yards and miles. This runner competed in an 8 km race,
period. I cannot understand why sports writers keep injecting obsolete
mile measurements, as you did in referring to the race as 4.97 miles.
Any reader interested enough in the subject to read your article would
know how far 8 kilometers is.
I doubt that the Bee reports 1500 m races as being so-and-so yards, or
some decimal part of a mile. Why should a road race be treated differently?
Dual measurements help no one and just confuse things. I hope you will
report metric events accurately in the future.
Thanks again for the nice article.
HARRY WYETH
Grass Valley
