I think the tide is turning, at least in gravel events. The longer events still have the most mystique/prestige, but the stigma of the shorter events being somehow lesser is fading. For example, it’s becoming increasingly acceptable to ‘race’ the 100 vs the 200 at Unbound. Winning your AG in the 100 is a pretty big deal, whereas years ago it was ride the 200 or turn in your man card.

Most entrants have a goal of completing an endurance event, not competing in it. When the goal is completion, longer is more impressive.

Event marketing leans towards this theme as well, which makes sense because that's how most customers think. This impacts the decisions of competitive customers too.

Some of the very best triathletes in the world raced a super sprint triathlon yesterday. Also yesterday was local to me triathlon with a sprint and super sprint distance. The super sprint is very clearly marketed to the absolute beginner athlete by the event producer. Not surprisingly, all the competitive athletes race the sprint.

This. I did my first full before I ever did a standard. In my head, the longer the event, the more worthy it is. Most in my club are not interested in short course, seemingly as they think those events are only worth doing if you’ve a chance at the podium. For some reason coming 100th in an Ironman seems to carry more weight than finishing 10th in an Olympic.

Because all of these other sports are concocted.

In the real sport that happens in every playground around the world, the fastest kid to sprint across the field is the real champion. It does not matter if it is Botswana, or Hokkaido or Riga or New Orleans. So really the marquis event is the 100m sprint. Every human has done it. All these other sports are for slow people. If you can sprint 100m in the Olympic finals each lane is faster than the other 1B people and those 8 are faster than the remaining 8B on earth.

The only reason why the "marquis" event in all these endurance sports is the longest is because endurance sports inherently are for the second tier of athletes who can't sprint. If you can sprint, that's where you end up. All the endurance people are slow runners, and everyone doing the other sports, just can't run in the first place. Thus when we show up to endurance events, we value who can go the longest and go moderately fast at it because by definition endurance sport is for all the people who can't sprint in the first place.

I know this is harsh to hear on an endurance sport forum, but this is why we are biased to longer around here. The value set is basically biased towards rewards that are on the other end of the spectrum from 100m sprinting.

This earns the title of the most ridiculous thing I’ve seen posted on this forum, which is an astounding feat.

My current A race is a trail ultra in the Alps where there are multiple distance options. My "premier" event at the ultra is the longest option that I can finish because it gives me the opportunity to see more of the Alps during a single supported run. If all the options used the same course and there were just more loops for the longer options I'd probably pick the single-loop option if the course was scenic enough to be worth the entry fee.

OTOH, all my tris for the past decade + have been sprint tris.

As to Dev's comment, yes I ran the longest race there was in HS track (2 miles) because I wasn't fast enough to be competitive at the shorter distances.

Or winning a sprint....

That’s my opinion too, the podium of a shorter distance is more impressive to me than “also ran” in the ass end 1/3 or even slower half of an enduro event.

I almost feel like some enduro run and mtb stuff has it right, everyone goes for X time and winners are those going furthest.

Because most don't have the talent or want to put in the time it takes to get really good at shorter events like the 5k.

Everyone is searching for a pat on the back and nobody cares about doing a mediocre 5k, but do a mediocre marathon or ultra and someone might be impressed.

It's sad really

Cost may also be a consideration in terms of participation. In the given example of the Croatan Buck Fifty, the cost is the same for the 50, 100, and 150 mile rides. For the same $170, I'd rather get more riding.

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Super League Malibu was raced yesterday and not one word about it here on ST,yet pages and pages about Taylor Knibb and an Ironman race she hasn't even done yet.

Following the money seems logical also. If dangled with that prospect it’s like an American buffet restaurant. Paid the same so why not eat 3000 calories instead of just 1000.

It’s why I feel cyclocross with reduced price “2nd races” are a deal. $30 for first race and $10 each additional same day. Shame I ate it in warmup and couldn’t double up recently.

I'm watching it tomorrow, and only note from SLT Malibu was Rapp's crash that caused a broken jaw which I saw from socials.....

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Running 100m really fast will allow me to escape a sabre toothed tiger..but so would Running slow - just not as slow as the slowest guy.

But if I can't run 10 or 20 miles in mediocrity, I'm gonna starve. Then I'll become the slowest 100m runner and get eaten by the sabre toothed tiger.

Simple evolution really.

Realistically in the rest of society, we value the person who can sprint fastest. Those are also the cool kids. They get all the accolades. Over here in the outcast endurance domain where we were all losers in the playground, on the track team, or in the pickup football game, we decided that in our club we're gonna swing totally the other way, get revenge and reward max endurance the most.

But we really know in our heart of hearts, that's we're not the real athletes. People like Bolt or Ronaldo are the ones people care about, not us, or Jan, or Knibb or Laidlaw. Heck even in the cycling world, we kind of care more about the sprinter who can take 35 TdF stage wins at the end of slogging 160-200km in a full throttle 10 second sprint, then we care about some random mountain goat polka dot wearing pencil neck :-) Maybe we may care about the yellow jersey wearing pencil neck a bit, in conformance with our endurance bias.

Now I have to go back to training 20 hrs per week so that I don't lose my ST free subscription for telling people here that the rest of the world cares about fast twitch more.

I heard an NFL player say today after a loss that a season Is a marathon, not a sprint. :)

That sound like what a loser would say.

Some people dont care about the speed or medals or "who has the fastest time". I stopped doing short distance because to whichever event I went I only heard "So how fast did you run?" "Oh that was slow" and the competitiveness aspect was just too harsh in my eyes. I hate crit racing because everyone is acting like they are enraged and bitching around when they missed a second on their timer. Ive seen people in Oly distances pushing people from their way and many many crashes because they had to go over absolutely everyone else to end up first

Then you go to long distance evens and the people is way more friendly and helpful, the vast majority competes against themselves and not against the others. Its just a more mature sport in general and less toxic

Someone above said the same about travel. Im not going to bother paying a hotel, trip and anything for a measly 5k or sprint/oly distance. Its just not worth for me. Id rather pay more for proper organization and infrastructure and spend the whole day outside enjoying an sport I like

That may be the most hilariously deflating thing ever told to a distance athlete. I could not agree more. After four years of coaching high school XC and track, it was amazing to me that the universal thought among the athletes was that distance runners were people too slow to sprint. It was not really true, but you could not convince people otherwise. My kids (the distance runners) loved the workout where we did 12x400 at threshold and then would do some max efforts 200s afterwards. My faster guys would occasionally be going side by side with the "sprinters" and smoke them on the 200s despite everything they had already run earlier. You would think that would change peoples minds, but it neve did, despite the evidence.

Fortunately, some of us could not sprint and so we discovered endurance events and loved them. Would we have ever gone there if we could have won the 100m? Probably not, but we are here and now we know that endurance>sprinting.

The 300+ mile races at Unbound and Gravel Worlds are less prestigious than the premier event. At Barry Roubaix the 62 miler was the premier event, not the 100 (it may have changed). Texas Chainring Massacre used to have a bigger payout for the 100k than the 100+ miler until the year Colin Strickland signed up for the 100+ miler and they matched the payout for him.

You're right that most events do make the longest course the premier event. I don't know why. Personally, if I'm looking to "race" something I'll choose something 60-120 miles (or less if its a crit, mtb, cx, etc). If i just want to go finish something big and hard to see if i can, then I'll do something longer. But for me, anything longer than 120 miles is more fun to "ride" than "race."

Not to me, whilst your answer is certainly worthy of that title.

The premier event at the Olympics is the 100m dash. Whilst at the other end, and as athletes get older and slower they tend to go to longer distances.

Yep, I too bitch and whine about the “going slow culture” as I call it. The slower, the better 😂

And gravel is probably (probably, as I’m not that familiar with gravel racing) even “worse” than tri in that respect?

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"FTP is a bit 2015, don't you think?" - Gustav Iden

Other aspects of it is probably relatability for "street cred" points among the uninitiated. To the unwashed masses, swimming at #:## per 100 or riding at 24mph or running at 8min/mi might not mean much to them. Apply that to the individual sports of those three also. But.....you went a bazillion miles far in distance seems to register more.

Kind of like outside of really "in" news circles of bike racing, nobody knew about the 100 year old guy who kept doing the hour record each new age bracket he reached. Amazing stuff. But, it was just riding an hour at something well under 20mph. So average joe no care. But.......had that 100 year old guy rode 1000 miles for some event he'd have made the big news.