Chris Hollis, New Generation Manager at Adidas Group, talks about the Dream Mile and Dream 100 and answers questions about the selection process and future of the event.
What is the selection process for the Dream Mile and Dream 100?
There are a couple of things that come into question. There are the three automatic qualifier meets (Meet of Champions, Kansas Relays, and Golden South). Also, if you win and hit a qualifying time: boys 4:11 (mile) and 10.54 (100m) and girls 4:50 (mile) and 11.70 (100m), which is an indicator to see if you can compete at the level we are looking for. We want everyone in the field to be competitive and to be as close as possible to compete for the win. We want to put together a race where kids can run really fast. The other way to qualify is to get an automatic bid from Adidas. We take into account PR’s, performances at big meets whether it be one of ours or Penn Relays, Mt. SAC Relays etc, and also quality of the wins, who are you running against. We take things like that into consideration.
For athletes that might be close in time or ranking what are other factors you might take into consideration?
We take in 100 percent into account past experiences and past championships, but we also want to keep in mind that kids sometimes for whatever reason don’t perform from year to year. I’m in Portland, Oregon so someone might have run 11.3 last year and as far as I know she could have something wrong with her this year that is keeping her from reaching her full potential. We take into account last year and that is why we have watch lists, but in more cases than not we wait for the kids to post something big this year. Until they’ve done something to show us otherwise we can’t let them run because the fields are so small, 12 boys and girls for the mile and nine boys and girls for the 100.
This is the second year for the Dream Mile and the first for the Dream 100. How did this meet come about and are there plans to add other events down the road?
Last year, we brought on Jim Ryun to be an ambassador for the brand and thought let’s build something up around him, so we came up with the Dream Mile. We’ve got the first sub-four minute mile runner on board, and we have this great meet where the best of the best run in New York City. We want to put a field together that can go sub-four minutes and since we did a boys race then of course we are going to do a girls one as well. Since there is no mythical time like a four minute barrier for girls, we go for the national record and class record of 4:35. So that is what we try to set the pace at. Everyone wants to be a miler. That is the legendary distance event.
As far as the 100, we have Tyson Gay the American record holder. And the 100 is typically an event that people enjoy watching. If you can add a fast, fast 100 to a meet where people are watching Olympic champions and medalists without having it detract from the meet then that is a good thing. The goal is to see if we can break the national record and we have a field on the boys side who can attempt to. We have Octavious Freeman on the girls side who is a once in a lifetime athlete and we want to put her in a situation where she can break that record.
I don’t know if we will add another event. The logical progression if we did add another high school event to the Grand Prix would probably be to go for some jumps or throws from the standpoint of being fair to the sport in general. As of now we don’t plan in the foreseeable future adding too many events.
Jim Ryun and Maurice Greene will be the guests of honor. How much interaction will the athletes have with them?
There are a couple of types of interactions we have. The interactions with the two historic figures (Ryun and Greene) and then we’ll have them run with some current runners in the world scene and some professional coaches from Adidas, who will be the so-called managers for the boys and girls teams if they have any questions. They will interact with some of the professional athletes at the banquets we have. They will interact with Ryun and Greene throughout the week. It’ll start with them telling their stories, answering questions on Friday, and then going to the track and answering more questions. Maurice will be there and then afterwards they will get the chance to interact with athletes from the past and present. We give the kids the chance to take advantage of these opportunities and to be around these people as much as they want. We don’t force anything upon them.
Nike, Foot Locker, Brooks, all have a national meet. How do you gauge the interest for the Adidas Dream Mile and Dream 100 and get the athletes hyped for this event?
Obviously we are biased to our own success. I think we did as good of a job as we could last year of making the athletes feel special. When the kids come to New York City we treat them like the professionals. When they get here we give them their per diem, their itinerary, and we let them loose in Time Square. I think the best way to gauge what we are doing is by making an impact. I’ve gotten emails from 22 Foot Locker All-Americans that asked me to be in this meet. We’re getting that type of kid approaching us, not us approaching them. If we weren’t hyping it correctly, we wouldn't be be getting that type of reception in only the second year of an event.
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