A Brief Chat With Nick Symmonds
November 14, 2011 11:28 pm

By Jon Gugala

Nick Symmonds of the Oregon Track Club, has been running professionally since 2006 after his time at Willamette University concluded. Since then, the 27-year-old has established himself as the U.S.’s top 800-meter runner, amassing four consecutive outdoor USATF 800 titles since 2008, and an additional two indoors (‘07, ’10). In 2010, he lowered his PR to 1:43.76 during the same race in which David Rudisha set the current world record. But Symmonds believes something is rotten in the state of Denmark. His chief grievance has to do with current IAAF and USATF regulations on the displaying of corporate logos on an athlete’s uniform and body, further brought into the spotlight after Lauren Fleshman was required to remove a temporary tattoo of her Picky Bars company on the starting line of the 2011 New York City Marathon.

On September 30, Symmonds started a Facebook group titled “Im [sic] tired of USATF and IAAF crippling our sport.” The group swelled to 4,000 members within 24 hours. Symmonds, now the figurehead of what could be described as the “Occupy USATF” movement, will be meeting with the leadership of the USATF at its annual meeting in St. Louis from November 30 to December 4.

You mentioned in your blog that it was the IAAF’s retroactive decision on Paula Radcliffe’s world record (since reversed) that caused you to speak up.

Nick Symmonds: Well, Nike was kind of upset about it, and they asked that we tweet or Facebook our response to that particular rule change, and I wasn’t a huge fan of it–I don’t think you can go back and rewrite the records after you’ve already put them on the books. Going forward, if they want to change something, that’s one thing, but it seems kind of absurd to me that they’re going to rewrite the rules after the fact. So I expressed my disdain for that rule change.