The New Super Track Groups

See the rise of the new track super-groups in the USA, from Oregon to near-by New York City at this link: Track and Field News April 2014, "The Rise of the Modern Training Group," pages 8 to 12

For world-class runners there always have been a lot of advantages to joining a club or living together in a remote mountain location, while working out with their peers and few distractions.  The advantages include professionalism, a super coach, economic security (perhaps from a big sportswear company), good medical care, all kinds of psychological supports,  and it now appears, Olympic medals.   Maybe US track is back minus the "track star",  painful over-training (including bad drugs), declining performance and public interest. 



The group model has been re-invented many times over by the great track powers like Finland, Britain, Kenya, Jamaica, some US university teams, Australia, New Zealand, etc.  It is worth noting it is ultimately a social model of track, not an economic model, which might apply just as well to tennis or the Canadian girl's half-pipe team in the winter Olympics.  
In our perhaps modest way we had some of the elements in the Nutana Kiwanis Track and Field Club in Saskatoon in the 1960's.   Some pretty good people passed through that club and it dominated track in Saskatchewan for many years.  Does anyone know what has become of it?

Anyway, this suggests a new (very old) way to rebuild track and field in Canada, which would produce both world class athletes--somewhat like seems to be the case in the Winter Olympics--without getting into the psychological mess of  pseudo-scientific over-training and the resultant injuries and cheating, or the sports tourist philosophy of pointless participation for itself, again on unproven scientific grounds, rooted in our particular odd form of national ideology.