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America’s best sprinter will not run the 200 meters in the Beijing Olympics, another casualty of our stupid selection policy.
 Tyson Gay accelerated through the first curve. Then, he started flying. Not in the figurative sense, but in an all-too-real way — a shocking sprawl to the ground that cost America’s best sprinter an Olympic spot in the 200 meters and made him look like less than a sure thing, health-wise at least, with the Beijing Games five weeks away.
[...]
Had this been gymnastics, or a number of other sports, an injury at trials wouldn’t have ended Gay’s chance to make the Olympics in that specific event. But USA Track and Field plays it straight — top three finishers at trials make the Olympics, no exceptions.
It’s a black-and-white policy that most athletes accept, though it could end up costing the American team as much as Gay in Beijing. Gay is the defending world champion in the 100 and 200 meters.
“I don’t know any other way to do it, but it’s tough,” said Wallace Spearmon, now the favorite in Sunday’s finals. “Either you’re ready on this day or not. You can be the best athlete coming into it, and you could be sitting at home watching it from the house.”
How about a system that combines multiple events? Say, the Olympic Trials, the World Championships, and one or two other major competitions? That way, a poorly timed fall, injury, or illness would be less likely to cost an individual an opportunity for which they’ve spent a lifetime training. And Team USA would be represented by the best athletes.
As incredible as it sounds, a man with no legs will be able to compete as a sprinter in the 2008 Olympics.
Double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius won his appeal Friday and can compete for a place in the Beijing Olympics. The Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled that the 21-year-old South African is eligible to race against able-bodied athletes, overturning a ban imposed by the International Association of Athletics Federations.
More amazing: the opponents argue that he has an unfair advantage.
Pistorius appealed to CAS, world sport’s highest tribunal, to overturn a Jan. 14 ruling by the IAAF that banned him from competing. The IAAF said his carbon fiber blades give him a mechanical advantage.
[...]
“The panel was not persuaded that there was sufficient evidence of any metabolic advantage in favor of a double-amputee using the Cheetah Flex-Foot,” CAS said. “Furthermore, the CAS panel has considered that the IAAF did not prove that the biomechanical effects of using this particular prosthetic device gives Oscar Pistorius an advantage over other athletes not using the device.”
It’s hard not to admire Pistorius, who was born without fibulas and had his legs amputated below the knee before his first birthday, and wish him all the best.
At the same time, those of us who grew up watching “The Six Million Dollar Man” and its spinoffs can certainly envision a scenario where those with prosthetic limbs do have an advantage over the “able bodied.” And what’s the standard for assessing that? No better than the best human legs ever in existence? Knowing how obsessive competitive athletes can be — survey after survey shows they’re willing to risk losing years of their life if they can win now — we might see the day when someone decides it’s worth it to have perfectly healthy legs amputated.
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Shadows of Rosie Ruiz. From the Sarasota Herald-Tribune-
SARASOTA — Cristina Noble, the first woman to cross the finish line at Sunday’s Sarasota Marathon, has been disqualified.
Race officials say she missed electronic checkpoints at mile 17 and 18 of the Sarasota race. Course monitors confirmed that she did not run a mile of the marathon on Ken Thompson Parkway.
The official women’s winner of the 2008 ABC-7 Sarasota Marathon is now Madeleine Zolfo, 43, of Treasure Island. She learned the news Monday night.
Madeleine Zolfo finished three minutes behind Sunday’s winner, but was named the winner Monday.
“It’s kind of a bittersweet phone call to get,” Zolfo said. “You know, to win because someone else got disqualified.”
Zolfo said the course was clearly marked on City Island, but she doesn’t know what happened with Noble.
Race officials didn’t elaborate. Noble is supposed to be a gifted runner with a similar time in last year’s Detroit marathon. Without her side of the story we can only guess what happened in Sarasota.
The disgraced Gold Medal winner confessed two months ago to taking steroids prior to the 2000 Olympics. From AP-
LAUSANNE, Switzerland - The IOC formally stripped Marion Jones of her five Olympic medals Wednesday, wiping her name from the record books following her admission that she was a drug cheat.
The International Olympic Committee also banned the disgraced American athlete from attending next year’s Beijing Olympics in any capacity and said it could bar her from all future games.
Jones had already handed back the three gold medals and two bronze she won at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
Last month, the International Association of Athletics Federations erased all of Jones’ results dating to September 2000, but it was up to the IOC to formally disqualify her and erase her Olympic medals.
The decision was announced by IOC president Jacques Rogge at the end of a three-day executive board meeting.
Jones won gold medals in the 100 meters, 200 meters and 1,600-meter relay in Sydney, and bronze in the long jump and 100-meter relay. She was the first female track and field athlete to win five medals at a single Olympics.
*****
The IOC postponed a decision on redistributing her medals, including whether to strip her American relay teammates and whether to upgrade doping-tainted Greek sprinter Katerina Thanou to gold in the 100.
The IOC’s move comes as no surprise. One thing I find intersiting is Jones not being to be at any future Olympics. Can she still attend the games as a spectator or does it just forbid her from associating with athletes?
Also the IOC postponed any decision to take away Jones’ relay teammates medals. I don’t see how they can take Jones while not taking the others. This sounds unfair to the gold medalists, but the IOC can’t just go half way in my opinion.
Some of you may remember how East German athletes were made to use steroids and the consequences that had. Yvonne Buschbaum’s story is different.
BERLIN: German pole-vaulter Yvonne Buschbaum announced her retirement Wednesday, saying she had long felt as if she were “in the wrong body” and planned hormone treatment.
Buschbaum, 27, finished third at the European Championships in 1998 and 2002.
“I feel as if I am a man and have to live my life in the body of a woman,” Buschbaum said in a statement on her Web site announcing her retirement. “I am aware of the fact that transsexuality is a fringe issue, and I do not want to be responsible for it remaining on the fringe.”
Buschbaum asked for respect for her decision and urged observers “not to draw false conclusions.”
“I do not dope,” she said, adding that her “upcoming hormone treatment” contributed to her decision to quit, as did a persistent injury.
Anyone else note the irony in Buschbaum being a ‘pole’ vaulter.
Good luck to Yvonne or whatever name she takes in the future.
He won gold medals in four consecutive Olympics, setting Olympic records each time. Oerter died of heart failure yesterday in Florida. RIP.
FORT MYERS, Fla. - Al Oerter was destined to become an athlete, although he often wondered what he might have been if not for a chance meeting with a discus.
“I could throw a baseball, a football or a golf ball a country mile,” Oerter told the Associated Press in an interview last year. “It was just easy to throw anything.”
The discus great who won gold medals in four straight Olympics to become one of track and field’s biggest stars in the 1950s and ’60s, died Monday of heart failure, less than two weeks after his 71st birthday.
His long love affair with the circular disk that would bring him fame began one day when he was hanging around a track, watching practice and gave it a try.
“I picked it and threw back to a guy further than he threw it to me,” Oerter recalled. “The coach walked over to me and said you need to go over there with them.”
Oerter died at a hospital near his Fort Myers Beach home, wife Cathy Oerter said. He dealt with high blood pressure since he was young and struggled with heart problems, she said.
“He was a gentle giant,” she said. “He was bigger than life.”
Oerter won gold medals in 1956, 1960, 1964 and 1968. Oerter and Carl Lewis are the only track and field stars to capture the same event in four consecutive Olympics. Oerter, however, is the only one to set an Olympic record in each of his victories.
“His legacy is one of an athlete who embodied all of the positive attributes associated with being an Olympian,” said Peter Ueberroth, chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee. “He performed on the field of play with distinction and transferred that excellence to the role of advocate for the Olympic movement and its ideals.”
Born in New York City, Oerter was 6-foot-4 and once competed at nearly 300 pounds. He dispensed with coaching and conventional training methods, molding himself into a fierce competitor who performed his best when the stakes were highest.
“I can remember those games truly as if they were a week ago,” Oerter told The AP.
In Melbourne in 1956, Oerter threw 184 feet, 11 inches on his first toss and watched in amazement when nobody else, including teammate and world-record holder Fortune Gordien, came close to beating him.
He came from behind to win again in Rome, and overcame torn rib cartilage and other injuries to make it three in a row at the Tokyo Games in 1964.
At 32, he was a long shot in the 1968 field headed by world-record holder Jay Silvester. However, Oerter responded with a personal-best of 212-6 to leave Mexico City with the gold.
He came out of retirement and won a spot as an alternate on the 1980 team that didn’t compete because of the boycott ordered by President Carter.
“Al Oerter is one of the greatest track and field athletes, and one of the greatest Olympic athletes, of all time,” said USATF CEO Craig A. Masback.
“What made him even more special was his excellence off the track, in pursuits ranging from community outreach to art. The track world has lost a legend, a Hall of Famer, and a true gentleman. USATF extends our deepest sympathy to Al’s family.”
From AP-
PROVO, Utah - For a star runner at Brigham Young, this was hardly a clean getaway.
Kyle Perry was arrested last week after getting out of his car and striking a pedestrian — with a mop.
Perry’s vehicle apparently got too close to the man, who was pushing a bucket with mops across a street June 14, witnesses told police.
“Angry words were exchanged,” Provo police Capt. Cliff Argyle said. “Mr. Perry exited his vehicle and grabbed a mop out of the pedestrian’s mop bucket and started to strike the pedestrian.
“The pedestrian grabbed another mop and used it to defend himself,” he said. “Eventually the pedestrian was shoved over a planter box and fell onto his back.”
The man, who had a bump on his head, blocked Perry’s car until police arrived and arrested the track star for aggravated assault, Argyle said. Any legal action from the mop fight is up to prosecutors.
In 2006, Perry won the Mountain West Conference title in the 1,500-meter run. He finished 12th in the same event at the NCAA track championship. His performances were limited this year by injuries.
I’ll leave readers to make the appropriate wisecracks. Right now I can’t think of anything. Maybe Mr. Perry can pitch long…..err mopup relief.
From AP-
NEW DELHI, India (AP) — An Indian runner who won a silver medal in the women’s 800 meters in the Asian Games this month has failed a gender test and is expected to be stripped of the medal, according to reports Monday.
Santhi Soudarajan took the gender test in Doha, Qatar, after the victory.
The test reports sent to the Indian Olympic Association on Sunday said Soudarajan “does not possess the sexual characteristics of a woman,” The Times of India reported. The test was administered by a medical commission set up by the games’ organizers.
There are no compulsory gender tests during events sanctioned by the International Association of Athletics Federation, but athletes can be asked to take a gender test. The medical evaluation panel usually includes a gynecologist, endocrinologist, psychologist, and an internal medicine specialist.
Dr. Manmohan Singh, chairman of the medical commission of the Indian Olympic Association told the Indian Express newspaper that the Olympic Council of Asia had been informed of the results of Soudarajan’s gender test.
Sports officials in the athlete’s home state of Tamil Nadu said that they have no information on her whereabouts.
I thought this kind of cheating went out with the fall of East Germany.
Whether Ms Mr Soudarajan failed some hormone test or was caught with a dangly part is unknown. We’ll just have to use our imaginations and hope this runner gets some serious mental help.
Hat tip- Bullwinkle who says it took balls to come in second.
Update- According to this AP article, Mr. Mr Soudarajan had Y chromosones present and most likely never had sex change surgery.
Leaving no stone unturned in looking for potential talent, the Houstan Texas are taking a look a sprinter Justin Gatlin.
The Houston Texans worked out the world’s fastest man, Justin Gatlin, on Tuesday but that doesn’t mean he’s making a fast entrance into the NFL. The Texans didn’t make a big deal out of the Tuesday visit. They looked at Gatlin like they did with two other receivers — Kevin McMahan of Maine and Jovan Witherspoon of Central Michigan. NFL teams usually bring in players for Tuesday workouts while the 53 players on the regular roster take a day off.
The only difference in this workout was the name recognition of Gatlin, the 100-meter gold medal winner in the 2004 Summer Olympics. Gatlin holds the world record for running the 100 meters in 9.76 seconds. In April, he tested positive for the banned substance testosterone and accepted an eight-year ban from track and field.
Though the Texans wouldn’t be willing to sign him for this season, they are one of the first NFL teams to look at him for future contracts, which teams can start signing in late December.
The reason for the slow reaction by NFL teams to Gatlin’s availability is his lack of football experience. At the University of Tennessee he ran track instead of playing football. He hadn’t played football since 10th grade.
That’s likely to be a problem. That he’s a dirty cheater apparently is not. Still, they say you can’t coach speed.
I don’t care much about track and field unless it’s the Olympics (and not that much even then, now that the Cold War is over). Still, this headline is rather amusing: “Gay sets sights on 200 meter record.”
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