Police say former Olympic shot putter Dave Laut has been shot to death outside his Southern California home.

Sgt. Ron Whitney said the 52-year-old was at home when he and his wife heard noises in the backyard and he went outside to investigate. Shots were fired moments later, and Laut died at the scene.

South Africa’s track and field federation has been asked to conduct a gender test on an 800-meter runner amid concerns she does not meet the requirements to compete as a woman.

Caster Semenya, 18, won the 800 meters at the world championships with a stunningly dominating run.

Semenya took the lead halfway through the race Wednesday and won in a world-leading 1 minute, 55.45 seconds, beating defending champion Janeth Jepkosgei of Kenya by a massive 2.45 seconds. Jennifer Meadows of Britain took bronze.

The world track and field federation requested the gender test about three weeks ago, after Semenya burst onto the scene by improving her personal bests in the 800 and 1,500 by huge margins.

IAAF spokesman Nick Davies said the “extremely complex, difficult” test has been started but that the results were not expected for weeks.

Wouldn’t determining someone’s gender be as simple as checking what they have below the waist? No it is more complex.

The verification requires a physical medical evaluation, and includes reports from a gynecologist, endocrinologist, psychologist, an internal medicine specialist and an expert on gender.

“So we’re talking about reports that are very long, very time consuming,” Davies said.

It is actually quite complex, as are the possible reasons for people to be confused about Semenya’s correct gender.

Proving one’s gender isn’t always so easy. Aside from the obvious physical signs, chromosomes usually determine whether a person is male or female. Males are born with XY chromosomes while females have two X chromosomes.

A person can be born intersexed or have Turner Syndrome.

Maybe I’m naive, but I think the testing will show Semenya is a woman. The days where East German athletes made you wonder if they had a sex change are like some ago dream.

Usain Bolt has captured another world record, winning the 100-meter race in 9.58 seconds at the world championships.

Bolt shaved 0.11 seconds off the record he set at the Beijing Olympics, beating defending champion Tyson Gay on Sunday, who set a U.S. record of 9.71 seconds.

In the fastest 100 ever, Asafa Powell earned a bronze with a time of 9.84 in Berlin.

The race had been the most anticipated event of the world championships and lived up to its billing.

Bolt won the Olympic gold in Beijing last year with a world record performance of 9.69.

That big an improvement in these days of drug scandals in sports always makes fans suspicious.

A French pole vaulting champion ran naked with his pole through the streets of Paris and posted the video on the Internet, hoping to draw attention to his quest for a new sponsorship deal.

Romain Mesnil, who won a silver medal at the 2007 Athletics World Championships in Osaka, was sponsored by Nike but says his contract expired last year and was not renewed.

“It was probably for budgetary and strategic reasons. It’s the crisis,” he wrote on his Web site.

Many athletes have reported difficulties obtaining corporate sponsorship as companies cut costs because of the global economic downturn.

In his video, Mesnil runs with his pole as if preparing for a vault at tourist spots like Montmartre and the Pont des Arts across the River Seine. A black square has been added to the footage to cover his groin area.

I don’t think too many people would want to see this pole vaulter’s ‘pole’ but I could be wrong.

While Mesnil’s stunt drew him plenty of publicity, supporting a pole vaulter who runs naked in public may not be the image a potential sponsor would want to be presenting.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.”

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.

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.

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.

OTB

SAN FRANCISCO – Bob Mathias, a two-time Olympic champion in the decathlon and former U.S. congressman, died Saturday. He was 75.

The U.S. Olympic Committee said in a statement that Mathias died in his home in Fresno, Calif. His brother said the cause was cancer.

Bob Mathias became the youngest Olympic gold medalist in a track and field event in 1948 in London, when he won the decathlon at 17. It was only his third decathlon competition, having qualified for the Olympics by winning two events in the United States.

At the 1952 Games in Helsinki, Finland, he became the first athlete to repeat as Olympic champion in the decathlon. Earlier that year, he played fullback for Stanford in its Rose Bowl appearance. Though the Washington Redskins drafted him, he never signed. Mathias also won the 1948 Sullivan Award as the nation’s top amateur athlete.

*****

After retiring from sports, Mathias served as a Republican congressman representing California from 1967-74, serving four terms. Following his political career, Mathias became the first director of the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colo.

He also is a member of the U.S. Olympic and national track and field halls of fame.

Mathias was the Associated Press male athlete of the year in 1952.

*****

Mathias is survived by his wife, Gwen, and several children.

I wouldn’t even know the name except for a Sports board game called Decathalon which was made in the 70’s. Others will remember Mathias for much more. RIP.