Olympics Page 15 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Ethiopian Distance Runner Pulls Fellow Countryman By His Shorts After Believing He Was Tripped
The end of today’s men’s 5,000-meter race at the IAAF Diamond League meet in Lausanne, Switzerland devolved into infighting between two Ethiopians when one runner felt he was tripped and yanked his fellow citizen’s shorts in retaliation....
USC Wins National Championship On Wild 4x400 Comeback As Announcers Declare Them Dead
Coming into the 4x400 meter relay at tonight’s NCAA track and field championships, the USC women had to win to clinch a national title; otherwise, Georgia would win and pull off a rare sweep of the men’s and women’s titles. When USC mangled the handoff on the final exchange (about 2:48 into the vide...
College Runner Who Almost Burned To Death Reaches NCAA Final Two Years Later<em></em>
Probably the easiest sports story to write is one about a meteoric improvement. The Wow This Person Got A Lot Better At Sports story is one that works in every sport, honestly, but it tends to be most common in ones like running or swimming. (Stories about rapid improvements in those sports generall...
Officials Ruin Steeplechase Competition By Setting A Barrier Six Inches Too High
Wild shit happens in the steeplechase. Emma Coburn won last year’s world championship in part because one of the favorites ran around the first water jump instead of over it; a runner at the 2009 U.S. women’s championship broke her foot after one barrier was accidentally set at the men’s height; in ...
A Double Amputee Coming Off A Cocaine Suspension Is Suddenly One Of The Best Sprinters In America
Blake Leeper is a double amputee, self-described alcoholic, and coming off a two-year suspension for testing positive for cocaine that ended last year. He also may be one of the best 400-meter runners in the United States—and by extension, the world—after dominating the field with a PR of 44.42 seco...
World Champion Runner Accused Of Failing Drug Test, Has Elaborate Story About His Pee Sample
Asbel Kiprop, the best miler of the last decade, a three-time 1,500-meter world champion, and an Olympic gold medalist, reportedly tested positive for the blood-boosting drug EPO. Matt Lawton of the Daily Mail broke the story yesterday; several other outlets independently confirmed the report; and K...
The Only Point Of Track’s Dumb New Testosterone Rules Is To Make It Illegal To Be Caster Semenya<em></em>
Track and field’s international governing body announced this morning that women who compete internationally in events from 400 meters to the mile will have to maintain natural testosterone levels below a certain limit in order to be eligible to compete. (Those with more testosterone will be require...
Geoffrey Kamworor Raced Ten Miles, Then Ran A 13:01 5K<em></em><em></em>
The first three quarters or so of this weekend’s IAAF World Half Marathon Championships in Valencia, Spain, were cagey and uneventful, as the runners hung out and watched each other while being buffeted by powerful gusts of wind. Then, with about six kilometers left to go, two-time defending world c...
![100-Year-Old Superhuman Orville Rogers Sets New World Record In Race Of Scootin' Grandpas [CORRECTED]](https://images.deadspin.com/tr:w-900/avlhygeyirwypgkjcbmq.gif)
100-Year-Old Superhuman Orville Rogers Sets New World Record In Race Of Scootin' Grandpas [CORRECTED]
Look at this hightailin’ geezer! CORRECTION: While Orville is, in fact, a hightailin’ geezer, and certainly the man in green is also a hightailin’ geezer—perhaps the hightailin’-est geezer in the history of geezers—it turns out Orville is in white, in lane 2. It’s an impressive run, and he did indee...
We Bribed Adam Rippon With Donuts For Olympics Gossip
Adam Rippon might be the only Olympian who’s been busier since he got back from South Korea than he was during the competition. The 28-year-old returned home with a bronze medal from the figure skating team event—and a packed schedule of media appearances and marquee events. We talked to Rippon the ...
Holland House At The Olympics Had A Designated Sex Room
I know that the Olympics fades from the collective consciousness the second the closing ceremonies end, if not sooner! But this week, Deadspin Olympics correspondent Hannah Keyser came onto the DEADCAST to debrief us on her time in Pyeongchang and ended up giving us an EXCLUSIVE BACKSTAGE LOOK at ho...
From John Shuster's Persistence To Rachel Homan's Disappointment, Every Olympic Curler Is On A Journey
Last November, my team played in a World Curling Tour event. Our team couldn’t be considered “competitive”—we play about one such event a year, whereas the good ones are looking at about a dozen weeks a year. We know what we’re doing; we’re just out of shape. Still, we finished 0-3 in our pool and o...
Adding A Skateboard To Pole Vault Makes It Even Better<em></em>
French vaulter Baptiste Boirie gave us the highlight of the All-Star Perche pole vaulting competition this weekend, and he did it with a skateboard. He jumped 5.9 meters while using some help on his approach....
Nice And Good Isn't Enough To Be A Story At The Olympics
Parents are an Olympic reporter’s gold mine, or anyway something like a lifeline. They are not what anyone would term an unbiased source, of course, but they can tell you what’s human about the superhuman athlete they’ve raised and shed light on their athlete’s otherwise invisible life away from co...
Mirai Nagasu Apologizes For Wild Comments Made After Disappointing Free Skate
Hey, remember that unhinged interview Mirai Nagasu gave following her bafflingly poor free skate performance? The one where Nagasu framed the fucking Olympics as an audition for Dancing With the Stars? The one where she threw her teammates under the bus? What the hell happened there?...
Austrian Cross-County Skier Running Second Makes Wrong Turn, Finishes Ninth
Of all the ways of failing to medal in a grueling 30-kilometer cross-country race, Austrian Olympian Teresa Stadlober certainly discovered the most excruciatingly regrettable: She got lost. She took a wrong friggin’ turn and got lost. Per the Associated Press:...
Olympian Haley Anderson Ranks The Buoyancy Of Olympic Heroes
Two-time Olympic open swimmer Haley Anderson knows a thing or two about buoyancy, but how does she feel about the buoyancy of, say, Olympic curler Matt Hamilton? Or Aja Evans? Or the relative merits of the Williams sisters versus the Knowles sisters? It truly takes an Olympian to bring clarity to th...
Kerri Walsh Jennings Ranks Olympians As Volleyball Prospects
Kerri Walsh Jennings is a five-time Olympian volleyballer and three-time Olympic gold medalist. Here her expertise is directed to the task of ranking things, including the volleyball potential of other U.S. Olympians, and other people whose names are some form of “Kerri.” Enjoy!...
United States Wins First-Ever Curling Gold On John Shuster's Fiver
A brilliant eighth-end hammer delivery by U.S.A. skip John Shuster turned a 5-5 nailbiter into a 10-5 lead that the Americans held onto through the final two ends en route to beating Sweden 10-7 and claiming their first-ever gold medal in curling, and only the second medal ever for the U.S. in the s...
Ester Ledecká Wins Snowboard Parallel Giant Slalom, Is First Winter Olympian To Win Two Different Sports At Same Olympics
Ester Ledecká, who basically won Super-G in alpine skiing by accident on a pair of borrowed skis, claimed gold in her primary event as the Czech sailed to the finish of the snowboard parallel giant slalom well ahead of silver medalist Selina Joerg....