Olympics Page 25 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Something Sketchy Is Going On Between Nike And The Kenyan Athletics Federation
Kenyan runners have dominated men’s and women’s distance running for decades now, and they own 18 world records, from the middle distances to the marathon. Nike has an exclusive sponsorship agreement with the Kenyan athletics federation (Athletics Kenya), wherein they pay a boatload of money for Ken...
Former Russian Anti-Doping Chief Dead At 52
Nikita Kamayev, the former head of the Russian anti-doping agency RUSADA, died on Monday at the age of 52. “Presumably, the cause of death was a massive heart attack,” wrote RUSADA in a press release....
Chinese Runners Allegedly Revealed State-Sponsored Doping In 1995, IAAF Suspicious
In 1993, the Chinese women’s track team ran crazy; they set insane world records, times so fast, over such a range of distances with almost no recovery in between that, well, they were widely believed to be dirty. The women themselves admitted doping in 1995, but we’re just seeing the evidence now. ...
Could A Nepalese Reality Show Help Restore Faith In Track And Field?
The real problem in track and field might not be the endemic corruption, but defeatism, the feeling that everybody’s in on it—administrators, coaches, athletes, watchdogs. The feeling that the problem is just too big to solve. There’s a nagging sense that telling the Russian federation it’s not okay...
Ohhhhhhh, Track & Field Organizations Are Supposed To Serve Track & Field Athletes. Oops!
It has come to track and field athletes’ attention that during all those gutting workouts, dark-thirty in the morning, when the rent was due and cupboards bare, and it seemed like no one had their back—they were right. No one had their back. While they were pounding out repeat 1000s, the organizatio...
Coe's Dilemma: Does This Bribery And Corruption Make Me Look Complicit?
Back in July, when in Sebastian Coe’s telling he was as pure and innocent as a spring lamb in the #2 spot at the International Association of Athletics Federations, he was in fact mulling over whether “we” in the West (meaning the US and Europe, maybe Canada, but definitely not Mexico) were being to...
IAAF Suspends Russia From International Competitions
When the World Anti-Doping Agency published its damning report accusing Russia of running a state-sponsored doping program for international athletes, it asked the International Association of Athletics Federation to ban Russian track and field athletes from international competitions. Today, the IA...
WADA Report: Drug Testing Works, But Bribery Works Better
The corruption at the top of track and field and the institutionalized doping miasma makes me tired. It’s supposed to. If it is ugly and confusing enough, lousy with unintelligible acronyms, most observers will just say, The hell with it, they’re all juiced to the gills, and most athletes will say, ...
The Story Behind Bob Beamon's Miracle Jump And The Only Photo That Mattered
The man who took one of the most famous photos in Olympic history wasn’t a professional photographer. Tony Duffy was on vacation at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, and with nothing more than an amateur’s bravado, he casually wandered into the Athletes’ Village—which should have been off limits to ...
Holy Shit, Usain Bolt
Over the last couple of years, there’s been no reason to think Usain Bolt could be as dominant in Rio as he was in Beijing or London. He’ll turn 30 during those games, for one. For another, he sat out many of the big races since 2013, and lost a lot of time to nagging hamstring troubles last year. T...
How An Implausible Runner And A Tiny Track Club Conquered The 800 Meters
On June 13, 2014, 21-year-old Boris Berian got up early, put on a red and yellow uniform with a name tag and started his shift at the McDonald’s inside a Walmart in Colorado Springs. He’d dropped out of college, and was staying with a friend. Berian was an 800-meter runner; his best for the two-lap ...
Glory Boy Runner Celebrates Too Early, Loses Race
It’s running, man. Nobody was all that psyched to cheer for you anyway....
USA Track & Field: Our Sport Is Cool Because It's Real Basic
USA Track & Field made a TV commercial that aired recently on NBC with enough moving parts to anger or confuse nearly everyone. Which is good for buzz, so it was successful on that front. ...
Never Mind That Last-Minute $37M Doha Paid To Win The IAAF Championships
Last week, Doha, Qatar was named the host city for the 2019 IAAF Track and Field World Championships, beating out Eugene, Oregon, and Barcelona, Spain. Now it emerges that the Doha bid offered up about $37 million in "incentives" in the minutes before the vote, and the IAAF wants everyone to know th...
300-Pound Relay Racer Runs Like He Was Shot Out Of A Cannon
Freddie Booth-Lloyd is a 6-foot-1, 300 lbs. defensive lineman from Cocoa, Fla., who will be playing football for Temple University next year. For now, though, he's also a member of his high school's track and field team. This is what it looks like when he runs the second leg of the 4 x 100:...
When A Famed Nike Coach Tried To Steal A Race, A Track Protest Was Born
The scene was unprecedented: seven runners walking off the track hand in hand, in quiet protest against their own governing body. The women had just run the 1,500-meter race at the U.S. indoor national championships on Feb. 23 in Albuquerque. The day before, the winner of the 3,000-meter race, Gabe ...
The Fall Of Texas Track Coach Bev Kearney Required Awesome Hubris
Texas Monthly this week threw a Proustian 12,800 words at the sad, strange story of Bev Kearney, and if you manage to read the entire thing, because perhaps you've had a flight canceled or you're pulling a double shift in the parking garage tollbooth, you'll likely follow a winding trajectory in try...
Allyson Felix Tears Hamstring In 200M Race
The American relay team took a blow Friday night when Allyson Felix tore her hamstring during the 200m race at the IAAF Track and Field World Championship in Moscow....