rack Page 9 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

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...

Rai Benjamin Runs 47.02 400m Hurdles, Tied For Second-Fastest In Human History
USC’s Rai Benjamin claimed the national championship in the 400 meter hurdles today in a mind-blowing 47.02, tying Edwin Moses’s former world record for the second-fastest time in human history in the event....

Steeplechase Leader Loses National Championship After Falling On Last Lap
Houston’s Brian Barraza accumulated a massive lead on his opponents on the final lap of tonight’s NCAA national steeplechase final, only for disaster to strike in such a way that he ended up finishing outside the top eight....

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 ...

The Time Barack Obama Tracked Down Dave McKenna At A Coffee Shop
Our beloved colleague Dave McKenna tells good stories. He’s done a lot of cool shit, met many weird people in weird ways, and had his run-ins with the law. And after selfishly squirreling all his stories away in Slack and our brains for years, we’ve realized we have a societal obligation to share....

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...

Tennis Player's Meltdown Ends With Smashed Racket And "Broken" Banana
One tennis player’s violent racket-smashing meltdown at Sunday’s ATP Challenger final in Busan, Korea had devastating consequences for a banana....

Karolina Pliskova Unleashes Rage Upon Umpire's Chair
Forget the weak beeves you’ve been served in the past, all the gristly cheap stuff, and ready your palate for Grade-A Tennis Beef. Well-bred cows were fed only foraged wild grasses and massaged six to eight times daily to produce beef of this lusciously marbled quality. Appreciate it....

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...

The Tale Of Gabe Kapler's Bizarre Ice Cream Habit<em></em> Is Actually Even Weirder
It’s too early in the baseball season to make any meaningful judgments about the strength of any teams, but one takeaway from the first couple of weeks is that rookie Phillies manager Gabe Kapler is one of a kind....

Six Games In, Everyone Already Hates Gabe Kapler
On Thursday, the Phillies won their home opener for the first time since 2011. They did so easily, in a 5-0 win over the Marlins where Miami had just four baserunners. The game even ended in 3 hours, 3 minutes. Pretty quick for a game where the Phillies saw 177 pitches! It was a great day at the bal...

What Did Gabe Kapler Fuck Up This Time?
Phillies manager Gabe Kapler had a hell of a first week on the job. First he mismanaged the bullpen to the point that he needed to put a position player on the mound just a few games into the season, and then he tried to make a pitching change before anyone had been given a chance to warm up. The se...

Gabe Kapler's Cosmic Brain Is Putting The Phillies In Some Tough Spots
Gabe Kapler, new manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, is having a weird time. It’s too early to call it a hard time, and probably too early for any firm pronouncements about his fit as a manager, but things are for sure going in strange directions. Through three games Kapler has already spent more ...

Presenting The 2018 Name Of The Year Bracket <em></em>
To all of you who have shouted at us on Twitter, through our email address, and in my Gchat windows: Yes, we know, we’re late....

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...

Mo Farah, Who Is Definitely Definitely Not A Doper, Reportedly Sued A Writer For Referencing Doping Rumors
World-beating British runner Mo Farah has spent the gold-medal winning portion of his career denying that he took performance-enhancing drugs in more than the allowed amounts or in unallowed ways. He’s had to issue those denials in part because of his association with the legendarily shady coach Alb...
![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...

The Only Good Brackets Are For Basketball
I remember the first time I played an NCAA tournament pool. I was 8. I picked UCLA to win it all, probably because even then I was a huge dork and knew they had won a lot of games, historically. Or maybe I liked their colors....