track-and-field Page 5 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights
Two Favorites Tangle, Two Fresh Faces Step Up, And A Strong 800 Meter Olympic Team Emerges
What the heck is that, above? It’s years of 24/7 grind going down the tubes in a hundredth of a second. It’s dreams dying and being made. It’s bad luck and dumb luck. And according to USA Track & Field, it’s incidental contact. It’s the sport of track and field....
One Runner’s Quest To Escape From A Nike Contract<em></em>
“Nike ego takes over,” 1500-meter runner Will Leer told me. “They never let something happen on your terms. They want to solidify the power structure—they have all the power, the athlete has none.”...
Boris Berian's Legal Fight Against Nike Could Change Track And Field Forever (UPDATED)
UPDATE: Late on June 23, Nike dropped their breach of contract suit against Boris Berian, not because they were wrong or because the bad PR had reached toxic levels, but as a consideration of the stress the suit was causing Berian. Or Boris, as the congenial Nike spokesperson likes to call him....
Genzebe Dibaba's Coach Arrested For Allegedly Administering And Distributing EPO
Track coach Jama Aden has been arrested after police raided his hotel room outside Barcelona and found traces of EPO and other banned substances, according to the Associated Press. ...
Anti-Doping Agency Says Kenya Is In The Midst Of A Doping Crisis; No One Cares
The run-up to this summer’s Olympics in Rio have been a disaster, between the prevalence of the Zika virus, Brazil’s political upheaval, and deadly problems with Rio’s Olympic infrastructure. It doesn’t help matters that the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) is in the midst of a meltdown, with all man...
High School Relay Team Uses High Jump Pole Instead Of Baton, Wins
The 4 x 100 meter race is about pure, raw speed, but it also takes a good deal of coordination to time your handoffs right. This is much easier if you have a dang high jump bar to hand off instead of a tiny, near-weightless baton....
4x400 Runner Comes Back "From The Depths Of Hell" To Win
To get the full effect of the dramatic ending to the women’s 4x400 at Saturday’s Irish University Athletics Association intervarsity games, I suggest you watch the entire race. But if you’re pressed for time, skip to 3:06 for the final lap. It’s incredible, with an incredible ending, and improved 50...
Well, This Is The Worst Way To Start A Race
If you’re interested in the vector of virality, you’ll surely find interest in this New York magazine story on a video of an eighth-grader faceplanting at a track meet a full year ago, but the video itself not blowing up until a new friend decided to Tweet it out this weekend....
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....