Sprints/Hurdles
Swiss You Can’t Miss
Tuesday, August 26th, 2008
Bob Ramsak has posted a preview of the Weltklasse Zürich meet over at the IAAF’s Golden League website. Don’t forget to join Tom Borish over at TrackShark.com for a live video feed and some live blogging of the meet this Friday, August 29th!
Clay claims “world’s greatest athlete” moniker, wins Olympic decathlon
Friday, August 22nd, 2008
BEIJING - Bryan Clay upgraded his 2004 silver medal to 2008 gold in the decathlon, dominating competition during Friday evening action at the "Bird’s Nest" National Stadium.
Clay (Glendora, Calif.) got his evening off to a very strong start, throwing a season-best 70.97m/232-10 to place third in the javelin. The performance earned him 904 points, bringing his total up to 8,269 with one event remaining in the 10-event competition. Ahead of the field by 479 points, his only competition was himself in the final event, the 1,500m.
Never a favorite event for Clay, he endured through the accumulated fatigue of two days of competition to finish in 5:06.59 for 522 points, bringing his winning total to 8,791 and becoming the first U.S. gold medalist in the event since Dan O’Brien in 1996. Andrei Krauchanka of Belarus took the silver with 8,551, and Leonel Suarez of Cuba finished third with 8,527.
World Record For Jamaican 4×100m Relay Team
Friday, August 22nd, 2008Jamaica beat the old world record of 37.40 by an improbable 3/10ths of a second. Usain Bolt’s third leg was so spectacular, it was beyond explanation. I’ve never seen anything like it. Richard Thompson, who ran the anchor leg for silver medalists Trinidad & Tobago wasn’t within 30 meters of Asafa Powell at the finish. Japan came in a surprise 3rd place. Here are the results:
| Position | Lane | Team | Country | Mark | |
| 1. | 5 | JAM | Nesta Carter; Michael Frater; Usain Bolt; Asafa Powell | 37.10 | WR |
| 2. | 4 | TRI | Keston Bledman; Marc Burns; Emmanuel Callander; Richard Thompson | 38.06 | |
| 3. | 7 | JPN | Naoki Tsukahara; Shingo Suetsugu; Shinji Takahira; Nobuharu Asahara | 38.15 | SB |
| 4. | 3 | BRA | Vicente de Lima; Sandro Viana; Bruno de Barros; José Carlos Moreira | 38.24 | SB |
| 5. | 9 | GER | Tobias Unger; Till Helmke; Alexander Kosenkow; Martin Keller | 38.58 | |
| 6. | 6 | CAN | Hank Palmer; Anson Henry; Jared Connaughton; Pierre Browne | 38.66 | SB |
| 7. | 8 | NED | Maarten Heisen; Guus Hoogmoed; Patrick van Luijk; Caimin Douglas | 45.81 | |
| DQ | 2 | CHN | Yongyi Wen; Peimeng Zhang; Bin Lu; Kai Hu | DQ |
Russia Wins Women’s 4×100 Relay After Jamaica Misses Exchange
Friday, August 22nd, 2008This Olympic games has to have set a record for dropped batons. Jamaica and Great Britain both fumbled their first exchanges, giving away the gold medal to Russia. Here are the results:
| Place |
Lane | NAT | Team | Time |
|
| 1 | 4 | RUS | Yevgeniya Polyakova; Aleksandra Fedoriva; Yulia Gushchina; Yuliya Chermoshanskaya | 42.31 | SB |
| 2 | 5 | BEL | Olivia Borlee; Hanna Mariën; Elodie Ouédraogo; Kim Gevaert | 42.54 | NR |
| 3 | 3 | NGR | Ene Franca Idoko; Gloria Kemasuode; Halimat Ismaila; Oludamola Osayomi | 43.04 | SB |
| 4 | 8 | BRA | Rosemar Maria Neto; Lucimar Aparecida de Moura; Thaissa Presti; Rosângela Santos | 43.14 | SB |
| 5 | 9 | GER | Anne Möllinger; Verena Sailer; Cathleen Tschirch; Marion Wagner | 43.28 | |
| DQ | 2 | POL | Ewelina Klocek; Daria Korczynska; Dorota Jedrusinska; Joanna Kocielnik | DQ | |
| DNF | 6 | JAM | Shelly-Ann Fraser; Sherone Simpson; Kerron Stewart; Veronica Campbell-Brown | DNF | |
| DNF | 7 | GBR | Jeanette Kwakye; Montell Douglas; Emily Freeman; Emma Ania | DNF |
Merritt Vs. Wariner in Zurich
Thursday, August 21st, 2008European Athletics has announced that meet organizers of the Weltklasse Zürich meet have confirmed a rematch between LaShawn Merritt and Jeremy Wariner on August 29th, 2008.
Streaming video of that meet will be broadcast live on TrackShark.com. Usain Bolt will also be competing. Can he run a 9.5 in the 100m next week?
I Seem To Have Touched Some Nerves
Thursday, August 21st, 2008I seem to have touched some nerves with this post. Yes, Allyson Felix, Sanya Richards, Tyson Gay and many Team USA athletes have had sub-par performances in Beijing. But there are logical reasons for everything if we look for them.
It was obvious throughout the rounds (and, really, throughout the season) that Felix had a hitch in her giddyup. I’ve already discussed that in a recent post. There was no need for me to rehash that argument today.
Richards claimed a dehydration-induced hamstring "event" of some kind during her final. I’m going to take her at her word.
Gay had a major injury, then claimed he was back to 100%. Yes, he might have been healthy, but he had probably lost too much fitness. He was merely in mid-season form during Beijing. No track & field pundit his or her right mind would claim otherwise.
LaShawn Merritt Is New King Of 400 Meter Mountain
Thursday, August 21st, 2008
After his sub-par performance in the Olympic 400m final, Jeremy Wariner no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt. Many people questioned his judgment in firing his longtime coach Clyde Hart at the beginning of an Olympic season. I defended his decision all season in hopes that his inconsistency had less to do with his decline and more to do with LaShawn Merritt’s ascent. Once Wariner defended his Olympic title, the doubters would be silenced.
But no longer. It’s obvious now that something was not right, that something had changed, either in his mental game or his training. For years he had followed a certain routine under Hart’s tutelage and he had succeeded in doing so. Suddenly that routine was gone and he had an inconsistent season for the first time in his career. It doesn’t take a PhD to put two and two together and conclude that the coaching change had something to do with his inconsistency. The ironic part of this story is that he fired Hart to save some money. Now, without the gold medal, he may have thrown away much more money in endorsements than he saved in coaching expenses.