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This much you know: After the Tampa Bay Rays scored a run in the top of the sixth inning to draw even with the Philadelphia Phillies 2-2, the grounds crew placed the tarp on the infield at 10:40 p.m. ET, and 30 minutes later the game was declared officially suspended. You also know that an awful lot of people got wet.
Here’s what else you may want to know:
When will the game be resumed?
The game is tentatively scheduled to be resumed Wednesday at 8:37 p.m. ET, after Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig decided that the weather conditions were unacceptable to play Tuesday night.
“While obviously we want to finish Game 5 as soon as possible, the forecast for today does not allow for us to continue the game this evening,” Selig said in a statement. “We are closely monitoring tomorrow’s forecast and will continue to monitor the weather on an hourly basis. We will advise fans as soon as we are able to make any final decisions with respect to tomorrow’s schedule.”
People with Game 5 tickets will get to use those tickets when the suspended game is restarted.
Any chance MLB will decide it is a better idea to finish the game in Florida, since the Rays play under a roof?
None. “We’ll stay here,” Selig said. “We’ll stay here if we have to celebrate Thanksgiving here.”
Don’t laugh. We are in Philadelphia, after all. Game 4 of the 1911 World Series between the New York Giants and Philadelphia Athletics was postponed six days due to rain.
Will the game be replayed in its entirety, or do they pick up from where they left off?
They pick up from where they left off. The Phillies will be coming to bat in the bottom of the sixth, with the score tied 2-2. Cole Hamels, who was Monday’s starting pitcher, is scheduled to lead off the inning. He threw 75 pitches, so his work is done, and Phillies manager Charlie Manuel will replace him with a pinch-hitter. Grant Balfour, who was on the mound for Tampa Bay when the Phillies finished batting in the fifth, is still in the game, and Rays manager Joe Maddon said he expects Balfour will remain in the game.
The applicable rule regarding suspended games is Rule 4.12 (c): “A suspended game shall be resumed at the exact point of suspension of the original game. The completion of a suspended game is a continuation of the original game. The lineup and batting order of both teams should be exactly the same as the lineup and batting order at the moment of suspension.
Are you sure? We thought if a suspended game was tied, they replayed the whole thing and only the stats counted.
That’s an old rule. The Playing Rules Committee changed it in 2007, after a recommendation that came out of meeting of team general managers in 2005.
The only time a tie game would be played in its entirety in the regular season is if a playoff spot was at stake and the teams involved had no other games scheduled between them. So that wouldn’t affect a suspended game in the World Series.
Has this ever happened before in the World Series?
No. There have been 40 postponements in Series history – 29 due to rain, one due to cold (1903) and a 10-day postponement as a result of the 1989 Bay Area earthquake. No official World Series game in its 104-year history has gone fewer than nine innings.
What if the Phillies had been leading 2-1 after 5½ innings, and the game was stopped because of the rain. Under baseball rules, wouldn’t the Phillies have won the game and thus the World Series?
That’s what nearly everyone thought. And that’s what it says in Rule 4.10 (c): “If a game is called, it is a regulation game:
(1) If five innings have been completed.
(2) If the home team has scored more runs in four or four and a fraction half-innings than the visiting team has scored in five completed half-innings;
(3) If the home team scores one or more runs in its half of the fifth inning to tie the score.”
But in his postgame media conference, Selig said that he made a judgment call before the game began, and informed officials of both teams, that he would not allow a rain-shortened game to take place in the World Series, no matter how long it meant waiting.
“I have to use my judgment. It’s not a way to end the World Series,” Selig said.
Did both teams understand Selig had modified the rule?
Selig insisted he informed both teams. Rays manager Joe Maddon said he was “pretty confident” that was the case after speaking with Rays GM Andrew Friedman, but there were lots of players in the Rays clubhouse – including starting pitcher Scott Kazmir, who said they had no idea. “I thought after five innings it was done and over and we don’t continue the game,” Kazmir said.
“We thought we had to score a run,” said rookie reliever David Price. “That’s kind of garbage, because people start to press, you know. That was like the ninth inning, added pressure for Carlos [Pena]. He’s up there thinking, ‘If I don’t get a hit right here, we lose.’ I don’t know, it should be done a little bit better than that.”
Pena said he didn’t think it was possible the game would be called early.
Similar confusion reigned in the Phillies clubhouse.
“They didn’t tell anyone,” said closer Brad Lidge, who thought the Phillies would have won if they had been leading when the game was stopped. “The [Rays] made it easy by scoring a run [and tying the game]. Absolutely, I thought, ‘That’s [MLB’s] out.’ ”
So, if the usual regulation-game rule wasn’t in effect, why wasn’t the game stopped sooner, before the playing field resembled mudders’ day at Aqueduct?
Players asked the same question.
“After I was done, watching the guys out there in the sixth inning, it felt like anyone at any moment could slip and hurt themselves,” Kazmir said. “Puddles everywhere, and after that hit by Pena, and seeing B.J. [Upton] going around third on his tippy-toes, I mean, one bad move it could be a serious injury.”
“From the third inning on, it felt like you weren’t getting any footing out there, you weren’t getting any grip, every baseball you got felt like it was a little water-logged. Just tough conditions.”
Hamels was more concise: “Those were the worst conditions imaginable that you could possibly pitch in.”
Selig said he consulted in the fifth inning with Mike Boekholder, the Phillies head groundskeeper, and that Boekholder said, “We’re OK.”
Selig said Boekholder then called “the weatherman.” Said Selig: “He said ‘Look, I think we’re OK, but let’s see what happens.’ And the problem was, it got worse. The winds changed.”
Umpire crew chief Tim Welke said the grounds crew stayed ahead of the rain in the first five innings, preserving what he called “the integrity” of the mound and the batter’s box. But when the rain began falling harder, the grounds crew no longer could keep up, and the game was suspended.
Baseball got lucky in Game 3. They waited an hour and a half to play, insisting that the bad weather would clear out, and it did. But why did they even start Game 5? Weren’t they looking at the same radar that Fox kept putting up on the TV screen during its broadcast?
Selig expects to get second-guessed about this one. This was almost as bad as the teams running out of pitchers in the 2002 All-Star Game in Milwaukee, and Selig having to declare the game a tie.
He says he canvassed everyone involved – umpires, groundskeepers, managers, officials from both clubs – and had forecasts from three weather services (which he refused to name). “We were told at about 7:45 that there would be only one-tenth of an inch of rain between then and midnight or after,” Selig said. “So everybody in the room wanted to play.”
Count Cliff Floyd of the Rays among those wondering why they started the game in the first place.
“They should have banged it before they started,” he said. “You’re going to play the deciding game of the World Series in this? Hey, we’re just the players. You try to start figuring out things, you get yourself in a lot of trouble.
“I know one thing: From a player’s standpoint, it’s miserable. That’s not the way you want to play your last game like that, doesn’t matter if you’re up three to one or down three to one.
“For my teammates, I felt really helpless and sad that they were out there in those conditions.”
OK, so does either side gain an advantage?
You’d have to say the Rays. Hamels hadn’t lost a game this postseason, and he’s out, although if Game 5 gets pushed back to Wednesday, he could come back and pitch a Game 7 on three days’ rest. For that matter, Kazmir said he’d be available to come out of the bullpen as soon as Game 6.
The Rays also have to feel good about coming back in such extreme conditions, and that two of their studs, Pena and Evan Longoria, both came through with run-scoring hits after combining to go 0-for-31 in the first four games.
The Phillies have an advantage when Game 5 resumes because they’ll have 12 outs left. They get to bat four more times in regulation, the Rays only three.
So, who was most inconvenienced Monday night?
You mean, other than the thousands of folks who got drenched? Well, the Rays had checked out of their hotel and couldn’t get back in. They had to bus to Wilmington, Del., about 30 miles away, to find lodging.
Marathon runner Arien O'Connell will be a winner after all.
O'Connell ran the fastest time in last Sunday's Nike Women's Marathon, but when she finished she was told she couldn't be awarded first place because she hadn't run in the "elite" women's group, which was given a 20-minute head start.
O'Connell said she was contacted early this morning by a Nike representative who said they were going to award her a trophy and recognize her as a winner.
Not the winner - "a" winner. Notice the distinction.
"She told me they had been getting lots of calls and e-mails," said O'Connell, a fifth-grade teacher in New York City. "She said they were going to send me the same prize as the one awarded to the winner."
O'Connell's story, which first appeared in Tuesday's Chronicle, set off a firestorm of controversy, most of it directed at corporate sports giant and race sponsor, Nike.
O'Connell said the Nike representative also said that the sports shoe corporation had also decided to eliminate the "elite" category in the annual San Francisco event and would let everyone start at the same time.
The annual event is billed as the largest women's marathon in the world with 20,000 entries. O'Connell ran the race in 2 hours, 55 minutes and 11 seconds. The fastest woman in the elite group ran it in about 3 hours, 6 minutes.
At Women's Marathon, fastest time didn't win
There were over 20,000 competitors in Sunday's Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco. And 24-year-old Arien O'Connell, a fifth-grade teacher from New York City, ran the fastest time of any of the women.
But she didn't win.
It doesn't get much simpler than a footrace. All it takes is a starting line, a finish line and a clock. You fire the gun and the first person to the end of the course is the winner.
However, as the marathon officials said to O'Connell - not so fast.
While O'Connell had the greatest run of her life and covered the course faster than any woman, she was told she couldn't be declared the winner because she didn't run with the "elite" group who were given a 20-minute head start.
So what could have been a lovely Cinderella story about a young woman rising above her expectations in a race that bills itself as all about empowering women turned into a strict the-rules-are-the-rules edict. That's not the image we're trying to promote here.
San Francisco has become one of those destination locations for the new breed of distance runner. Between the San Francisco Marathon in July and the Nike race - billed as the largest women's marathon in the world - over 40,000 runners will visit this year.
It is great that these events are held here, but they are also representing the city. What we are hoping is that they leave town talking about the terrific location, the great restaurants and the perfectly organized event. Instead, we look like we don't know how to operate a stopwatch.
"That's pretty weak," said Jon Hendershott, associate editor of the authoritative Track and Field News magazine, based in Mountain View. "Think of the PR they could have had with this girl coming out of nowhere. It sounds like they got caught totally off guard."
O'Connell, who describes herself as "a pretty good runner," had never managed to break three hours in five previous marathons. But as soon as she started at 7 a.m. Sunday, she knew it was her day. In fact, when she crossed the finish line 26.2 miles later, her time of 2:55:11 was so unexpectedly fast that she burst into tears.
"I ran my best time by like 12 minutes, which is insane," she said.
At the awards ceremony, the O'Connell clan looked on as the top times were announced and the "elite" female runners stepped forward to accept their trophies.
"They called out the third-place time and I thought, 'I was faster than that,' " she said. "Then they called out the second-place time and I was faster than that. And then they called out the first-place time (3:06), and I said, 'Heck, I'm faster than her first-place time, too.' "
Just to make sure, O'Connell strolled over to a results station and asked a race official to call up her time on the computer. There it was, some 11 minutes faster than the official winner.
"They were just flabbergasted," O'Connell said. "I don't think it ever crossed their minds."
No one seemed exactly sure what to do. The trophies had already been handed out and the official results announced. Now organizers seem to be hoping it will all go away.
"At this point," Nike media relations manager Tanya Lopez said Monday, "we've declared our winner."
O'Connell said some race officials actually implied she'd messed up the seeding by not declaring herself an "elite" runner.
"If you're feeling like you're going to be a leader," race producer Dan Hirsch said Monday, "you should be in the elite pack."
So this is her fault? O'Connell was just being modest.
"I'm a good, solid runner," she said. "I never considered myself elite."
Jim Estes, associate director of the long-distance running program for USA Track and Field, did his best to explain the ruling. He's had some practice with the issue. The Sunday before last, at the Chicago Marathon, a Kenyan named Wesley Korir pulled off a similar surprise, finishing fourth even though he wasn't in the elite group and started five minutes after the top runners.
In that situation, and in this one, Estes made the same ruling: It didn't count. O'Connell wasn't declared the winner and Korir didn't collect fourth-place prize money.
"The theory is that, because they had separate starts, they weren't in the same race," Estes said. "The woman who is winning the elite field doesn't have the opportunity to know she was racing someone else."
Estes admits that giving the elite runners a sizable head start may not be the best policy.
"These are things this race and other races need to look at," Estes said. "It comes down to what a race is, and who is racing who."
Nonsense, said Track and Field News' Hendershott. He said O'Connell took her best shot, ran the fastest and should have won.
"What's she supposed to do, lay back because she's not an elite runner?" he asked. "If the elites are going to lay back, that's their fault."
As for O'Connell, she's not bitter. After all, she got her best time ever, had a nice weekend in San Francisco and comes home with a story.
But she didn't win. Maybe the best way to explain that is to say it is just another case of the elites in San Francisco giving the city a bad name.
At 35, Jason Kidd is the grandfather, a likely Hall of Famer who still is wheeling and dealing for the Mavericks.
Deron Williams and Chris Paul are the understudies, All-Stars in their own right and, along with Steve Nash, leaders in the point guard renaissance that has taken hold in the NBA.
At 20, Derrick Rose is the rookie, the one who faced Kidd last week and who will match up Friday night against Williams in Champaign as Williams returns to the University of Illinois with the Utah Jazz for an exhibition matchup against the Bulls.
Rose also squared off against Kidd, Williams and Paul as part of the U.S. Select team that scrimmaged against the Olympic team in
Even while praising Rose, Kidd doesn't disagree.
"He has all the physical capabilities, but now it's just the mental side of understanding the game," Kidd said. "There's no comparison to college. People can talk about it. But you have to go through it.
"Williams and Paul picked it up pretty fast. But you have to have talented teammates and understand this doesn't happen overnight. You're going to have some good nights, and there are going to be some nights you kick the ball into the stands. You have to understand how to let that go because there are so many games to be played."
Kidd came away from those
"He's a competitor who's tough and talented and wants to be good," Kidd said. "When you have a young kid like that who puts in the time, the sky's the limit. But it's not going to happen in two weeks."
It may take even longer if Bulls coach Vinny Del Negro opts to bring Rose off the bench in the early stages of the season. Del Negro keeps saying not to read anything into his exhibition lineups, but he started Kirk Hinrich and Larry Hughes on Tuesday night against the Timberwolves.
Hughes missed his second straight practice Thursday with a sore knuckle on his right hand, so Del Negro said "there's a chance" Rose would start Friday. But Del Negro also might have opened a window to his thought process when discussing how Jazz coach Jerry Sloan used Williams as a rookie.
"They brought Deron along kind of slow," Del Negro said. "They brought him off the bench and let him learn everything, get a feel. You have to take a look at that situation as well. Whatever [Sloan] did, it worked."
Indeed, Williams averaged a double-double in his third season with 18.8 points and 10.5 assists after starting just 47 of 80 games as a rookie in 2005-06. Williams enjoys the responsibility that comes with being part of the point guard renaissance.
"I think [Paul] and I changed the draft a little bit in showing you can't skip over a good point guard," Williams said while at the Beijing Olympics. "I'm proud to be a part of that movement of great point guards."
The Bulls would be proud if Rose joined the group. But for now, the rookie knows the challenges keep coming, game after game.
"Deron's one of the best in the NBA," Rose said. "If I can hold my ground against him, I should be able to hold my ground against everyone else in the NBA."
Study: Obese people don't enjoy eating
Obese people actually don't enjoy eating food and they eat more high-calorie food in order to make up for the missing enjoyment.
The finding comes from real-time brain-imaging studies in obese and lean women by Eric Stice, PhD, of the Oregon Research Institute, and colleagues, according to media reports on Friday.
"We originally thought obese people would experience more reward from food. But we see obese people only anticipate more reward; they get less reward. It is an ironic process," Stice said.
Using a technique called functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), researchers examined 43 female college students aged 18 to 22 and 33 teenagers aged 14 to 18, while they drank either a chocolate milk shake or a tasteless solution.
Cells in the brain's "reward" centers release dopamine when people eat, causing that feeling of pleasure, researchers explain.
The brain scans showed that activity in the brain's dorsal striatum area was much weaker in weighty women. After a year, however, participants who displayed the blunt response were more likely to have put on weight.
"The research reveals obese people may have fewer dopamine receptors, so they overeat to compensate for this reward deficit," said Stice, who has studied eating disorders and obesity for almost two decades.
Although past research has shown that biological factors play a major part in obesity, the study is one of the first to positively identify factors that increase people's weight gain risk in the future.
The results, said Stice, are key for understanding weight gain, and to helping at-risk individuals. >>>>
It is the biggest buzz word in Olympic circles, and the promise of it can dramatically sway the bidding process for future Games.
Legacy.
These days, any hopeful city with Olympic aspirations must not only show its ability to provide venues and infrastructure of the highest standard, but also prove there will be a lasting positive effect on the local community.
The 2004 Olympics in
Four years since the Athens Games, a Greek tragedy is taking place. Incredibly, 21 out of the 22 Olympic venues now lie abandoned and in various states of ruin.
Gypsy camps have sprung up in the shadow of stadiums where the world’s finest athletes once battled for gold. Graffiti is scrawled over the outer walls of many sites, and it has been reported in Greece that upward of $1 billion has been spent simply to maintain these ugly wrecks.
That is
Sixteen days of glory, but at what price? The Olympics are now almost a dirty word in
There was an element of tokenism in awarding the Olympics to
The Games will never return there. They will not be allowed to, if for no other reason than that the level of public outrage at the grotesque waste of money on oversized venues with no future is extreme.
“The reason why some countries have been challenged with economic downturns after hosting an Olympics is that hosting cities are often very small,” said Chen Jian, executive president of the Beijing Economy Research Association. “Their investments in infrastructure construction were excessive. Fluctuations arose in the economic growth when no new hotspot for investment occurred after the Olympics.”
The Bird’s Nest will be used for major international events, concerts and domestic soccer matches.
The Water Cube aquatic center was built to a sensible size, and will mainly be used for international diving competitions and exhibitions. Diving’s popularity in China should ensure that it is often filled to near capacity.
The luminescent light show on the glowing exterior of the stadium will be turned off soon after the Games, but will be put back on whenever there is a major event taking place in
Other sites such as Workers’ Stadium and Workers’ Gymnasium were already in place. The Olympic Park Tennis Center has been tabbed to host an ATP event next year.
Whereas the list of
The Games have sparked economic growth, and experts predict a continued surge in tourism as many fans who traveled to the Olympics are expected to return for a second look.
Here, there is a legacy of pride, and a spectacular standard of responsible spending for future hosts to uphold.
Whether you agree with
Congratulations,
Being a young gymnast wasn’t always a bad thing. Nadia Comaneci, after all, was just 14 when she scored a perfect 10 to win gold in
The philosophy of the time was old enough to vault, old enough to compete.
The way a budding age scandal has clouded the gymnastic competition in these games, maybe it’s time to return to the days when no one had to produce an ID to compete.
The age issue resurfaced Friday with the International Olympic Committee urging the people who run gymnastics to make sure five Chinese gymnasts are really 16 as the Chinese claim. The IOC did so after being prodded by U.S. officials to take one last look at the true ages of medal winners He Kexin, Yang Yilin and others.
There’s some motivation behind the
It’s a longshot because ages are verified by passports and the two gymnasts have passports showing they are 16. And the International Gymnastics Federation isn’t going to find any official evidence showing otherwise.
But there are questions that haven’t been answered.
Earlier this month, the AP found registration lists posted on official Chinese sports Web sites that showed He listed as being born Jan. 1, 1994, and Yang on Aug. 26, 1993. That would make both of them 14, not the 16 the Chinese now say they are.
And the reason the Chinese might have to tell a fib? Simple, young girls make perfect gymnasts, with their bodies and minds uncluttered with the fear of falling and failure.
Worked for Comaneci. And some think it worked for the Chinese here.
It wouldn’t be the first time a country tried to pull a fast one in gymnastics. North Korea was barred from the 1993 world championships after FIG officials discovered one of the country’s gold medalists was listed as 15 for three years in a row.
But the idea that either the IOC or FIG will step in and do something about Chinese medalists who look suspiciously like 12-year-olds who raided their mother’s makeup drawer is almost laughable.
That’s despite a controversy that already seems older than some of the girls.
Take one look at them and it’s clear to an untrained eye they’re awfully young. They have little teeth, unformed bodies and carry themselves with the gait of girls who have yet to begin planning their Sweet 16 parties.
At the end of last year the Chinese government’s own official news agency, Xinhua, reported that He Kexin was 13, identifying her as one of the sport’s upcoming stars. And He looks even older than Yang Yilin, the other medal winner in question.
But they have passports, and they have identity cards. To rule against them would be akin to charging the host country with forgery and fraud, something that’s not about to happen during these games.
“The Chinese government and the Chinese athletes must be respected,” China coach Lu Shanzan warned.
Lu claimed the parents of the gymnasts were indignant about the whole thing, though he didn’t bring any forward to say so. Interestingly enough, Yang told reporters after winning a bronze in the all-around that she hadn’t been home in more than a year, didn’t know when she last saw her parents, and didn’t know if they were watching the Olympics.
There’s no real way of telling how old any athletes are if their governments want to go to great lengths to hide their ages. And we’ll probably never know the true ages of He and Yang unless they decide 10 years from now to tell their story.
The real question might be why there is an age limit in the first place. The reasoning behind making 16 the minimum age in 1997 was to protect young girls from injury, but if ages can’t be enforced there’s not much point to keeping an artificial limit.
There’s a lot of other young athletes in these games, including a 12-year-old swimmer from Cameroon and a 13-year-old swimmer from Seychelles. The
Young athletes aren’t the real problem. It’s the parents, coaches and countries who drive them to compete at too young an age that make it an issue.
Maybe it’s time to open the Olympics to all ages.
It really was that close between Michael Phelps and Milorad Cavic.
Official timekeeper Omega released a digital photo sequence of last week’s riveting 100-meter butterfly finish at the Olympics—and it’s still not clear to the naked eye just who won.
However, according to Omega timer Silvio Chianese, the results are clear.
“In the third set of images, with Phelps on the left, it is clear he is really pushing hard, while Cavic, on the right, is just arriving,” Chianese told The Associated Press on Saturday.
Last week’s victory gave Phelps his seventh gold medal of the games, tying him with Mark Spitz for most golds in a single Olympics. A day later, Phelps won his eighth gold as a member of the United States’ 400 medley relay squad.
Phelps’ time of 50.58 seconds was confirmed after a review down to the 10-thousandth of a second; Cavic’s time was 50.59.
Chianese explained that it requires 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds) of pressure to activate the touchpad.
“Any less and waves would set it off,” Chianese said. “You can’t just put your fingertips on the pad, you really have to push it. We explained all this directly after the race to (Cavic) and his coach.”
The photos were taken by Omega cameras placed directly above the finish line, slightly angled to include two lanes in each photo.
Chianese said the touchpad is the primary source to determine the race winner, while the photos can only be used as backup material.
“We mainly use the photos for relays, to determine disqualifications if someone dives in before a teammate touches,” he said. “This is the only sport where athletes don’t cross the finish line. The athlete stops.
“For us, it was clear five minutes after.”
Serbia coach Kapor Mladen filed an appeal but accepted the results after reviewing the photos immediately after the race.
FINA executive director Cornel Marculescu had been pressing Omega, one of Phelps’ sponsors, to release the images for several days.
“This is very simple. Our sport is about which athlete stops the time by pushing the touchpad,” he said. “Omega can’t stop the time.
“In our sport we don’t have photo finishes like in athletics. In our sport, it’s who touches first. Water is a different element.”
The International Olympic Committee has ordered an investigation into the age of Chinese gymnast He Kexin, The Times of London reports. Faced with almost insurmountable evidence which suggests that He is two years younger than the birth date listed on her Chinese passport, the IOC has launched an inquiry that could result in the stripping of He's gold medals.
This news comes on the heels of another Times report that details the findings of a New York computer security expert who found official Chinese documents that list He's age as 14 years and 220 days. Mike Walker used a Chinese search engine's cache feature to find He's actual date of birth on spreadsheets from a Chinese government website. The spreadsheets were taken down off the site recently and He's name had been removed.
Assuming the IOC is committed to a real investigation and not some dog and pony show, the revelation that the Chinese government covered up the ages of gymnasts could end up being the defining moment of these Games for the host country. Officials wanted the Olympics to be a coming out party for a new China. But while the Games have been a huge success, there is a legitimate possibility that
All the good work
Photo via Getty Images
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Usain Bolt of Jamaica broke the world record by winning the 200 meters in 19.30 seconds Wednesday night, becoming the first man since Carl Lewis in 1984 to sweep the 100 and 200 gold medals at an Olympics.
Bolt is the first man ever to break the world marks in both sprints at an Olympics. Not even Lewis or Jesse Owens managed that.
Showing what he can do when he runs at full speed all the way through the finish—something he hadn’t done yet in the Beijing Games—Bolt eclipsed the old record of 19.32 seconds set by Michael Johnson in
Bolt was an astonishing 0.52 seconds ahead of Churandy Martina of Netherlands Antilles, who was second across the finish line but later was disqualified after a U.S. team protest that he had run out of his lane. The third man across the line, Wallace Spearmon of the
Those rulings meant Shawn Crawford of the
The performance marked Bolt as one of the breakthrough stars of these Summer Games, coming on the heels of his victory in the 100 Saturday night. He bettered his own world record in that race by winning in 9.69 seconds—despite slowing down over the final 20 meters to showboat. >>>>
Spain’s synchronised swimmers have been banned from wearing a swimsuit with embedded waterproof lights which they had hoped would give an extra sparkle to their Olympic routine.
“It got very sophisticated because obviously the battery doesn’t last long and then we had to look at circuits and interrupters, so we have been working on it around two months with a crack team,” swimmer Andrea Fuentes said.
“It looks a bit like Christmas lights,” added the Spaniard, one half of the team that won silver at the last world championships and are favourites for a medal in
Swimming’s world governing body, which sets swimsuit rules for a sport where sequins are almost obligatory, said the lights were an accessory but Fuentes still hoped they might back down.
“This is a very conservative sport … their excuse that is you cannot have accessories on your swimsuit, but they are sewn in. If you use those standards, sequins are a type of accessory.”
Leryn Franco is just your run-of-the-mill javelin thrower/pageant queen/model with her own calendar. But during the Beijing Olympics the 26-year old Paraguayan became so much more to the American people; she became our javelin thrower/pageant queen/model with her own calendar. So, my fellow Americans, it is with a heavy heart that I regret to inform you that our favorite Paraguayan athlete (sorry Jose Luis Chilavert) was eliminated from the Olympics this morning after failing to qualify for the javelin finals. Take all the time you need.
Ms. Franco became the object of our attention after she was noticed by NBC cameras during the Parade of Nations at the Olympic Opening Ceremony. Fourth-Place Medal's fledgling Investigative Unit discovered her identity eight magical days ago and since then our schoolboy crush blossomed into unrequited love.
Leryn -- can we call you Leryn? -- didn't return our collective calls, but we didn't mind. We knew she was busy preparing for her event: the javelin throw. She competed this morning, finishing second-to-last in the qualifying round with a throw that was 12 meters short of her personal best. It was a disappointment, to be sure, but not altogether surprising. After all, Leryn's goal was never to medal; it was to win the hearts of men and women worldwide. And in that event, Leryn Franco won gold.
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