American sprinter and Olympic medal hopeful Tyson Gay talks to CNN about his targets for 2012.
DAEGU, South Korea -- The significant portion of the world that doesn't pay attention to track and field except when there is a ceremonial flame burning on the rim of the stadium first was brought into Usain Bolt's orbit on the night of Aug. 16, 2008 at the Beijing Birds Nest stadium. It was there that Bolt won the 100-meter gold medal in a world record 9.69 seconds despite dropping anchor before the finish line, a breathtaking show of dismissive domination. Think: Vintage Tiger winning the Masters while laughing and putting with a lob wedge during the Sunday back nine.
DAEGU, South Korea -- Here was the moment, the only moment that truly matters beyond the four walls of a flagging sport. It was 8:41 Sunday night in a stadium set among green hillsides outside this industrial city. The seats were no more than two-thirds filled, but the halfhearted turnout of apathetic locals whose leaders simply bought a world championship event, is more than balanced by millions watching (or readying to watch later) on televisions and computer screens around the world.
It could have been the 15,000 participants, or maybe the $100 million price tag, or perhaps The Flying Man, the guy who lit the torch after completing his final lap of the Olympic Stadium track while suspended in midair. Whatever the cause, organizers of next summer's London Olympics must have felt gobsmacked by the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. The Games are all about quadrennium-upon-quadrennium comparatives -- faster, stronger, higher and all that -- and in the Olympic event that could be called synchronized can-you-top-this, the Chinese retired the trophy.
EUGENE, Ore. -- Long after his race was finished Friday evening, Justin Gatlin dressed in sweats and swapped his sprint spikes for a pair of clunky sneakers. He walked along an iron barrier near the warmup area behind the grandstand at Hayward Field. A friend approached from inside and snatched up Gatlin in a long embrace, chiropractor Dr. David Pascal. Then another friend did the same, former U.S. Olympic coach George Williams. Tears formed in Gatlin's eyes and then rolled down his cheeks, and not for the first time on this evening.
NEW YORK -- It's been a little more than three years since Tyson Gay's world changed. This was back in the spring of the Olympic year, 2008, and Gay was the reigning world champion in both the 100 and 200 meters, presumptive heir to the U.S. sprinting legacy that stretched back over decades and included names like Morrow and Hayes and Lewis and Greene, among many others. Now it was Gay's time, a 25-year-old who paid his dues in hundreds of races at a junior college and the University of Arkansas and now prepared to win gold medals in Beijing.
Surely the Olympic rings were turned on their sides this past week. Two giants of their respective sports suffered rare defeats when Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps each lost races.
Surely the Olympic rings were turned on their sides this past week. Two giants of their respective sports suffered rare defeats when Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps each lost races.
At 39, Allen Johnson decided to retire from the sport he loves. It would be easiest to review the career of one of history's finest hurdlers simply by scanning his astounding resume. The 1996 Olympic champion in the 110 highs was, after all, a four-time world outdoor champ and a gold medal winner in 1995, 1997, 2001 and 2003. He came back to win bronze in Helsinki in 2005, 10 years after winning his first title. He took second at the world indoor championships in Valencia two years ago, when he was 37.
DES MOINES, Iowa -- In warm twilight Thursday at Drake Stadium, 16 men advanced from first-round heats into Friday night's semifinals of the 100 meters at the USA Track and Field national championships. A modest gathering of track fans cheered politely. It was the first round, on the first night. Nothing big was expected.
SI.com: Brian Cazeneuveupdated: Tue May 18 2010 13:26:00
•Michael Phelps won three of four races last weekend at the Charlotte UltraSwim Grand Prix meet, an early competitive foray into the 2010 season. He placed first in the 200-meter freestyle, 100-meter butterfly and 200-meter individual medley. He placed second in the 100-meter backstroke.
BERLIN -- On a night when Jamaica's women's speedsters confirmed the country's sprinting preeminence at the world championships in Berlin, the top female athlete in track and field was a stunning disappointment. Shelly-Ann Fraser and Kerron Stewart went one-two in the women's 100 meters on Monday, leaving no doubt as to which country has the world's fastest humans just 24 hours after Usain Bolt decimated the world record in the men's hundred. On the same track, Russian pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva, the sport's female athlete of the year in three of the past five years, no-heighted, allowing Poland's Anna Rogowska to capture a surprise gold medal and U.S. vaulter Chelsea Johnson to sneak in for a silver.
The world's fastest man, Usain Bolt talks to CNN about his friendly rivalry with fellow Jamaican Asafa Powell.
BERLIN -- The world's fastest man is now even faster, swifter still than the Usain Bolt who sprinted and danced to an Olympic victory at the Beijing Olympics last year. The Jamaican superstar fired off another world record at the world championships in Berlin Sunday, lowering his own 100-meter mark to 9.58 seconds from the 9.69 he ran in winning the Olympics. Unlike last summer, Bolt ran through the finish line, waiting until after his moment in history to celebrate. He was gamely chased by a rejuvenated Tyson Gay, the U.S. rival and defending world champion who was felled by a hamstring injury last year and established himself as a worthy challenger to Bolt with some strong early-season performances. Gay finished in a solid 9.71 seconds, a time only Bolt has ever surpassed in history. Jamaica's Asafa Powell finished third in 9.84.
With two races down and two to go in the marquee event of the IAAF world Championships in Berlin, one man is all smiles and the other is all business. Olympic champ Usain Bolt of Jamaica sprinted with such ease and confidence in the first two rounds of the 100 meters at the Olympic Stadium on Saturday, he motioned for his friend and training partner, Daniel Bailey of Antigua, to go past him and win the quarterfinal heat by a hundredth of a second as he waved Bailey across the line. Bailey crossed in 10.02 seconds; Bolt was next to him in 10.03. Call it showing off. Call it bravado. Or if you're Bolt, the man who looked around for his competition before cruising across the finish line at the Beijing Olympics in world-record time last summer, simply call it confidence.
The IAAF World Championships in track and field kick off on Saturday morning in Berlin and run through Sunday Aug. 23. Here are five things to look for at the upcoming championships:
CNN's Alex Thomas talks to the world's fastest man, Usain Bolt about his form and dealing with fame since the 2008 Olympic Games.
BEIJING -- That's why they run the races, and throw the disks and jump the bars. So that, with the taste of gold on their tongues, Lolo Jones can heartbreakingly hit the ninth hurdle, and Sanya Richards can tie up with 80 meters to go in the 400. So that Tyson Gay can get knocked out in the semifinals and miss the baton in the 4x100, and so that Stephanie Brown Trafton, who finished third at the U.S. Olympic Trials, can use her first throw to win the first U.S. gold in women's discus in 76 years.
BEIJING -- Think back to the end of last summer to another warm, humid place. Team USA is leaving Osaka, Japan, and the world championships of track and field with its stars clearly in order.
Beijing report
updated: Fri Aug 22 2008 00:01:00
CNN's Larry Smith updates all the latest news from the Beijing Games.
BEIJING -- In the belly of the Bird's Nest past midnight, Usain Bolt emerged from a room where drug testing is done, having delivered the samples that might someday say as much about his performance as his winning time. He stepped into a wide hallway where giddy Olympic volunteers beseeched his autograph and his picture. He scribbled again and again, attaching his name to scraps of paper and to shirts, to programs and to credentials hanging from lanyards and surely they would have stayed all night with him.
Jamaica's Usain Bolt broke the 100m world record with ease. With two races to go, he might take over the Olympics
Bolt crosses the finish line with a chest-pumping victory
BEIJING -- Do the eyes lie or do the eyes tell the truth? If they tell the truth, the Olympic 100 meters is over. Break out the gold medal, give it to 21-year-old Jamaican world record holder Usain Bolt and run the race for silver and bronze. Check that; give the silver to his countryman, Asafa Powell and run the race for bronze.
BEIJING -- The track meet starts Friday morning at the Bird's Nest. Ten things I'm most intrigued by at the beginning:
Here was a metaphor screaming to be expressed. Asafa Powell, sweating.
BEIJING -- At 10:13 Monday morning in an Olympic swim stadium called the Water Cube, a world record was broken. Kirsty Coventry, a 24-year-old from Zimbabwe, touched first in a semifinal heat of the 100-meter backstroke, and the towering scoreboard froze numbers and letters next to her name: 58.77 WR. Three people in the audience clapped politely while yawning and checking spectator bus schedules.
BEIJING -- In the last weekend in June, Tyson Gay finally seemed to have found his path to the Olympic Games. Less than a month after he was crushed in the 100 meters by 21-year-old Jamaican Usain Bolt's world record of 9.72 seconds at the Reebok Track Classic in New York, Gay won the U.S. Olympic Trials.
To the interloper, the Olympic 100 meters is but a 10-second event. What's shorter? A drag race? Bull-riding?
The Beijing games beckoned, far in the distance, as three sprinters aligned themselves last winter for a run at the grandest title in track and field -- Olympic 100-meter champion. They had clearly defined roles: the favorite, the record holder, the upstart.
Tyson Gay, the defending world champion in the 100 and 200, had already qualified for the Olympic 100 meters. But his chances for a medal in the 200 is gone because of the injury
The U.S. Olympic track and field team was dramatically changed in a period of five seconds early Saturday afternoon during the team trials at Hayward Field.
EUGENE, Ore. -- The U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials resume Thursday at Hayward Field. Thoughts, past and future.
EUGENE -- The news came late yesterday afternoon that Justin Gatlin's last attempt at judicial intervention to enable his participation in the Olympic Track and Field Trials had been turned aside. (In a hilarious Blackberry World moment, this information was delivered in a press conference here by a colleague of mine who first asked U.S. 100-meter favorite and world champion Tyson Gay how he would feel -- hypothetically -- if Gatlin ran and then modified his question 15 minutes later to ask how Gay felt -- actually -- that Gatlin was, in fact, not running). Gay's answers, in summary: Bad, and then better.
EUGENE, Ore -- On Saturday morning, no less an authority on track and field than Michael Johnson conceded the future of the 100- and 200-meter races to 21-year-old Jamaican Usain Bolt. There is evidence to support Johnson's theory.
On a warm, breezy afternoon in late May, sprinters clogged the faded orange surface of a training track adjacent to the National Stadium in Kingston, Jamaica. World-class athletes mixed with young children wearing tiny racing spikes, a culture worshipping a sport that struggles elsewhere. Coaches shouted instructions and punched stopwatches. Music drifted across from a nearby neighborhood called Nannyville. And all eyes found Usain Bolt, a majestic, 6' 5" 21-year-old poised on the cusp of history.
NEW YORK -- By the time the night sky cleared over Icahn Stadium on Randall's Island and the 43-minute-long thunderstorm rolled eastward Saturday night, Jamaican Usain Bolt stepped into his starting blocks, weathered a false start and added a dash of lightning.
Usain Bolt is now the world's fastest man. The Jamaican sprinter, who doesn't even consider the 100 meters his best race, set the world record Saturday night with a time of 9.72 seconds
Here was a novel idea. In the summer of 1999 U.S. shot-putter John Godina, who had already won two world titles and an Olympic silver medal, interrupted an interview with a business proposition: "How about if SPORTS ILLUSTRATED pays to drug-test me every day between now and the [Sydney] Olympics?" said Godina. "Blood, urine, the works. Then when I win the gold medal, you've got a big story: a guaranteed clean athlete."
Sprinter Tyson Gay was expected to chase three gold medals at the Olympic Games in Beijing. A year ago at the World Track and Field Championships in Osaka, Japan, Gay rushed to the first page of history by winning the 100 meters, (humbling world record holder Asafa Powell of Jamaica) 200 meters and anchoring Team USA's gold medal-winning 4x100-meter relay.
Here is what the young man told his coach two years ago: I took care of myself. I'm fine. And so the coach let an ugly controversy drop. He pulled back and allowed the young man to grow and Tuesday night on a running track halfway around the world from home, Kerron Clement won the gold medal in the 400-meter hurdles at the world track and field championships.
The world track and field championships begin here Saturday morning. Eight matchups I'm looking forward to seeing:
Four truths from the 11th World Track and Field Championships, now three days old in steamy Osaka, Japan.
A sprinter writes his legacy in contrary moments, trying to mix desperate athletic passion with the calm required to sustain perfect running technique. The body wants to thrash like a child on the playground, flailing toward the finish line. The mind must make it chill, for thrashing is slow and inefficient and leads to defeat. In fractions of a second, champions are divided from the merely swift.
Two years ago U.S. sprinter Torri Edwards's training partners went to Europe for the summer track season, leaving her behind in Los Angeles. Edwards, who had been slapped with a two-year suspension in July 2004 after testing positive for a banned stimulant, spent long afternoons on the track at USC (her alma mater) and Mt. San Antonio College, sprinting past housewives and retirees in the sunshine. "[I was] bored, angry and sad," Edwards recalls, "missing a sport that I love."
Two days of finals in the books. Time to run an old-fashioned two-mile around the USA Track and Field national championships. Eight laps: We'll let Tyson Gay start and Bernard Lagat finish. Beat that.
The track coach has a strange and limiting job. He writes the workouts and provides whatever motivation he can offer and when race day arrives, he finds a place among fans in the bleachers and hopes that the lessons have stuck. It is an unusual vocation under the best of circumstances: Part trainer, part planner, part shrink. And on race day, he has absolutely no control.
It is a fact of life in modern track and field that major events are defined as much by the athletes who are absent as by those who are present. This is the unfortunate reality that attends a sport where euphoria is attended by suspicion and fans are advised to embrace a primal and terrific game with great caution, lest they be burned for loving too much.
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