Category : Tack and Field

Another Interesting Usain Article

Posted by admin at 12:56 am

Drug or Drug Free….

Can Bolt get every sprint world record?
Mike Young
Wednesday, 26 August 2009

usain bolt 9.58 Last week in Berlin, Usain obliterated his already ridiculous world records. His margin of victory was so great over otherwise fantastic sprinters that it got me to thinking that he might be so good at the 100m and 200m that he could maybe get the world record in EVERY SINGLE SPRINT EVENT without even doing specific training for them. Here’s a quick review of the possibility.

* The current world record for the indoor 60m is 6.39 in 1998 by the GOAT Maurice Greene. Bolt ran 6.31 seconds for 60m en route to his Beijing 9.58.
* The current world record for the indoor 50m is 5.56 in 1996 by that year’s 100m Olympic Champ Donovan Bailey. Bolt ran 5.60 seconds for the first 50m….ON THE CURVE.
* The current world record for the indoor 200m is 19.92 in 1996 by Frankie Fredericks. I’d guess if you put Bolt in one of the outermost lanes on a fast banked track that he’d crush that pretty easily and run around 19.8 or below. That may seem conservative but he’s stated previously that he doesn’t like tight turns…and that’s kinda understandable seeing as the guy has a 90 inch inseam.
* The world record for the 300m is 30.85 by Michael Johnson. To run this Bolt would have to tack on a 10.66 second 3rd 100m on top of his Berlin 200m time. There’s a chance he could do it but I think that the dropoff over the last 50m in his Berlin splits indicates that it wouldn’t be a sure fire lock in his current condition. In fact, I actually think Usain’s speed endurance in the 200m and his 100m / 200m ratio shows that he would actually struggle (by comparison at least) in events longer than that right now unless he put in some more specific training time.
* If we use a conservative variation of my standard prediction for current 400m capabilities, I’d guess he’s capable of around 43.9 for 400m right now. That’s quite a ways off the world record but if his coach will make him commit to the event like he’s previously stated, then I’d guess he could take that get that too.
* Oddly, the world indoor 400m record might be the most out of his range right now…because it would include his two weaknesses right now…tight turns AND long speed endurance.

I think it’s safe to say he could probably get MOST of the records right now but he might struggle with the 400m records in his current condition. Next year there’s no major championship, so it would be a perfect time to go after this ‘trivial pursuit’ of getting every single record. That would cement his place as the most accomplished sprinter of all time and officially require Jules Winnfield to relinquish his wallet.

Man or Women winning the womens 800m final?

Posted by admin at 6:25 pm

Judge for yourself…

(CNN) — South African teenager Caster Semenya won the women’s 800 meters gold medal at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin, just hours after the sport’s governing body asked for the 18-year-old’s gender to be verified.
Semenya celebrates her gold, which came just hours after the IAAF called for a gender test on the athlete.

Semenya celebrates her gold, which came just hours after the IAAF called for a gender test on the athlete.

Semenya crushed her rivals by streaking away to secure victory in a time of one minute 55.45 seconds — the best time in the world this year.

Defending champion Janeth Jepkosgei of Kenya took the silver with Briton Jennifer Meadows claiming bronze.

However, the race was run amid controversy following the announcement by the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF). Video Watch outrage over allegations »

“The gender verification test is an extremely complex procedure,” said IAAF spokesman Nick Davies — who revealed the question of Semenya’s gender was first raised after her astonishing African junior championship displays.

“In the case of this athlete, following her breakthrough in the African junior championships, the rumors, the gossip were starting to build-up,” Davies added to reporters.

I still feel like it is Unbelievable

Posted by admin at 6:21 pm

Bolts 19.19
Please re-read my drug post with Bolt in questioning

YOUTUBE VID

Fr Randy Starkmans Blog

Posted by admin at 2:10 pm

Come on for all you who make comments that are negative about Perdita….id like to see you perform on the world stage! Everyone loves the underdog anyway and Perdita has had her fair share of injuries and figuratively and literally hurdles to overcome…

A Message To The Knuckleheads Out There by Randy Starkman

It didn’t take long for the knuckleheads — the kindest term I could come up with – to surface gleefully after Perdita Felicien’s disastrous run in the world championships final in Berlin yesterday.

Not that Priscilla Lopes-Schliep isn’t attracting her share of loons. But the anti-Felicien comments on message boards have such virulence that it makes one wonder why it’s so personal.

Okay, her calves cramped up yesterday. Was it due to nerves? You never know. If it was, that only makes her more human, not a better target for ridicule. But the cramps a recurring problem and she knows she has to get to the bottom of it.

As for those true morons out there suggesting she retire, you’d know if you followed her this season that she’s made an impressive comeback after missing all of last year and the Beijing Olympics with a foot injury. She was ranked in the top five entering the worlds.

She’s turning 29 a week Saturday. That hardly makes her over the hill in her event. Brigitte Foster-Hylton, the winner yesterday, is 34 and nearly retired after missing a medal in Beijing. Remember Gail Devers? She competed well until she was 40. She had more than her share of heartbreaks, too, just as Felicien did at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

This is sport, eh. How many athletes have failed and failed again before their big moment of triumph? (You might recall speed skater Dan Jansen.) That’s what makes the whole thing so compelling.

Those who call her a “choker” ignore that she won a world title in 2003, beat Devers for the world indoor title in 2004 – an event where Devers has a huge edge because of her better start – and came back and won a silver at the worlds in 2007.

The Perdita haters are probably the same people waiting to pounce if speed skater Jeremy Wotherspoon doesn’t deliver at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

You gotta wonder what it says about Canadians that they possess so much venom for athletes they ignore most of the time. You have to love that kind of support.

Lopes-Schliep doesn’t escape being maligned, either. In her case, it’s all the snide comments about her stocky build and people wondering “what’s she on.”

They ignore the fact that Lopes-Schliep’s musculature was there from grade school, that the other kids made fun of her because of her big legs and the pronounced veins. It’s a hereditary condition she shares with several aunts, who are built the same way.

Her progression as an athlete has been steady, no huge leaps forwards that would make you suspicious. She’s not coached by someone with a checkered past, as some top hurdlers have been. Her longtime coach, Anthony McCleary from Whitby, makes his living installing air conditioners.

It’s too bad the dart throwers don’t do a little homework, but then I guess it wouldn’t be as much fun then. Much easier to just log on and cast aspersions behind a cloak of anonymity.

Enough of this rant. We’re bringing out the prestigious Sunnyside Hardware Tool of the Week. Only it’s Tools of the Week this time.

We only award it sparingly. In consultation with the advisory board (chiefly my brother Laurie, brother-in-law Scott Turner, who runs the family-owned Sunnyside Hardware, and buddy Morry Helfan), we reckoned the award would only have meaning if it was handed out to true tools, not just willy nilly.

Knuckleheads out there, wear the honour proudly.

DRUGS 9.58 BOLT?

Posted by admin at 1:06 pm

ANALYSIS
Pulling a fast one on the world?
By Mark Zeigler
Union-Tribune Staff Writer

2:00 a.m. August 24, 2009

Is he or isn’t he?

Clean or dirty?

Let’s face it. It’s what most people want to know about Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt after yet another staggering performance, this time at the World Track and Field Championships that concluded yesterday in Berlin. In Beijing last summer, he won the 100 and 200 meters and set world records in both. In Berlin he did the same thing, lowering the 100 record to 9.58 seconds and the 200 to an even more preposterous 19.19.

“It is always going to be in the sport,” the 23-year-old Bolt told reporters about the specter of doping, “and I’m trying to clear that up (by) continuing to run fast and being clean and letting people know that you don’t have to take something to run fast. I’ll just continue doing that, and one day people will stop asking that question.”

Until then, until people who run fast are no longer tainted by doping, the question remains in play.

Ben Johnson, Tim Montgomery, Justin Gatlin and Maurice Greene were the first four men to run under 9.80 seconds in the 100. All were eventually linked to doping or sanctioned for it, which would lead you to believe the drugs indeed work and question whether a human can run that fast without them. Now we’re supposed to believe someone can run 9.58 clean.

Bolt has never tested positive, of course, but remember that Marion Jones passed an estimated 160 drug tests.

When I noticed many of the men’s 100 finalists seemed jumpy, had dilated pupils, weren’t blinking and were speaking a mile-a-minute in post-race interviews, I e-mailed BALCO doping guru Victor Conte about what sort of stimulant athletes could be using without fear of testing positive. Within minutes, he replied with a short paragraph outlining a stimulant program with an accessible and undetectable substance. Cheating is that easy.

He also added this: “Anyone who tests positive is an idiot.”

Two of Bolt’s training partners did at the Jamaican championships in June, for a mysterious stimulant-like substance that authorities still can’t decide what to make of. It could be a case of a tainted supplement, or it could be like modafinil was for BALCO – their secret stimulant not specifically included on the banned list.

European media reported a third Bolt training partner, Antigua and Barbuda’s Daniel Bailey, had a positive test before the worlds. So far, no such positive has surfaced.

But at this point, it amounts to a few wisps of smoke surrounding a dominant athlete, nothing more.

It’s fair to raise the question. It’s just not fair to answer it. Gender verification The other big question in Berlin: Is she a he?

South Africa’s Caster Semenya won the women’s 800 by 20 meters, then faced questions from the IAAF, track’s world governing body, as well as her fellow competitors about her gender. The IAAF has requested a complicated and time-consuming gender verification test, the results of which have yet to be announced.

Two thoughts:

What makes Semenya’s performance so suspicious is her sudden improvement at age 18. Last October her PR in 800 was 2 minutes, 4.23 seconds; in Berlin she won in 1:55.45.

And the 800 – which requires a unique blend of power and endurance – seems to attract female champions with masculine features. Mozambique’s Maria Mutola won seven indoor and three outdoor world titles from 1993 to 2006 and dealt with similar whispers. So did world record holder Jarmila Kratochvilova of the former Czechoslovakia in the ’80s. The relays After both the U.S. men’s and women’s 4×100 relay teams were disqualified for dropping the baton at the 2008 Olympics, new USA Track & Field CEO Doug Logan wrote in his blog:

“Responsibility for the relay debacle lies with many people and many groups, from administration to coaches to athletes . . . We will do everything we can to figure out what went wrong and to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

A task force made several recommendations, some of which were implemented in the months before Berlin.

And what happens? Both 4×100 teams are DQed in the prelims – the men for passing the baton too early, the women for dropping it. Since 2004, it’s the sixth disqualification out of 10 chances in an Olympics or World Championships.

The Brazilians, meanwhile, had no one in the semifinals of either the men’s or women’s individual 100 yet reached the finals in both 4×100 relays. Their secret? Tireless practice to perfect baton exchanges. NBC A B-minus.

The good: Live daily telecasts of the nine-day meet split between NBC (weekend) and Versus (weekdays), a huge improvement over past years.

The bad: Pretending that track and field is a sport without scandal, completely ignoring the doping issue and finally mentioning the Semenya controversy two days later.

The ugly: The jingoistic coverage that treated these like U.S. championships instead of world championships. Americans won 22 medals in Berlin. The rest of the planet won 119, but you’d never know that watching NBC. Mark Zeigler: (619) 293-2205; mark.zeigler@uniontrib.com

Mark Zeigler: (619) 293-2205;

So Proud of my good friend Gary Reed

Posted by admin at 6:35 pm

Congrats to my good friend Gary Reed who won the London Grand Prix 800m
Check it out!

More Scandals + Drugs

Posted by admin at 9:08 am

Five Jamaican Athletes from Athletics test positive.
I am shocked by this one:

STORY HERE

No One To Blame But Yourself…

Posted by admin at 1:10 am

The price athletes pay to stay in the winners circle…Winning is an addiction.
Is it cheating if everyone is doing it?

Who could forget the Canadian: BEN JOHNSON

Similarities to Flo-Jo
I think so.

Even though she cheated…LIKE SO MANY ATHLETES…she was pretty amazing, and she was my track hero and inspiration…weird being let down by her though:

BALCO 1

BALCO 2

BALCO 3

BALCO 4

BALCO 5

Did you know…

Posted by admin at 8:57 pm

Carl Posing with his Olympic Medals

Carl long Jumping

Did you know that…
Carl Lewis (The controversial American Sprinter from the Ben Johnson era):

* The Chicago Bulls drafted Carl Lewis in the 1984 NBA Draft as the 208th overall pick, even though he hadn’t played high school or college basketball. Lewis never played in the NBA. On the NBA’s website he’s included in a section named “draft oddities”[75] explaining this was an honorary draft capitalizing on his popularity after the Los Angeles Olympics. There’s a poll[76] on the same page where Lewis is second to Lusia Harris, the only woman to be drafted by the NBA, as the most unusual pick in the history of the NBA Draft.

* Though he did not play football in college, Carl Lewis was drafted as a wide receiver in the 12th round of the 1984 NFL Draft by the Dallas Cowboys but he did not play.[77]

Hgh

Posted by admin at 5:50 pm

If charlie Francis talked about hgh in speed trap all those years ago whyyyy did we wait so long to talk abt it and bust track and field athletes on it…man what a corrupt system track is…they shoulda cleaned the sport up long ago…jus like tyree washington has been saying as of late. Ugh
Sent on the TELUS Mobility network with BlackBerry