Usain Bolt 300m

Posted by admin at 4:53 pm

London 2012 Mascots

Posted by admin at 12:34 am

The London 2012 Olympic Mascots were revealed today. What in the %$#@ were they thinking? The official website can be found HERE. Pictures below are of the Mascots….Thoughts?

According to the site the mascots names are Mandeville and Wenlock.

Madeville goes on to say

“How did I get my name?
My name is inspired by Stoke Mandeville in Buckinghamshire, the birthplace of the Paralympic Games. On the same day as the Opening Ceremony of the London 1948 Olympic Games, Sir Ludwig Guttmann held his own sport competition in Stoke Mandeville for World War II soldiers with spinal injuries. The Stoke Mandeville Games grew and grew until they became the Paralympic Games.

Obviously, I love the Paralympic sports and I think Paralympians are amazing! I love finding out about people, what makes us all different and also what links us together. I’m also always ready for action. With so many people to meet and challenges to try there’s no more time to fill this in! Sorry!”

According to Wenlock:

“How did I get my name?
My name is inspired by Much Wenlock in Shropshire, a town that is at the heart of Olympic history. In the 19th century, Baron Pierre de Coubertin was invited there to watch the Much Wenlock Games, which were inspired by the Olympic Games of ancient Greece. De Coubertin was inspired by the Much Wenlock Games, too, and went on to found the modern Olympic movement. The Much Wenlock Games are still held to this day!

I love sport (especially the Olympic ones) and I want to be as good at them as I can. I also love making friends who show me exciting new things to try and help me achieve my personal best. If they can make me laugh along the way… even better!”

Usain Bolt dating Lava from the Love of Ray J 2

Posted by admin at 1:03 pm

Another Article I want to Share

Posted by admin at 6:22 pm

Bolt reminds the world why sport means so much to so many

LONDON (Reuters) – Amid the soaring triumphs and tawdry scandals underscoring the first decade of the new millennium, Usain Bolt reminded the world why sport captivates and exalts so many people.

A roar of disbelief greeted the tall Jamaican in Beijing’s Bird’s Nest stadium last year after he shattered the world 100 record and became the first person to run under 9.7 seconds.
The wonder was provoked not just by the time but by the manner in which the race was run and won. Bolt made a mockery of the previous world mark and the efforts of his hapless opponents, despite slowing down and glancing to left and right well before the finish.
He set another world record in the 200 final, this time bettering Michael Johnson’s 1996 mark which statisticians had predicted would last for 25 years, and added a third when the Jamaicans won the 4×100 relay.
This year, again without appearing to extend himself unduly, Bolt went under 9.6 for the 100 and again broke the 200 mark at the Berlin world championships.
Bolt on the track, Michael Phelps in the pool and Yelena Isinbayeva through the air showed that the most elemental Olympic sports can be the most satisfying. Phelps won a record eight gold medals in nine days in Beijing with seven world records while Isinbayeva raised her own women’s pole vault record to 5.05 meters, her 24th world mark.
Awe at Bolt’s extraordinary feats near the end of the decade followed widespread unease prompted by events at the start.
In 2000 Marion Jones was the athlete of the moment after announcing she would go one better than Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis and win five track and field Olympic golds. Jones, who had featured on the covers of Time, Newsweek and Vogue while securing multi-million dollar contacts, spent the Beijing Games in jail after admitting to systematic drug use before Sydney.
Bolt has never failed nor missed a drugs test and the giant stride which eats up the ground faster than any of his contemporaries gives a plausible genetic explanation for his staggering feats.
Still, Bolt and his contemporaries must live with the suspicion that permeates too much sport in the 21st century as the huge financial rewards now available make the pressure to succeed ever more relentless.
Drugs scandals have besmirched the Tour de France and eroded the credibility of athletics and weightlifting.
South Africa cricket captain Hansie Cronje and two other international skippers were banned for life in 2000 for match fixing. This year Formula One team Renault admitted Nelson Piquet had deliberately crashed at the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix to help team mate Fernando Alonso win the race.
BALCO SCANDAL
Jones was exposed as a result of the BALCO scandal in which federal investigators discovered she had been one of the clients of a laboratory dedicated to manufacturing performance-enhancing drugs designed to fool the testers.
San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds, who faces charges that he lied to a grand jury about steroid use after hitting a record 762 career home runs, was another BALCO client.
Despite its travails, sport not only survives but prospers in the rapidly shrinking global village and looks set to thrive further despite the financial crisis which hit the world shortly after the Beijing Games.
Sports are spreading outside their traditional markets, with the 2009 European golf tour, for example, starting in Shanghai and climaxing in Dubai.
Formula One, dominated by seven-times drivers’ champion Michael Schumacher in the first part of the decade, showed in Singapore how mesmerizing a night race can be.
The 2007 Tour de France started in London, two years after Lance Armstrong won a record seventh consecutive title. Armstrong, who had fought a successful battle against cancer which had invaded his lungs and brain, retired in 2005 but came back in 2009 to finish a creditable third.
Athletes also switched countries to maximize their potential earnings with land-locked Switzerland twice winning sailing’s America’s Cup thanks to a team of renegade New Zealanders.
At the turn of the decade, the two best footballers in the world, Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo and Argentine Lionel Messi were both plying their trade in Spain’s Primera Liga.
Television money underwrites modern sport and in particular soccer, now more than ever firmly entrenched as the global game.
Despite the economic crisis, the world governing body FIFA is expected to amass $2.5 billion in television revenue from the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
An exclusive broadcast deal with Rupert Murdoch’s Sky television has made the English Premier League the most popular and entertaining in the world and the explosion in the sports and leisure business generates enormous revenues.
In Beijing, the German shoe company adidas sponsored the Chinese National Olympic Committee while its fierce rivals Nike signed up 22 of the Chinese teams.
CRICKET AUCTION
Sport’s global appeal has been a direct result of the communications revolution.
Boundaries of time and space vanish with devotees able to watch or follow a dizzying array of events through dedicated television channels, specialist websites and magazines. Their reward is to live in an era when athletes have never been so uniformly skilful and strong and, consequently, the games they play have never been so fast and action-packed.
Tennis fans can marvel at the artistry of Roger Federer on Wimbledon’s manicured grass, thrill to the muscular vigor of Rafael Nadal on the red clay of Roland Garros and savour the exploits of sisters Venus and Serena Williams on any surface.
Twenty20 cricket, the three-hour version of a game stretching to five days in traditional tests, has become a phenomenon with the Indian Premier League holding an unprecedented auction to snap up the world’s top players.
Other sports slipped from the limelight, notably heavyweight boxing which became dominated by technically proficient but deeply boring fighters from the old Soviet bloc.
In September 2009 Forbes magazine announced that Tiger Woods, who has succeeded Michael Jordan as the world’s best-known athlete, had become the first sporting billionaire.
Woods has become an athletic and commercial phenomenon since winning the U.S. Masters in 1997 by 12 strokes. In the process he achieved the improbable feat of making golf, sport of the suburban middle classes and the country clubs, appear glamorous.
However, Woods’s lifetime ambition to overhaul Jack Nicklaus’s record of 18 majors was put on hold in the final month of the decade when he admitted to cheating on his wife and announced he was taking an indefinite break from the game.
Woods is a wonderful golfer, probably the best to play the game, and an implacable competitor as he demonstrated while winning the U.S. Open on one leg last year.
What he is not is the new messiah predicted in the more fanciful prophecies of his late father Earl or the impossibly perfect individual portrayed in the carefully crafted corporate image the sponsors crave.
One of the joys of sport is its unpredictability. The Woods case, which shows that athletes however gifted possess the same human frailties as the spectators, is all part of the appeal.

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.

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

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;

A Reminder

Posted by admin at 3:37 am

http://selectism.com/columns/timyu/2008/11/14/bolt/