Posts from the Track And Field Category at FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

American sprinter Tyson Gay fell during the 200-meter dash at the U.S. Olympic trials today and was carted off the track, preventing him from qualifying for Beijing in the 200 and perhaps putting the 100 meters in doubt as well.

Gay was the world champion in both the 100 and the 200 last year, and he was expected to compete for golds in both events at this year's Olympics. Now his entire focus will go toward recuperating from what appears to be a hamstring strain in time to run the 100.

If Gay can't run in Beijing, it would be a major blow not just for him but for the Olympic Games and the sport of track and field. His showdown with Jamaican world record holder Usain Bolt was expected to be one of the marquee events of the Olympiad, and right now it's not clear whether Gay will be ready to go.

It's going to be an embarrassing day at the office for people who get their news from the Christian web site One News Now. The water cooler conversation about sports is going to get awkward when they say, "Did you see the record set by Tyson Homosexual?"

Yes, One News Now, which describes itself as providing "your latest news from a Christian perspective," calls the Olympic sprinter Tyson Gay "Tyson Homosexual."

Jim Buzinski of Outsports explains that the site has set a filter to change the word "gay" to "homosexual," and they don't bother to look at the context of the story before applying the filter. And that's how Gay became Homosexual.

Tyson Gay won the 100-meter dash at the U.S. Olympic trials today in a blistering 9.68 seconds. It's the fastest any human has ever covered that distance, although it will not go down as a world record because there was a strong wind at Gay's back.

"My start was a little off, but I knew it was going to be a fast time," Gay said after the race. "The wind was picking up, the crowd was great, and I just had to run to the finish line."

Joining Gay in Beijing will be Walter Dix, who finished second in 9.80, and Darvis Patton, who came in third in 9.84.

Gay's run comes on the heels of the 9.77-second 100-meter dash he ran yesterday, and sets him up for an epic Olympic showdown with Jamaica's world record-holder, Usain Bolt. The 100 final in Beijing will be a can't-miss event.

The United States and Jamaica both had their Olympic track and field trials Saturday, meaning the three top contenders to win the 100 meters in Beijing were in action. American Tyson Gay put on the day's best showing.

Gay set a new American record by running the 100 in 9.77 seconds, an especially amazing time considering that it was just a quarterfinal heat, and he slowed down over his last few steps. If he had gone full speed through the finish line, he might have broken the world record of 9.72 seconds.

That world record is owned by Jamaica's Usain Bolt, who won his country's Olympic trial today with a time of 9.85 seconds. Although that's blazing speed, it's actually somewhat disappointing compared to the way Bolt has been running this year. And Bolt's countryman, Asafa Powell, turned in a very disappointing (by his standards) time of 9.97 in finishing second to Bolt.

Bolt and Powell will represent Jamaica in Beijing, while Gay still has to run in Sunday's semifinal and final before he even qualifies for the Olympics. But even though Bolt and Powell have both recorded faster times than Gay's 9.77, Gay looked today like the favorite to bring home the gold in two months.

With the opening ceremonies to this summer's Olympics just about 40 days away, Chinese officials have declared their National Stadium complete and fully operational. The impressive structure which holds 91,000 fans will play host to both the opening and closing ceremonies as well as track and field events.

The National Stadium is nicknamed the "Bird's Nest" for its resemblance to the twigs a bird piles together to form their nests. Ground was broken on the structure in December of 2003. There was a competition to select the design of the structure and the design you see today was done by Swiss firm Herzog and de Meuron and Chinese architect Li Xinggang.

Efforts to ensure a clean U.S. Olympic team have taken a step forward. According to a report in the Tampa Tribune, athletes competing at the trials for the track and field and swimming teams will have their blood tested for the first time in history.

They'll undergo the more familiar urinalysis as well but the blood tests are designed to stop athletes from using HGH and drugs which aid in the enhancement of oxygen transfer to red blood cells. The top finishers at the track trials will be tested, along with other random athletes. In American team sports, blood testing has been controversial because some believe it violates the privacy rights of athletes. With public belief in track at an all time low, however, they can't be quite as choosy about the methods of screening.

"I don't like needles but I don't like people cheating, either," said long jumper Rose Richmond. "They have to do what they have to do. I'll just close my eyes and hold someone's hand when they take my blood."

With the IOC's own methods for detecting EPO, one such drug, called into serious question, blood testing seems a necessary step to qualify any event or team as truly drug free.

The Olympic movement is based on stacking the greatest athletes in the world against each other on the fairest of playing fields -- no steroids, no advantages. You would think the 100 meter dash would have to be among the most fair competitions going (steroids aside of course). But according to the New Scientist, advantages are given to runners on the inside track.

Sound from the starter's gun is known to take longer to reach athletes who start from the outside lanes than their competitors on the inside. Now a new study suggests that competitors nearest the gun have another advantage – the loudness of the bang shocks them into starting more quickly.

Together, these extra boosts may amount to more than a tenth of a second in some races, which is easily enough to make the difference between gold and silver.

According to the article, racing officials are aware of the discrepancy and are looking to adjust the problem in the future but do not plan to make any changes before the Olympics in Beijing in August.

The U.S. is expected to send one of their best track and field teams ever to Beijing with reigning 100 meter champion Tyson Gay a legit contender for gold.

[h/t kottke.org]

After a brief flicker of hope earlier last week, Justin Gatlin's hopes of defending his Olympic gold have been snuffed once and for all. First the IOC said that a U.S. judge's ruling that he could run in the Olympic trials didn't mean he wasn't still banned from competing and, yesterday, the same judge reversed course and rescinded his earlier decision.

In his seven-page order, Judge Lacey Collier said that although he believed Gatlin was "being wronged," he lacked jurisdiction over the United States Olympic Committee to determine who could be eligible for the trials.

Collier had previously ruled that Gatlin's suspension for using ADD medication violated the Americans With Disabilities Act, something he obviously still believes, but the IOC and other Olympic bodies lobbied him to revisit the ruling. The IOC did say that Gatlin could appeal the ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sports in Swiss Federal Court but the trials start on Friday and it's highly improbable that Gatlin could get everything done in time to actually make a go of it.

The U.S.'s best hopes of beating world-record holder Usain Bolt is Tyson Gay. When Bolt set the new record with a 9.72 -second time in New York last month, Gay was second at 9.85 seconds.

On Friday it appeared that 2004 100m gold medalist Justin Gatlin got a reprieve that might enable him to defend his title in Beijing. A U.S. court issued a temporary restraining order that would allow him to take part in the Olympic Trials because suspending him for taking ADD medication violated the Americans With Disabilities Act. If Gatlin finishes in the top three at the trials, he'd be set for Beijing then, right?

Not so fast, says the IOC. They argue that Judge Lacey A. Collier had no jurisdiction to rule on the case, which was handled by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and that the ruling has done nothing to change Gatlin's eligibility for Beijing.

"Should he wish to appeal this CAS decision, he must do so before the Swiss Federal Court," wrote IOC director of legal affairs Howard Stupp in the letter dated June 23.

Lawyers from the U.S. Olympic Committee, USA Track & Field and the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency were in Pensacola to try and convince the judge that he was overreaching as well.

Even if Gatlin's first suspension, the ADD one, is overturned there's still a question about when he'd be eligible to start running again. The erasure of the first test would mean a two-year suspension which the CAS said began on July 25, 2006. That means it wouldn't expire until after the trials, ending his hopes all over again.

In a surprising turn of events, sprinter Justin Gatlin, who was banned from track and field for using performance-enhancing drugs, may get a chance to run at the 2008 Olympics after all.

Gatlin has been suspended twice, once for testosterone and before that for using an attention deficit disorder drug that is on the World Anti-Doping Agency's list of banned substances. Gatlin brought a lawsuit alleging that punishing him for using ADD medicine violates the Americans With Disabilities Act, and today a judge ruled in his favor.

That means Gatlin's first suspension is wiped clean, and his second suspension becomes a two-year ban instead of a four-year ban. Since his second positive test happened more than two years ago, he's now eligible to run at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials, which begin a week from today.

There's no way of knowing what kind of shape Gatlin is in, whether he'll be good enough to qualify for the Olympics, or whether the International Olympic Committee might still find a way to keep him out despite today's court ruling. But there's now a chance that Gatlin will run in Beijing. Few people saw this one coming.