As the swimming meet comes to its final days, the action at track and field begins at the Olympic Stadium. Here's what to look for as that competition starts and in four other notable sports:
An expected runoff between two sprinters for a spot in the London Olympics was scratched Monday when one of them decided to bow out.
Linford Christie puts Usain Bolt through his paces with quick fire questions.
EUGENE, Ore. -- According to a source, late Sunday night officials from USA Track and Field were working to convince sprinter Jeneba Tarmoh to participate in Monday evening's unprecedented tie-breaking 100-meter runoff at Hayward Field to decide the final individual spot on the U.S. women's 100 team in London. Tarmoh, 22, and training partner Allyson Felix, 26, a two-time Olympic silver medalist in the 200 are scheduled to race at shortly after 5 p.m., Pacific Time. NBC has committed to televising the runoff live to the Eastern and Central time zones, cutting into coverage of the U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials.
EUGENE, Oregon -- According to a source, late Sunday night officials from USA Track and Field were working to convince sprinter Jeneba Tarmoh to participate in Monday evening's unprecedented tie-breaking 100-meter runoff at Hayward Field to decide the final individual spot on the U.S. women's 100-meter team in London. Tarmoh, 22, and training partner Allyson Felix, 26, a two-time Olympic silver medalist in the 200 meters are scheduled to race at shortly after 5 p.m., Pacific Time. NBC has committed to televising the runoff live to the Eastern and Central time zones, cutting into coverage of the U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials.
EUGENE, Oregon -- On the seventh day of the controversy, finally there was a gasp that punched a hole in the clouds. (The metaphorical clouds, not the actual ones). It happened roughly eight seconds into the women's 200-meter final Saturday evening at the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials at Hayward Field. A starter's gun had been fired and eight women had exploded from metal blocks anchored to the pebbled orange track. They spread out through the turn in a stagger that looked like -- and always looks like -- an accordion fan.
1. The United States will not lead the medal table in London. China, which didn't fully compete in the Olympics until 1984, will conquer the overall medal standings for the first time, completing its rise into sports superpower status. The Chinese led the Beijing Games with 51 golds, but the U.S. had 110 total medals to the host nation's 100 to top the table for the fourth straight Olympics.
DAEGU, South Korea -- This is the year when the best track and field athletes plan. They tinker and experiment with training and competing while searching for something that will work -- or ferreting out something that will not -- during the Olympic year that follows. World championships like the ones that have reached their final weekend here are just fine. Or better than fine. Gold medals are awarded and national anthems are played and winning brings unquestionably the second-most important title in the sport. But it definitely ranks second.
Usain Bolt made untroubled progress into the 200m final at the world championships in Daegu, South Korea on Friday.
Controversy struck the world athletics championships in Daegu for the second straight day as Cuba's Dayron Robles was disqualified Monday after winning the men's 110m hurdles final.
DAEGU, South Korea -- Seven reasons, among many, to make a little time for the World Track and Field Championships, which begin Saturday in this city of 2.5 million people, 145 miles southeast of Seoul.
World and Olympic champion sprinter Usain Bolt had to battle hard to win the 100 meters race at the Diamond League meeting in Monaco on Friday.
DES MOINES, Iowa -- Two women stood 8 feet apart Friday night, conducting interviews in a small room beneath the concrete grandstand at Drake Stadium. Each had just won a title at the USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships. There the resemblance seemed to end abruptly.
BERLIN -- Allyson Felix and LaShawn Merritt ruled their events on Friday night at Berlin's Olympic Stadium, and there should be no doubting their supremacy in their respective races. Both U.S. runners came into this year's world championships in Berlin with something to prove. Felix entered as the two-time defending world champion at 200 meters, but she settled for silver behind Jamaica's Veronica Campbell-Brown at last summer's Olympics in Beijing. Merritt entered as the Olympic 400-meter champion who was still getting second billing before the event here because his teammate, Jeremy Wariner, the Olympic silver medalist, had won the previous two world titles and the 2004 Olympics.
American Allyson Felix cruised to her third straight women's 200 meters gold medal at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin -- but compatriot Jeremy Wariner failed to secure his own hat-trick in the men's 400m.
Jamaican sprint king Usain Bolt continued his unstoppable streak of form with a comprehensive win in the 100 meters at the Zurich Golden League meeting on Friday.
Some back-in-the-U.S, jet-legged final thoughts after the Olympic track meet in Beijing:
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.
The under-performing United States track and field team suffered further humiliation on Thursday as both their sprint relay squads exited the Olympics after blunders on the final changeovers.
Beijing report
updated: Fri Aug 22 2008 00:01:00
CNN's Larry Smith updates all the latest news from the Beijing Games.
BEIJING -- The track meet starts Friday morning at the Bird's Nest. Ten things I'm most intrigued by at the beginning:
World 100 meters champion Veronica Campbell failed to qualify for the Beijing Olympics but Usain Bolt justified his title of world's fastest human at the Jamaican Olympic athletics trials in Kingston.
ON THE toughest of training days, when repeat sprints painfully take their toll under the central Texas sun, Sanya Richards reaches for motivation and finds a name. Allyson Felix. "I think about her all the time when I'm working out, because she has such great talent," says Richards. "And such fast times." Richards drives her arms and pushes harder, chasing a distant ghost. Half a continent away, Felix works at UCLA on a weathered orange track framed by eucalyptus trees. She, too, knows where to find her best race. Sanya Richards .
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."
It is early morning at the large cafeteria hall of the Sunrise Ministry in Auburn, Calif., and Professor Paul Felix is giving an Olympic performance in the face of poor conditions. The volume on his body microphone is jumping from faint resonance to raised screeching to silence, and the veteran pastor isn't fond of his handheld mic. "Can we fix this?" he asks. "I like to talk with my hands."
Justin Gatlin has two jobs. One is to run fast, performing in the manner expected of the reigning Olympic 100-meter champion by constantly testing the limits of human speed. The other is to help rebuild the fragile credibility of professional track and field by constantly suggesting--BALCO taught us that you can't prove such things--that he runs without the assistance of steroids. These are heavy and often contrary endeavors.
Here we are, a sporting community, readying ourselves for a new year, tip-toeing around needles, pending testimonies and an ever-increasing number of allegations. And yet, when the ball drops and the calendar flips to 2008, the slate will not be cleansed.
Sports Illustrated will announce its choice for Sportsman of the Year on Dec. 3. Here's one of the nominations for that honor by an SI writer. For more essays, click here.
Twenty-six musings on the just-completed world track and field championships, one year out from the Beijing Olympic Games.
Allyson Felix became only the second woman to win three gold medals at a single world championships meet, helping the United States to victory in the women's 4x400-meter relay in Osaka.
Here was movement sweeter than beautiful music or fine wine, a combination of speed and style that ever so briefly transcends sport. We see it rarely in person and squeeze our eyes shut to remember it in ways that YouTube cannot convey.
American Allyson Felix defended her world 200 meters title with one of the quickest runs of all time in Osaka on Friday.
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.
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.
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.
SI.com: Jamaican flavorupdated: Tue May 01 2007 11:33:00
Standing barefoot on the asphalt after his race, 17-year-old Yohan Blake, a junior sprinter from St. Jago (Spanish Town, Jamaica), was simmering down last Saturday. After burning up the track with a 45.40 personal split in the anchor leg of the 4x400 meter relay team, Blake was left to critique his performance in the 113th running of the Penn Relays.
World champions Justin Gatlin and Allyson Felix won the 200 meter races at the British Grand Prix in Sheffield, while Kim Collins and Veronica Campbell each took the 100 at the Don Valley Stadium.
Defending champions the United States went out of the men's 4x100 relay at the world championships in Helsinki on Friday when the baton was dropped in a bungled changeover between leadoff runner Mardy Scales and Leonard Scott in the first round.
Olympic champion Justin Gatlin stormed to victory in the 100 meters at the Japan Grand Prix.
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