Far from home, competing against the best in the world, with the eyes of billions of people on them, Olympic athletes are under the kind of pressure that few of us can imagine.
Jamaican sprint star Usain Bolt has told CNN he can set a new 100 meter world record at the London 2012 Olympic Games -- and could run as fast as 9.4 seconds.
Sprint star Usain Bolt tells CNN he can break the 100 meter world record at London 2012.
A book closed last week when it was announced that the Millrose Games, the most venerable of all indoor track meets, would be moving out of Madison Square Garden (cap. 18,000), its home since 1914, to the Armory in New York's Washington Heights (cap. 5,000). The event began in 1908 when the Wanamaker department store wanted to hold a track meet and did so at a local Armory. When the meet simply grew too big, it moved to Madison Square Garden, where it would become the venue's longest standing annual event.
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.
Justin Gatlin made it three wins from three races sinces his return to competitive athletics with victory in a 100 meters race in Tallinn, Estonia, on Sunday.
Disgraced American sprinter Justin Gatlin made a successful return to competition on Tuesday following his four-year ban for drug use.
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.
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.
Disgraced sprinter Justin Gatlin will not be able to defend his Olympic 100 meters title after a U.S. court ruled that he could not run in the American trials.
Reigning Olympic 100 meters champion Justin Gatlin has had his appeal against a four-year doping ban rejected.
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."
Olympic 100 meters champion Justin Gatlin has appealed to the Court of Arbitation in Sport (CAS) in a bid to reduce his four-year ban for doping.
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.
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.
One by one they stepped up to the 15-foot-long megaphone, 18 women looking like Jack in the Giant's lair. Only they're Jills. And they're done trying to fit in the Giant-sized world. Their message was simple: we're done being judged as female athletes and are ready to drop kick the female qualifier.
Tyson Gay sprinted into the history books on Thursday as he completed the rare world 100-200 meters double in emphatic fashion in Osaka, Japan.
The world track and field championships begin here Saturday morning. Eight matchups I'm looking forward to seeing:
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.
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.
SI.com: Gail forceupdated: Sat Feb 03 2007 00:43:00
Five things worth knowing from Friday night's 100th Millrose Games at Madison Square Garden:
Asafa Powell of Jamaica equaled his own 100-meter world record of 9.77 seconds at the Weltklasse Golden League meeting in Zurich on Friday.
International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge has called for greater co-operation between governments and sports federations after two high-profile positive drugs tests by U.S. athletes.
Justin Gatlin's defense in his career-threatening doping case could revolve around a massage therapist who the U.S. sprinter's coach has accused of sabotage.
World and Olympic 100m champion Justin Gatlin has pulled out of Tuesday's meeting in Lausanne, the organizers revealed on Sunday.
Joint world record holder Asafa Powell has his sights set on claiming the 100 meters mark outright at Saturday's Golden League meeting in Paris.
Joint world record holder Justin Gatlin takes aim at the fastest 100 meters ever run in the United States at the national championships starting on Thursday.
Jamaican Asafa Powell equaled the men's 100 meters world record with a time of 9.77 seconds at a grand prix meeting in Gateshead, England.
Jamaican sprinter Asafa Powell threw down the gauntlet once again in his much-hyped duel with American Justin Gatlin at the Bislett Games.
Justin Gatlin, who grabbed a share of the 100 meters world record last month, hopes to celebrate a happy homecoming when he competes in New York's grand prix athletics meet on Saturday.
Justin Gatlin has been deprived of his 100 meters world record, because of a timing error, the International Association of Athletics Federations announced in Paris on Wednesday.
World and Olympic champion Justin Gatlin added the 100 meters world record to his list of achievements with a time of 9.76 seconds at the IAAF Super Tour meeting in Doha.
World and Olympic champion Justin Gatlin is aiming to clock a world record 9.75 seconds in Friday's 100 meters at the IAAF Super Tour meeting in Doha.
Olympic champion Liu Xiang swept to victory in the 110 meters hurdles in front of his home crowd at the Shanghai Grand Prix.
American Tyson Gay clocked 19.96 seconds into a headwind to upset team mate and world champion Justin Gatlin in the 200 meters on the first day of the two-day world athletics final.
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.
Asafa Powell has withdrawn from Zurich's Weltklasse meet, thwarting a showdown between the new world record holder and world champion Justin Gatlin in the 100 meters.
Justin Gatlin declared himself 'King of sprints' after becoming only the second man to win the world 100 and 200 meters titles in Helsinki on Thursday.
A violent thunderstorm in the Finnish capital Helsinki halted competition on the fourth day of the world athletics championships on Tuesday.
Justin Gatlin of the United States added world championship gold to his Olympic title with a commanding victory over 100 meters in Helsinki on Sunday.
Olympic champion Justin Gatlin is confident of winning the gold medal after qualifying for the world 100 meters semifinals.
Olympic gold medalists Justin Gatlin, Jeremy Wariner, Shawn Crawford, Dwight Phillips and Joanna Hayes head a 131-member U.S. team for the world athletics championships.
Russia's Yelena Isinbayeva set athletics history as she became the first woman to pole vault five meters - breaking her own world record at the London Grand Prix on Friday night.
Marion Jones surprisingly pulled out moments before her first race and Olympic champion Justin Gatlin was disqualified then re-instated in the men's 100 meters on an incident-paced second day of the U.S. championships.
Olympic champion Justin Gatlin stormed to victory in the 100 meters at the Japan Grand Prix.
Triple Olympic medalist Justin Gatlin and Olympic record-holding hurdler Joanna Hayes are this year's winners of U.S. athletics highest honor, the Jesse Owens Awards.
Olympic 100 metres champion Justin Gatlin justified his status as the world's best sprinter with a comprehensive victory in the Seiko Super track and field meeting on Thursday.
Maurice Greene and Justin Gatlin will face each other again in a season-ending event at the Yokohama track and field meet on Thursday.
Britain took a shock gold in the men's Olympic 4x100 meters relay, pipping favorites the United States by just one hundredth of a second.
Shawn Crawford denied fellow American Justin Gatlin a sprint double as he set up a United States clean sweep in the Olympic men's 200m final.
Veteran sprinter Frankie Fredericks said he would retire from athletics after this week's Olympic 200 meters event in Athens.
Justin Gatlin was the surprise winner of the men's 100 meter sprint final as he took the gold medal ahead of Portugal's Francis Obikwelu and favorite Maurice Green.
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