A few things you might have missed while waiting for Argentina to get a shot on frame:
BEST RECORD PERFORMANCE
Emma Coburn wanted the U.S. record in the women’s 3,000-meter steeplechase. Ethiopia’s Hiwot Ayalew just wanted a Diamond League win. The result: a terrific duel down the stretch, a world-leading time, and a record.
.@emmajcoburn breaks 3000m steeple American record
Not that we could ever condone cheating, but wouldn’t it be nice to think that if we’re going to bend the rules to get a celebrity into the Olympics, we did it for a violinist? Culture still exists!
Slovenia Ski Association director Yuri Zurej describes some of the problems:
When we checked the competition and all the data, we discovered that, on the results list on the second day of the competition, in fourth place there was a girl not even physically present at the course. Another example was of a girl who told us she fell in the race and then slowly continued to the finish line, but was recorded as finishing in second place.
The good news: There’s no evidence that the violinist in question, Vanessa-Mae, had any idea.
Lacrosse is nowhere near the global participation rates the IOC wants to see (compare their list of affiliated national federations with baseball’s, let alone karate’s), and if the Olympics expand any more, they’ll simply explode into oblivion.
But we can dream, right?
(And maybe one day the IOC will take up the idea of splitting up the Summer Olympics so more sports can get in.)
Meb Keflezighi started at the back of the Peachtree Road Race. He couldn’t pass everyone — the top runners were had been done for more than an hour by the time he started — but he reached his goal of passing 25,000 runners.
WORST COMPETITION
We were used to the idea of Ronda Rousey being a better grappler than every woman in MMA. Once she got you in her grasp, you were likely to fall prey to the armbar she honed as an Olympic judo medalist.
In her last two fights, Rousey has faced two accomplished grapplers — Olympic wrestling medalist Sara McMann and jiu-jitsu black belt Alexis Davis. She knocked both of them out in a combined time of 1 minute, 22 seconds. McMann, at least, is a relatively inexperienced MMA fighter. But Davis should have the kickboxing experience to avoid being knocked out in 16 seconds. And really, it was over in about 12.
Unless everyone can quit making excuses and let Rousey face Cris Cyborg, the woman who demolished the game but overwhelmed Gina Carano in the biggest pre-Rousey women’s MMA bout, who’s left to face her?
MOST EXPERIENCED YOUTH OLYMPIAN
The USA is sending 94 people to the Youth Olympic Games. One, table tennis player Lily Zhang, is the first U.S. athlete to have been in the regular old Olympics before she was in the Youth Olympics.
WORST OLYMPIC BIDDING PROCESS
The three finalists for the 2022 Winter Olympics are the only cities still bidding — Beijing, Almaty and Oslo. And you can almost hear the IOC saying, “Please be Oslo, please be Oslo.”
Jenny Simpson got out in front and nearly stayed there in the 1,500 meters in Paris. The quick tempo wound up dragging five runners under the four-minute mark. The Netherlands’ Sifan Hassan posted the top time of the year, Simpson just missed the American record (Mary Slaney, 3:57.12), and fellow American Shannon Rowbury (DUKIE!) set a personal best.
BEST RIVALRY
Kirani James vs LaShawn Merritt, once again. This time in Lausanne. No spoilers. Just watch.
BIGGEST TIE
World League volleyball, Pool A: Brazil, Italy, Iran, Poland. Each team played 12 matches. Brazil’s record: 6-6. Italy’s record: 6-6. Iran’s record: 6-6. Poland’s record: Basic match tells you what it has to be. A four-way tie.
By tiebreakers, it’s Italy, Iran, Brazil, Poland. And that leaves Poland out of the next round. But their fans were still great.
The Daily Relay’s Monday Morning Run rounds up the record chases in track and field this year, along with a Tim Howard save. Also in that roundup is the shocking revelation of a massive mistake — when Emma Coburn ran away from an elite field to win the steeplechase in Shanghai, a couple of runners assumed she was just a pacemaker. They didn’t even realize she finished the race, crossing the line and thinking they had finished first and second.
They’re not making that mistake again.
And as always, Ollie Williams’ Frontier Sports roundup is a must-read. The Monday wrap features a lot of cycling (including a third sport for Dutch short-track/long-track speedskater Jorien Ter Mors) and the odd story of a judo athlete who won her appeal against a positive test for cocaine, spurring a new investigation to find out who might have slipped her the powder.
The week in myriad sports includes a reminder that the best U.S. athlete of the year might be a triathlete, along with a reminder to turn off auto-correct when writing beach volleyball stories.
BEST U.S. ATHLETE OF THE YEAR NOMINEE
Gwen Jorgensen is in her fifth year as a triathlete, and she has already won six World Series races, three in a row. If you don’t build up a massive lead after the bike phase, just wave as she goes by.
Meanwhile, Jorgensen’s teammate put a wry smile on less happy news:
I'm very disappointed to have to withdraw from #WTSChicago with a minor injury. If it weren't my foot, I'd be kicking myself right now.
Devon Allen is a promising wide receiver who redshirted his freshman year at Oregon. He’s also the NCAA champion in the 110-meter hurdles. And the U.S. champion.
Jenny Simpson held off Mary Cain to win the women’s 1,500.
The women’s 5,000 had a fun back-and-forth finish between Molly Huddle and Shannon Rowbury.
And yes, it was a near replay of the women’s 10,000, with Kim Conley rallying past Jordan Hasay.
World chess champion Magnus Carlsen completed the triple crown, adding the rapid (15 minutes + 10 seconds per move) and blitz (3 minutes + 2 seconds per move) championships to his regulation title. This down-to-the-wire draw against top American Hikaru Nakamura helped. They drew on a three-move repetition while each player flung pieces around like they were in a cup-stacking contest.
BEST USA-GERMANY CONTEXT
Nick Zaccardi wraps up memorable USA-Germany duels in Olympic sports.
Do you abbreviate Nigeria NGA, NGR or NIG? How about Slovenia? Why are the U.S. Virgin Islands abbreviated ISV? Check out the differences between the IOC, FIFA and the IAAF.
Americans Tri Bourne (age 25) and John Hyden (41!) had never won an FIVB World Tour medal, and they had to advance through the qualification rounds in Berlin. They did so, then beat ANOTHER American team that had come through qualification — Ryan Doherty and Nick Lucena.
BIGGEST RUGBY WIN
U.S. rugby men had lost seven straight to Canada before this thriller:
BEST NAME
On the start list for this week’s USA Track and Field Championships: Just’N Thymes.
TV times (ET):
Friday 10 p.m.-midnight, NBCSN
Saturday 3-4 p.m., Universal Sports
Saturday 4-6 p.m., NBC
Sunday 3-4 p.m., Universal Sports
Sunday 4-6 p.m., NBC
BEST WAY TO COPE WITH BEING LEFT OFF WORLD CUP TEAM
Max Kruse quickly learned 2-7 Draw Lowball Poker and won $36,000 at the World Series of Poker.
BEST POKER EVENT
Rotating games, high buy-in, big money — the pros love the Poker Players Championship, event #46 of the World Series of Poker.
Sure, that money didn’t include all the infrastructure costs, government operational costs or cash that just disappeared into the mountains somewhere, but at least there’s something to show for it.
So what do you say, Oslo? Imagine how much money you can make with most of the infrastructure already in place!
How do you stand out in track and field in a non-Olympic, non-World Championship year?
A world record is the best way to do it, and high jumpers are getting closer and closer. That’s the highlight of this week’s Daily Relay Monday Morning Run, which starts with the Diamond League event in New York, the first in which two men cleared 2.42 meters (that’s 3/4 inch shy of 8 feet). Ukraine’s Bohdan Bondarenko and Qatar’s Mutaz Essa Barshim each took their shots at a new record of 2.46 meters (that’s 3.4 inch over 8 feet) but fell shy.
The funny thing is that they might not even be the best high jumpers in the world at the moment. Russia’s Ivan Ukhov and Canada’s Derek Drouin missed the New York meet. They’ve jumped 2.40 and 2.41 this year. USA’s Erik Kynard has gone over 2.37. Ukhov also cleared 2.42 indoor, while fellow Russian Aleksey Dmitrik got over 2.40.
Meanwhile, we’re promised a few record attempts at the Golden Spike meet tomorrow in Ostrava, Czech Republic. Slight asterisk there, though — they’re in the rarely contested distances of 1,000 meters, 2,000 meters and 20,000 meters. (For the latter, the “one-hour run” mark is also at risk.)
Other best and worst of the week in myriad sports:
BEST U.S. NATIONAL TEAM WIN
U.S. women’s water polo, World League champions despite losing Kami Craig in the final with a lacerated hand.
He’s the best decathlete in the world, so Ashton Eaton already has a pretty good claim to the “best athlete” title. But now he has won an individual Diamond League event: 400-meter hurdles.
BEST ITEM IN OLLIE’S ROUNDUP
“World governing body Fila, fed up with being mistaken for a form of pastry best employed with spinach, is …” read the rest.
BEST DEFENSIVE START TO A WORLD CUP QUALIFYING CAMPAIGN
England’s women: Seven games, seven wins, 36 goals scored, 0 goals conceded. (OK, so Germany has scored 56. They conceded three. Slackers.)
MOST SURPRISING CYCLING WIN
Now you know why the big guns always chase down the breakaways — American Andrew Talansky won the Dauphine Libere when Alberto Contador and Chris Froome waited too long to catch him in the final stage.
FASTEST SKATER AMONG MINOR LEAGUE BASEBALL PLAYERS
“So, you getting ready to go to Rio?” asked my dentist.
He loves soccer. We often have conversations like this:
“What about the defense? They have that guy Besler, or am I thinking of Beasley?”
“Arrrghwa rahhbwa baahna.”
“Right — Besler at center back. How is he?”
But no, I’m not getting ready to go to Brazil. Just I didn’t go to South Africa in 2010. Or Germany in 2006, though I was there five years later for the Women’s World Cup and loved it. I wasn’t in Japan or South Korea for 2002, instead going through an intensive sleep-deprivation experiment at home and in the USA TODAY office, nor France in 1998.
When the Cup was in the USA in 1994, I made it to one game — Belgium-Saudi Arabia, which means I was lucky enough to see the goal of the tournament.
Don’t mistake my lack of attendance as apathy. I’ve always followed the World Cup any way I could.
In 1982, I realized that the nearly four weeks I would spend at summer camp coincided with most of the World Cup. I was just old enough to be horrified.
I asked my dear mother if she would clip each day’s scores and standings, if applicable, from the daily paper and mail them to me. Bless her heart, she did it. And in a cabin in the Northeast Georgia foothills, I duly copied them into a bulky notebook in which I followed each group’s standings and traced through the knockout rounds. If anyone at my camp needed a break from being pummeled in the rowdy sports that apparently built character, they could come over and ask me how Argentina had progressed from the group stage through the quarterfinals. (Not that anyone did. Go to that camp today, and you might see a few Messi shirts. There were no Maradona shirts in those days.)
In my USA TODAY days, I went to several Olympics: 2002, 2006, 2008, 2010. No World Cups. It’s pretty simple: USA TODAY sends scores of people to the Olympics. To a World Cup, usually one or two. (I understand it’s more these days.) It wasn’t me in 2002 or 2006 because the “print” staff hadn’t yet realized that the “online” staff had built a presence and that people outside our offices generally saw me as our soccer writer. It wasn’t me in 2010 because I had left.
I would have loved to have gone in 2006. Then again, I had one young son and was about to have another. So the timing wasn’t ideal.
So maybe I missed my window of opportunity. But I don’t really have any regrets. And frankly, I’ve developed a view that may shock most of you:
I’d rather go to the Olympics than the World Cup.
No, really. I got a credential to the 2014 Winter Olympics and only gave it back when I ran the numbers and realized I didn’t have the time to make the trip to Sochi pay off. Brazil this summer? Never even considered it. Rio 2016? I’m a little nervous about the preparation, but I’ll probably try to go. Pyeongchang 2018? Logistics could be tricky, but all things being equal, I’d be happy to be there. Tokyo 2020? Oh, I’m there.
Part of it is simple logistics. It’s the travel. Reporters in Brazil will cover one game, get on a plane, cover another game, get on another plane, repeat. At the Olympics, I could cover two, three, eight events a day.
The Women’s World Cup in Germany was as close to that experience as you’ll get at a major soccer tournament. Thanks to the train passes organizers offered up for a semi-reasonable price (hey, espnW was paying, not me), I could go to nine games in seven cities in 11 days.
I’m hoping to go to the Women’s World Cup again in 2015, but I won’t be able to duplicate that experience in Canada’s far-flung venues. Won’t happen in Russia 2018, either. Sure, the travel will be easy in Qatar 2022, but I’d sooner cover an ice fishing contest in Antarctica than go to that disaster-in-waiting. (If it’s moved to, say, the USA, I’ll at least get tickets, if not credentials.)
But let’s say you could pool all the World Cup games in a cohesive area. Would I want to go? Honestly, unless it’s in England — probably not.
The World Cup is not the Olympics. The World Cup doesn’t have the diversity, the color, the sense of wonder of the Olympics. It’s not the same.
And with a few exceptions, the World Cup features the same players you’ve been watching all year. You don’t get many chances to see Michael Phelps in meaningful competition. Messi and Rooney are on our TVs every week, sometimes twice, for about nine months.
Here’s the sad part: World Cup hosting rights are considered so valuable that the exchanges of goods, services and cold hard cash that surround them are one big beautiful tragedy. The 2022 Olympics? At this point, the IOC is practically begging cities to bid, lest they face an unappealing choice between Almaty (Kazakhstan) and Beijing.
Part of the problem is the “white elephant” label. Athens, Torino and Beijing had some venues that had sketchy post-Games plans. Then there’s Russia — Sochi was such a money pit that it has scared off the normally rational European public. No Winter Olympics should cost that much — you put up bleachers at your ski resorts, maybe build a ski jump hill or sliding track, and off you go. If you already have the ski jump hill and sliding track, you should be in great shape.
But there’s hope. I’ve been to London’s Olympic Park — a nice tourist attraction, training facility and host for various events. Salt Lake City unquestionably did it right — the Olympic Park and the Olympic Oval are humming with athletes in training and regular folks taking advantage of the many activities on offer.
And now, Brazil is doing it wrong for the World Cup. They’ve built a stadium in the middle of nowhere in the most literal sense.
So I’m not sure the World Cup can claim superiority over the Olympics on the “white elephant” syndrome. Not if the Olympics are planned well by a non-authoritarian government.
Sure, the Olympics could be scaled back, particularly the Summer Games. Maybe it’s time to split the Summer Games into a couple of smaller events (future blog post). But they’re still a wonderful event. Being immersed in the Olympic atmosphere is an experience I’ll always treasure.
The World Cup, on the other hand, is losing some of its allure to me. There’s so much soccer all year. I love the weekly Saturday wakeup with the NBC Premier League crew, my trips to the SoccerPlex to see the NWSL, and the steady summer diet of MLS. I’m finding less in common with the people going to Brazil and more in common with the hard-core Spirit fans, the masses in Seattle, and the English supporters banding together with their neighborhood club.
Then there’s FIFA, the organization so ugly that it’s hard to stomach any summary of their deeds that isn’t mitigated by John Oliver’s wit.
Of course I’m still going to watch the World Cup. I’m looking forward to hearing Ian Darke, whom I had the privilege of meeting in Germany, add life to the action. And after seeing Next Goal Wins, I have a new appreciation for the countries that strive just to get a small piece of the competition.
But when it comes to planning international trips over the next decade, I have a few things that will be higher priority than handing any of my money to FIFA.
Heading into the weekend, I cast some doubt on the hype for the modern pentathlon World Cup final, which included the peculiar boast that it was expected to draw a U.S. audience of 25 million on NBC Universal. I couldn’t even find actual broadcast info after checking several sources.
Then I suggested the following:
The more I watch, the more I think modern pentathlon needs to swap the riding phase for something else. Any nominees?
That probably wouldn’t go over well in the host city(ies) of Sarasota/Bradenton, where the local writeup headline is “Equestrian event ignites interest.”
In the morning, less than 30 spectators watched athletes begin their quest for pentathlon glory during the fencing and swimming events at the Selby Aquatic Center.
OK, granted, the fencing is hard to follow. And you can catch half (well, two-thirds, in a sense) of the pentathlon at one venue later in the day.
More than half the number of spectators that filled the grandstands to watch the show jumping portion of the event left by the time the combined running and shooting event started.
You know, if you just want to see show jumping, you can.
I had a lot of fun covering pentathlon in Beijing. Maybe one day it’ll be appreciated for what it is. Though this is a nice first step:
Rolls Royce picked me up for the World Cup Final press conference this morning . Feeling like a princess. #Spoiledpic.twitter.com/qDP68icWSp
Is 3v3 basketball the next beach volleyball? Given the comparative histories of the sports, probably not. But the U.S. women continue to dominate, taking World Championship gold. The men lost in the round of 16 but got a bronze medal in the dunk contest.
BEST AQUATIC EVENT THIS WEEK
The USA Women have arrived in Kunshan, China and start play in the FINA World League Super Final tomorrow. Go USA! pic.twitter.com/v41hLqWmcN
Scotland beat the USA in rugby, four injuries to nil.
BEST ROUNDUPS
– Ollie Williams’ Frontier Sports: More on Team Chris Froome vs. Team Bradley Wiggins, Rio promising clean water for sailing, first steps toward women’s Nordic combined, a triathlon misprint, Rulon Gardner forgetting he’s nearly my age.
– Daily Relay’s Monday Morning Run: The Tori Bowie phenomenon, some youngsters ready to challenge Mary Cain, decathlon champion Ashton Eaton blasting through the 400 hurdles.
– Team USA Sports Scene: More World Cup medals — in shooting this time.
Duresport.com 