Category: track and field

olympic sports, track and field

Monday Myriad, April 21: Meb’s marathon

Posted on by Beau Dure

This year’s Boston Marathon was full of inspirational stories. We knew that. We didn’t know one of them would be the first American man to win since 1983.

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Meb Keflezighi wasn’t born in the USA, but through a long and distinguished career, he has always exuded love for the country that welcomed him and his family as they got out of Eritrea. And he has been quick to lend comfort and charity to those affected by last year’s bombing.

Here he is:

Other big U.S. performances in Boston: Shalane Flanagan led much of the way and finished seventh.

Then there’s Tatyana McFadden — major marathon, major marathon, major marathon, major marathon, silver medal in Sochi, major marathon (London, last week), major marathon (Boston).

Elsewhere in the Myriad world:

Best statement by a young runner: The Mt. SAC field for the women’s 400 included Lashinda Demus and DeeDee Trotter. Winner? Oregon senior Phyllis Francis.

Best comeback by a guy who usually wins: Jordan Burroughs won his first 69 international wrestling matches before losing to Nick Marable in February. He was 30 seconds away from his second loss but exploded for two late takedowns to beat David Taylor 7-6.

Best acceleration: Australia’s Caroline Buchanan and the USA’s Brooke Crain finished 1-2 in the BMX World Cup opener in Manchester, England.

Best miles: Also in Boston …

Best tiebreaker: The university in whose shadow I grew up has another national title:

Least existent tiebreaker: 

Best post-Olympic career: Win world and Olympic titles, then go to college. Only in gymnastics.

Most consistent cyclist: 

Best retirement: Jeremy Teela was a fun guy to cover. Glad to see him put down the gun and skis with grace.

And finally …

Least nutritious dinner for an all-time great:

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olympic sports, track and field

Monday Myriad, March 10: USA and Ukraine celebrate

Posted on by Beau Dure

Through three days of the Paralympics, host Russia unsurprisingly has a huge lead in the medal count with 24 medals, 7 gold. Tied for second with 7 medals is the USA and the inspiring team from Ukraine.

The U.S. track and field team ran away with the medals at the World Indoor Championships — 12 overall, 8 gold.

The USA’s week also included a redemptive World Cup weekend for speedskaters and more Alpine glory for Mikaela Shiffrin and Ted Ligety. (TeamUSA.org is also posting daily Paralympic recaps.)

Best and worst of the week …

Best event to watch Tuesday morning: USA-Russia in sled hockey.

Best documentary: USA Track and Field wrapped up Alan Webb’s track career with an inspirational 12-minute video.

Best Paralympic starter: Allison Jones won the first U.S. medal of the London 2012 Paralympics (in cycling). Then she took downhill bronze for the first U.S. medal in Sochi.

Best statement: The first 2012 Paralympic gold medalist from Ukraine, Olena Iurkovska, spoke proudly: “Every time I race, it will be for Ukrainian independence and peace in my country.” And she embraced a top Russian lawmaker at the flower ceremony.

Best bounce-back from Sochi: U.S. Speedskating medals in Sochi: zero. At the World Cup in Inzell, Germany, with most of the same skaters competing: eight. Heather Richardson won three races, Shani Davis and Brian Hansen each won one, Brittany Bowe had a second and a third, and Hansen added a third.

Best place to swim: London’s swimming venue is now open to the public.

Best description of covering the Olympics: Canadian journalist Bruce Arthur offers the proper mix of humility and humor:

On one Wednesday in Sochi I got up at 6:15 on three hours’ sleep, was on a bus to the mountains by 7:30, covered slopestyle for seven hours, wrote it, ate a meal cobbled together out of apples and water and a cake-like yellowish thing with raisins in it, covered the half-pipe where Shaun White lost, ran out of the mixed zone and under the bleachers as White’s last run ended to get a Canadian cross-country coach on the phone after he’d given a ski to a Russian competitor, scrambled back, slipping on the snow, covered the half-pipe until White finally spoke around midnight, wrote one of the columns on the bus ride back down the mountain, wrote the other one in the Main Press Centre (MPC), missed the 3 a.m. bus, had a beer with a colleague in the media bar, caught the 4 a.m. bus, decided to have two more beers with the same colleague in the media village bar because at the Olympics you start to get punchy after a while, and went to bed 24 hours after I started.

Great day.

Best top 10: Not sure how much longer 2010 gold medalist Bill Demong will compete, but it’s nice to see him back in the mix in a World Cup Nordic combined.

Least necessary apology:

Best World Indoor lap: Francena McCorory blew past and said goodbye in the women’s 400 meters.

Best hurled object at World Indoors: David Storl took the shot put lead, putting down the challenge for the USA’s Ryan Whiting. He responded with a shot that cut through the air like a meteor.

Biggest World Indoors upset: Nia Ali over Australia’s Sally Pearson in the 60-meter hurdles.

Most dominant World Indoors run, individual: Chanelle Price led each lap in the women’s 800 to win in 2:00.09, best in the world this year.

Most dominant World Indoors run, team: McCorory, Natasha Hastings, Joanna Atkins and Cassandra Tate won by nearly two seconds over a Jamaican 4×400 team that set a national record.

Best World Indoors win by someone I admit I’d never heard of: Omo Osaghae won the men’s 60 hurdles in a world-leading 7.45 seconds.

Most dominant multi-events athlete: Ashton Eaton was actually disappointed after winning World Indoors heptathlon gold. He didn’t break the world record. Poor guy.

Best multi-sport show: 

And finally, the world record World Indoors win: Kyle Clemons, David Verburg, Kind Butler III and Calvin Smith — 3:02.13 in the men’s 4×400. At least, that might be a world record — we have a discrepancy of record-keeping.

That’s eight gold medals for the USA. No other country got more than five medals, let alone gold medals. But that was still lower than the projection at DailyRelay.com, which posted a lively in-depth recap of the meet.

Most compelling argument for change in the Olympics: This many slopestyle snowboarders can’t be wrong.

Most emphatic continuation of Olympic gold medal form: Wins for Ted Ligety (though he concedes he’s unlikely to win the season title) and Mikaela Shiffrin (who clinched her second straight season slalom title).

Most depleted World Championship field: Raising the age-old question of why they bother to have a figure skating championship one month after the Olympics.

Worst time to have a part fall off a rifle: OK, maybe the Olympics would’ve been worse, but you still have to feel for Susan Dunklee trying to shoot without a sight.

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medal projections, olympic sports, track and field

Medal projections: Stats vs. subjectivity

Posted on by Beau Dure

Can we really come up with a statistical model for projecting Olympic medals?

I’ve often joked that I want to be the Nate Silver of Olympic medal projections. But Nate knows a lot more about stats than I do — I never took a single class in the subject, and I just hack my way through spreadsheets on the basis of some self-teaching and the occasional journalists’ seminar. (Did I just ruin my chances of getting hired to consult at the new FiveThirtyEight?)

Since Sochi, I’ve embarked on a bit more self-teaching in spreadsheets and stats. At the same time, I firmly believe I’m hitting the limits of what stats can tell us about Olympic performance.

Check this prototype I’ve made for the Rio 2016 medal projections:

[gview file=”https://duresport.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/2016-track-and-field-sheet1.pdf”%5D

A bit of explanation:

– Columns C through I are results from the Olympics, World Championships and the Diamond League. Obviously, we have a long way to go in this cycle, so many spaces are x’d out.

– Column J is each athlete’s personal best. Column K is each athlete’s best from the past season — for now, from 2013.

– I’ve assigned points to each of these columns, as you’ll see in the lower half of the spreadsheet. These can be adjusted without redoing a whole lot of work! If I decide to count the 2013-14 Diamond Leagues a little bit less, I simply change the point values in that chart. And I can duplicate this spreadsheet for use in sports that have different competitions.

So the point system is already bringing some subjectivity into the mix. I’ve decided to weigh the 2012 Olympics, the 2015 World Championship and the 2016 Diamond League more heavily than other competition. Then I’ve made a judgment call to assign points to times.

Then add another bit of subjectivity: Column N is an adjustment value. I can use this to account for any competitions missed through injury (Yohan Blake, Asafa Powell) or suspension (Tyson Gay).

Add it all up, and you have three columns that look scientific. Column O is “PI” or Predictive Index. (Yes, I said “Performance Index” on the spreadsheet – please ignore that.) Column P shows the percentage of possible points — divide an athlete’s PI by the “Max predictive index” in the middle of the spreadsheet. That number will rise throughout the cycle. When the 2014 Diamond League is complete, we’ll add 15 (the maximum value for Diamond League standings) for a total of 105.

Then Column Q is “odds”, a simple percentage chance of earning a medal in this event. I tinkered with a couple of possible formulas for this column. Perhaps I simply apply the %max column and adjust it so the numbers will add up to reality — you wouldn’t want four people to have am 80% chance at winning a medal, for example. Or perhaps I calculate how many standard deviations an athlete’s PI is away from the other contenders.

What formula is in there now? None. I eyeballed it.

That’s not a final decision. Perhaps I’ll figure out a statistically sound way to convert the PI into actual odds. But I’m not sure it’s really necessary.

We know Usain Bolt will win a medal unless he (A) isn’t healthy or (B) has a serious problem at the start, including a false start. The 100 meters, moreso than most events, is all about raw speed. Work up to 1,500 meters, and tactics become an issue — in a slower race, finishing speed is more important than a personal best over the whole distance.

I haven’t taken age into account, though I would expect the 2015 and 2016 results to catch anyone on the decline. But for now, I’m skeptical that Justin Gatlin will be in 2012 form in 2016.

So to make the 2016 projections, I’ll compile a lot of numbers. That helps, of course. If Nickel Ashmeade doesn’t improve his personal best of 9.90, it’s ridiculous to declare him a medal favorite. Yet when all is said and done, I’m going to leave some space for a gut feeling.

This isn’t a 162-game baseball season, where weather conditions and other factors tend to even out over time. This isn’t a presidential election, where substantial polling points to clear trends, and Nate’s success has shut up the pundits who didn’t get the math. This is a projection of who is going to run the fastest in one 10-second race.

I do hope to add some probability this time around. Usain Bolt (if healthy) will be much more likely to win a medal for Jamaica than my gold medal pick in some random judo weight class in which 10 people have a legitimate shot to win, and I hope my medal count projection will reflect this.

So I’m not afraid of a little math. I’m just looking for a healthy balance between the calculated world and the real world.

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track and field

Testing a hypothesis on running

Posted on by Beau Dure

I think there’s a relationship between the amount of running someone does in high school (and earlier) and the amount of running one does as an adult. This is an obviously unscientific survey to test that hypothesis.

Defining the question: If you ran for your school cross-country team (or track, 800 meters and up) or ran regularly for exercise, you DID run in high school and should answer this:

[poll id=”6″]

Otherwise, you did NOT run in high school and should answer this:

[poll id=”7″]

3
olympic sports, track and field

Woly Award: LaShawn Merritt, track and field

Posted on by Beau Dure

LaShawn Merritt won the 2008 gold medal in the highly competitive 400 meters. He followed it up with a world title in 2009.

Then the troubles began. He tested positive for a substance that he attributed to the drug ExtenZe. He returned with a second-place finish to Grenadan sensation Kirani James in 2011, then injured his hamstring in 2012 and didn’t make it to the Olympic final.

So he’s done, right?

Wrong. Merritt blew away the field at the World Championships in Moscow with a world-leading and personal best 43.74 seconds. Then he anchored the dominant U.S. men to victory in the 4×400 relay.

And he’ll take this week’s Woly Award for the top U.S. performance in Olympic sports.

Also in the playlist this week: David Oliver and Brianna Rollins win the world titles in the hurdles; winter sports season starts with slopestyle, halfpipe and cross-country; U.S. volleyballers and wrestlers win; and the USL’s Richmond Kickers try to play racquetball with no hands.

[iframe src=”//www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?list=PLWAQzaiNbislzoUM-egKxRmf2cKZCrGAN”  width=”560″ height=”315″]

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track and field

How not to hold a press conference, C. Jeter edition

Posted on by Beau Dure

Before the actual soccer started, the most entertaining thing I saw at a 2011 Women’s World Cup venue was a press conference that included one Sepp Blatter and a couple of other dignitaries of varying connections to women’s soccer. They had Steffi Jones, the beloved former German player and president of the organizing committee. They had Tatjana Haenni, head of FIFA women’s competition. And for some reason, they had FIFA executive committee member Worawi Makudi of Thailand.

Blatter artfully deflected questions about his old comments on women’s soccer and revealing clothes, and he declined to tackle the issue of Nigeria’s anti-lesbian purge. But at the very end, someone started to ask Makudi a question, somehow tying it to the tournament at hand but also steering it to recent alle-

Press conference over. Thanks for coming. Enjoy the whateverwurst.

Perhaps that abrupt conclusion was to be expected. The press conference was nearly over, anyway. The people behind the microphones said at the outset they were only going to talk about women’s football, and that question was a sharp tangent. We had managed to make it through 29 minutes or so of legitimate, if not particularly interesting, conversation.

Compare that with the curious case of Carmelita Jeter and Shelly Ann Fraser-Pryce.

From Christopher Chavez, who documented yesterday’s press conference (with video): The two sprinters, the reigning world and Olympic champions at 100 meters, sat down for their introduction from the press officer, who also tossed them the usual opportunities to speak a little. Then the press officer said there would be no questions about the doping issues that have hit the USA and Jamaica, their home countries, in recent days.

The first question, barely audible on the video, was rather innocuous. The second question, addressed to Fraser-Pryce, was about how the Jamaican team was dealing with the distraction of the doping issues.

The press officer snapped that the question was out of bounds. Reporters asked why. Then Jeter said bye-bye. So did Fraser-Pryce. So reporters got one question before the walkout.

For his part, reporter Simon Hart of the Telegraph is hardly apologetic.

And he’ll defend his right to ask the questions:

Check around on Twitter, and you’ll see Jeter has plenty of enablers telling her she did the right thing. That’s a nice reflection of how much people respect journalists these days and adore celebrities, even celebrities a vast majority of people don’t know.

The bottom line: She had an opportunity to show grace and determination at a difficult time in her sport’s history. Instead, she came across as petty and defensive. Casual fans — which would describe most track and field fans in the USA, despite my best efforts to get you all to read the Woly Awards and everything else I posted in 10 years at USA TODAY — would look at that video and think she has something to hide.

Maybe if she had at least waited until, say, an actual doping question was actually addressed to her?

2
olympic sports, track and field

Woly Award: Tyson Gay, again

Posted on by Beau Dure

This is only the sixth week of the Woly Award, the reincarnation of the U.S. Olympic Athlete of the Week honors I used to do for USA TODAY, and we already have our first repeat winner.

Tyson Gay won it a couple of weeks ago for running a 10.02 time in the 100 meters with a headwind and rain while still easing up in the last 20 meters.

This week, Gay and the rest of the U.S. track and field community was busy at the USA Track and Field Championships, which double as the trials for the World Championship team. Normally, domestic events don’t get much weight in the Woly Awards — you’re not going to see a U.S. wrestler win it for beating another U.S. wrestler, even for the titanic clash of world champion Jordan Burrough and college phenom Kyle Dake.

But track and field gives us the ability to compare times around the world. It’s not an exact comparison — Gay’s 10.02 against the wind and rain would be better than someone else’s 9.99 with a light tailwind — but it gives us a decent metric for comparing athletes.

So if we look at the top times in the 100 meters this year, updated through the weekend, the first name is: Tyson Gay, 9.75, Friday. (On the same day, Usain Bolt posted his best of the year: 9.94, though he had a slight headwind.)

Let’s check the 200 meters, in which the U.S. final was Sunday. No. 1 on the list: Tyson Gay, 19.74.

One weekend, two world-leading sprints.

Yes, Tyson Gay takes this week’s Woly Award.

And the competition was tough. Three U.S. records fell on the blue track and football-lined field in Des Moines, Iowa:

– Brianna Rollins, women’s 100 hurdles, 12.26. That beat the 12.33 set by the legendary Gail Devers in 2000. This final was fast — six of the top seven hurdlers this year were in the race (defending world champion Dawn Harper has a wild-card entry into this year’s worlds), and five of them ran their fastest times of the year. See the video.

– Amanda Bingson, women’s hammer throw, 248-5 / 75.73 meters. She actually broke Jessica Cosby’s 2012 record twice, first by 26 inches, then by four feet.

– Michelle Carter, women’s shot put, 66-5 / 20.24 meters. This was close: just 2.5 inches (6 cm) past the record shared by  Ramona Pagel (1988) and Jillian Camarena-Williams (2011).

Other top performers from the USATF meet and where they rank on the world lists this year:

Men

400 hurdles: Michael Tinsley, 47.96, first (also: Kerron Clement, 48.06, third; Bershawn Jackson, 48.09, fourth. Johnny Dutch still holds the second spot at 48.02 but couldn’t match it in Des Moines, finishing fourth in 48.21 and failing to make the World Championship team)

Shot put: Ryan Whiting, 22.11 meters, second only to his own 22.28 in May.

400: LaShawn Merritt, 44.21, second

110 hurdles: Ryan Wilson, 13.08, tied-second

Women

100 hurdles, Brianna Rollins, 12.26, first (and U.S. record; see above)

High jump: Brigetta Barrett, 2.04 meters, first

Heptathlon: Sharon Day, 6,550 points, first

100: English Gardner, 10.85, tied-second (Barbara Pierre matched that time in a semifinal with a barely legal wind but only finished fifth in the scorching final at 10.94)

400: Natasha Hastings, 49.94, second (leader Amantle Montsho has three faster times)

Shot put: Michelle Carter, 20.24 meters, second (and U.S. record; see above)

Hammer throw: Amanda Bingson, 75.73 meters, third (and U.S. record; see above)

800: Alysia Montano, 1:58.67, third

For more on the U.S. Championships, Daily Relay has a wrap of the meet’s best, including this great picture of shot put champ Ryan Whiting lifting the women’s 5,000-meter medalists.

http://twitter.com/HouseofRun/statuses/348907319284883457

In other sports …

BEACH VOLLEYBALL: You know big, bald Phil Dalhausser from his days winning the 2007 world championship, the 2008 gold medal and countless FIVB events with Todd Rogers. With Rogers’ retirement, Dalhausser has paired up with Sean Rosenthal. The pair took its first Grand Slam win over the weekend in Rome. The long-standing April Ross-Jen Kessy duo took second in the women’s competition.

GYMNASTICS: Sam Mikulak took gold in the horizontal bar and bronze in the floor exercise at the FIG World Challenge Cup in Anadia, Portugal.

SOCCER: Jozy and Abby. Enough said.

And elsewhere … U.S. paddlers won World Cup medals, and U.S. fencers won most of the available titles at the Pan American Championships.

0
olympic sports, track and field

Woly Award: Double-distance hurdler rules NCAAs

Posted on by Beau Dure

Stanford’s Kori Carter set an NCAA record in the women’s 400-meter hurdles (video) with a time of 53.21, also the fastest in the world this year. By a large margin. The second-best time of the year was set six days earlier on the same track in Eugene, Ore., by the Czech Republic’s Zuzana Hejnova — 53.70.

That alone would put Carter in consideration for the Woly Award, given to the top U.S. Olympic sports athlete of the week.

But Carter had competition from Clemson’s Brianna Rollins, who also set a meet record and world leader in the 100 hurdles at 12.39.

What set Carter apart? Check out who finished second in the 100 hurdles. That’s right — Kori Carter.

That’s 18 points of Stanford’s 33 points in the NCAA meet, and it’s enough to give Carter the Woly Award for the week.

Meet Carter at FloTrack, where she talks a bit about her 400-meter performance and the audacity of running both events.

Other top performances from the NCAA meet:

Women’s 100: English Gardner, Oregon, 10.96, third fastest runner in 2013.

Men’s 400: Bryshon Nellum, USC, 44.73, fourth in 2013.

Women’s 400: Ashley Spencer, Illinois, 50.28, fifth in 2013.

Then at the Golden Gala in Rome, the latest Diamond League stop:

Men’s 100 hurdles: Justin Gatlin (9.94) beat Usain Bolt (9.95). Yes, THAT Usain Bolt.

Men’s 400 hurdles: Johnny Dutch (48.31) held off Puerto Rico’s Javier Culson (48.36) and now owns the top two times of 2013.

Women’s long jump: Another good duel between Brittney Reese (6.99) and Janay Deloach Soukup (6.97).

Also in track and field, last week’s Woly winner, Mary Cain, … stop me if you’re heard this before … broke a U.S. high school track and field record, this time in the 5,000 meters. Time is 15:45.46. That’s three high school outdoor records this spring.

And the other nominees this week:

WATER POLO: Betsey Armstrong made eight important saves as the U.S. women clinched bronze at the World League Super Final.

TENNIS: Serena Williams and the Bryan brothers won French Open titles. Not enough room here to talk about their career accomplishments.

The rest of the Oly week is at TeamUSA.org as always.

Sports to watch this week:

– Archery, World Cup
– Beach volleyball, Grand Slam
– Volleyball, World League, Tulsa
– Water polo, men’s World League Super Final
– Track and field, Diamond League ExxonMobil Bislett Games, Oslo
– Mountain bike, World Cup
– Judo, Grand Prix Miami

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olympic sports, track and field

Woly Award: Mary Cain, class of 1:59.51

Posted on by Beau Dure

What were you doing with your weekends when you were in high school?

Mary Cain uses hers to break U.S. track and field records. She took down a few indoor and junior records in the indoor season, and she’s doing it again outdoors. In May, she ran the 1,500 in 4:04.62, smashing Suzy Favor Hamilton’s junior record of 4:09.10 and her own high school record.

Saturday at the Prefontaine Classic, Cain took advantage of a rare opportunity to break not just a record but a round number. No U.S. high school woman had ever run the 800 meters in two minutes.

Cain’s time: 1:59.51.

And she’s a little excited about it:

The flower is from U.S. champion Alysia Montano, who barely held off Cain for fourth place in the race. Montano then hugged Cain and transplanted the distinctive red flower from her own hair to Cain’s.

(Fourth place? Yes, this race was fast. Winner Francine Niyonsaba of Burundi won in the fastest time in the world this year and the fastest time ever on U.S. soil – 1:56.72.)

Cain takes this week’s Woly Award, given to the top U.S. athlete in Olympic sports over the weekend.

The Pre kicked up a couple of nominees, including 100-meter champion Justin Gatlin. In the men’s 400, LaShawn Merritt won a thrilling duel with Olympic champion Kirani James.

And we had a rare steeplechase skirmish.

Elsewhere:

SOCCER: You may have noticed that the U.S. men and women each won on Sunday. Clint Dempsey and Alex Morgan had two goals each.

TRIATHLON: Gwen Jorgensen finished fourth in Madrid but still leads the World Triathlon Series.

SWIMMING: Ryan Lochte and Missy Franklin are tuning up nicely for the U.S. Championships with Grand Prix wins.

BEACH VOLLEYBALL: Two runner-up finishes for the USA at the FIVB stop in Brazil: Jake Gibb-Casey Patterson and April Ross-Jennifer Kessy.

MODERN PENTATHLON: Margaux Isaksen was sixth in the World Cup final.

Full recap at TeamUSA.org

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olympic sports, track and field

Woly Award: Tyson Gay beats the elements

Posted on by Beau Dure

If we told you Tyson Gay ran a 10.02 in the 100 meters over the weekend, would you be impressed?

No? How about if it was cold and raining?

A little better? OK, shall we add that it was into a headwind?

Interested now? Let’s finish with this: He eased up over the last 20 meters because he was so sure he would take the Diamond League win in New York. And he did.

So Tyson Gay takes this week’s Woly award for outstanding achievement by a U.S. Olympic sports athlete.

Also at the adidas Grand Prix:

Women’s long jump: USA’s Janay Deloach-Soukup was nowhere near Brittney Reese’s world lead (7.25), but she set a meet record (6.79) to edge Britain’s Shara Proctor by 0.07. Reese fouled twice in her three attempts.

Men’s shot put: World leader Ryan Whiting was 1.01 meters off his season best of 21.27 but still won comfortably and led a U.S. sweep of the top four places with Reese Hoffa, Cory Martin and Joe Kovacs.

Women’s pole vault: Jenn Suhr entered the competition at 4.63 meters and cleared it on her second attempt. No one else did.

Men’s 400 hurdles: Good race – USA’s Michael Tinsley (48.43) held off Puerto Rico’s Javier Culson (48.53) and world leader Johnny Dutch (USA, 48.78).

Women’s 3,000 steeplechase: USA’s Bridget Franek interrupted the Kenya-Ethiopia hegemony with a fourth-place finish, less than five seconds behind Kenyan winner Lidya Chepkurui (9:30.82).

Women’s discus: Croatia’s Sandra Perkovic dominated — meet-record 68.23 meters extended her own world lead and beat the USA’s Gia Lewis-Smallwood by more than 6 meters.

Men’s triple jump: No one was getting near the world lead in these conditions. France’s Benjamin Compaore (16.45) held off the USA’s Christian Taylor by 0.03 meters.

Women’s high jump: The athlete who most looks like a Bond villain, Croatia’s Blanka Vlasic, tied the meet record at 1.94 meters. The USA’s Brigetta Barrett, fresh from a mention in SI’s Faces in the Crowd, finished third at 1.91.

Women’s 1,500: Brenda Martinez had the top U.S. finish (third, 4:06.25), finishing one spot ahead of world leader Nancy Jebet Langat of Kenya and two ahead of the USA’s Shannon Rowbury.

Women’s 400: Botswana’s Amantle Montsho (49.91) broke the meet record of Sanya Richards-Ross, who was a late scratch from the race. Natasha Hastings and Francena McCorory finished 2-3.

More Diamond League: Recap | Results | Analysis

Elsewhere in Olympic sports, the weekend was light.

BEACH VOLLEYBALL: Jake Gibb and Casey Patterson were second in the FIVB Grand Slam in Argentina. April Ross and Jen Kessy were fourth in the women’s competition.

WATER POLO: Some lopsided scores in World League continental qualifying.

FENCING: Mariel Zagunis was second in saber Grand Prix competition.

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