Drummond is a certifiable asshole, but so are the football players (American) who dance in the endzone after every touchdown, and the ones (soccer) who rip their shirts off and play to the crowd after every goal, as well as those who react to every nudge and inadvertant trip as if their leg has been caught in a bear trap.
Having said that, Drummond was right to protest this clearly wrong decision. To say he should just take his medicine and go home lets the situation remain unfixed. I fully supported the Canadian figure skaters when they got robbed in the last Olympics, as well as Roy Jones (US boxer) in Seoul in 1998. While going quietly is sometimes the dignified thing to do, fighting injustice is often the right thing to do, even if it makes you look like an asshole.
International athletics seems to suffer from a lack of either thinking, or clear cut procedures for a range of issues.
Look at Saif Saeed Shaheen, who won the steeplechase as a Qatari, yet a month ago he was a Kenyan called Stephen Cherono. Qatar bought themselves a medal winner for about $1,000 a month.
Then again, a few months ago, a story was doing the rounds that a medal-winning athlete at the Sydney Olympics had tested positive for steroids and allowed to run.
Today there was a story - in the L.A. Times, I believe - that that athlete was Jerome Young, who has just won the men’s 400 metres. It appears his first test was positive, and his second cleared him. He ran in Sydney after being cleared in an internal appeal.
The Olympic Association and the World Anti-Doping Agency believe that they should have been notified of the process. The IAAF support USA Track and Field, who say they didn’t need to notify anyone. Everyone now appears to be sulking and firing off press releases.
International athletics appears to have a large number of chiefs, but very few step-by-step rules to tell people what they can and should do in cases like these or Jon Drummond’s.
I love athletics, but is hard to defend it, and equally hard, these days, to support it.
If the “europeans” have had their stereotypes of Americans reinforced by ONE fucking American sprinter then they’re not really worth trying to convince otherwise because they’re too testy a people-and most likely NOT to change their minds no matter what. That’s like all Americans judging “Europeans” by TOny Blair, or Ringo Starr or some other ridiculous public figure.
When we were watching the coverage yesterday we likened the hooting, hand pumping and general ego tripping to similar personalities in football and basketball.
That’s why I think it’s a US cultural thing among athletes - not necessarily unique to sprinters.
I agree. There is a sense of entitlement that American athletes seem to have. They feel that no matter what, they should be able to compete and win. When things don’t work out in the dreamed of fashion, they resort to other means.
It is why the US mens hockey team trashed their rooms after they sucked themselves out of the Olympics in Nagano. It is why athletes banned for positive drug tests will get, or try to get, a court order to allow them to complete.
The media is, IMO, responsible for much of this. I remember watching the winter Olympics, 1994 maybe, and an American was in the finals of some speed-skating event. The guy ended up with the silver medal and the commentator made the remark that the guy had lost. No, he didn’t lose, he came in 2nd and that is still a great accomplishment. If a silver medal equals loser, what goes through the mind of a guy like Drummond who gets a DNF or a DQ? Its like the loser label is a bigger stigma than actually acting like a loser.
Now, see, I like the tether idea, but you have it backwards. Tether the sprinters to the blocks. Give them about 5 feet of rope. Then, with the little sensor things in the starting blocks, determine whether the sprinter has false-started when the gun sounds. If he/she has, do not release the tether, otherwise do. This way, you can tell immediately who’s been naughty by the way they hit the end of the rope and get snapped back, while the good boys and girls run free.
Gorsnak? You looney! The only thing that your idea would accomplish is immense laughter and snide remarks. Sadly, as delicious as your version of the “release tether” might be, it wouldn’t fix the grey area about using computer sensor pads to determine who false started and the controversies would continue unabated I’d wager.
At least with my idea - every runner is already champing at the bit - waiting for the release. In theory, no one could ever false start ever again. Not quite as entertaining as your version though Gorsnak - I must concede that.
Pfft! Are you trying to tell me that entertainment isn’t the prime consideration here? The athletes should all be in favour. It will boost ratings, and hence the value of endorsements. In fact, I should think they’d be falling all over themselves to get such a system into place!
Well alright then - if you really wanted to spice it up - you could introduce random steeples for each runner down the length of the straight - little pop up jiggers like you see on shooting ranges.
And throw in some random land mines along the track as well. Lets see how skimpy they want their skinsuits to be AFTER THAT, huh?
No no, not random…there needs to be some tenuous link to fairness, or it doesn’t seem like a sport anymore. See, questionable methods for determining false starts might not be completely fair, but it’s a fixed sorta deal - everyone knows going in that if they flinch in the blocks, they’ll end up looking like a dog hitting the end of a leash. Random steeples turns the whole thing into a crapshoot. Now, if you could rig the steeples to pop up randomly only in the lanes of the runners who’ve been using steroids or otherwise cheating, then you’d have something.
I’m guessing that US track athletes are tired of toiling in relative obscurity in the US. They go to Europe, get some attention, and start acting like prima donnas. Or, it’s just garden variety childish behavior.
The US has no monopoly on that. We’ve tried to corner the market, but world supply is too great. Most of the best athletes in the US are not noted for disrupting events with childish tantrums. Baseball managers, OTOH… The occasional figure skating knee beating, sure.
You looney! The only thing that your idea would accomplish is immense laughter and snide remarks. Sadly, as delicious as your version of the “release tether” might be, it wouldn’t fix the grey area about using computer sensor pads to determine who false started and the controversies would continue unabated I’d wager.
See, questionable methods for determining false starts might not be completely fair, but it’s a fixed sorta deal - everyone knows going in that if they flinch in the blocks, they’ll end up looking like a dog hitting the end of a leash. Random steeples turns the whole thing into a crapshoot. Now, if you could rig the steeples to pop up randomly only in the lanes of the runners who’ve been using steroids or otherwise cheating, then you’d have something. 