The Olympic track and field competition begins on Friday and I’m eager for it to get underway! NBC has promised unparalleled coverage of the Olympics. If your cable or satellite provider carries the NBC family of networks, you should be able to watch a live stream of any event or pull up an archived copy via your computer, tablet, or smartphone. I’ve “tested” it out on badminton and weightlifting on both my computer and iPad and it seemed to work. I hope that I can find the time to watch some of the track and field.
As promised, here are some more Olympic track and field stories to get you ready for the upcoming competition. If I discover more over the next few days, I will probably just post them on Facebook. So, if you aren’t friends with me on there, please hit me up!
From The Running Times, here is pre-Games quiz called “Olympics Believe It or Not.”
Of the 2,236 athletes entered in the Olympic track and field competition, 350 of the are former, current, or committed athletes at US colleges and universities. The SEC (including Missouri and Texas A&M) leads the list of conferences with 77 athletes. Southern California, Auburn, and Florida State lead the list of schools with twelve athletes each. Arkansas is next with eleven and has a list-leading five athletes who were members of their 2012 teams: Marek Niit, Raymond Higgs, Regina George, Ivanique Kemp, and Tina Sutej. None of these are competing for the US.
Though it is counter-intuitive, there has been years of debate on whether or not double-amputee Oscar Pistorius has an advantage over other runners because of his prosthetic legs. He is running in the 400 meters and on the 4x400 meter relay for South Africa in London. Here is Scientific American’s report on the issue. His is a pretty remarkable story, no matter what you think about the technology he uses to run.
The Wall Street Journal has an article called, “The Worst Way to Lose a Race.” It focuses on the 1,500 meters and brings back memories of some important Olympic races.
United States sprinters have been notorious at the last few major championship meets for not completing the 4x100 meter relays. Bad handoffs and dropped batons have seemed to be more common than medals. And it struck again at a recent warm-up meet for the US women’s team. Here is an article from the New York Times that looks at this in more detail.
Finally, here is another NYT’s article. This is on American marathoner Ryan Hall. It looks at the place that his faith plays in his running. It’s entitled “A Runner’s Belief: God is His Coach.”
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