fittish – blog

Olympic Champion In 100m Hurdles Suspended For Year Due To Scheduling Snafus

Last summer in Rio, Brianna Rollins led an American sweep of the 100-meter hurdles, winning the gold in 12.48 seconds. Yesterday, an arbitration panel handed her a year-long drug ban—even though she never tested positive for any banned substances. She’ll miss the entire outdoor season this year.

The Brutality Of The Barkley Marathons

Canadian endurance runner Gary Robbins had been running—which is to say, sliding, clawing, and bushwhacking, with a bit of sleep-deprived hallucination thrown in—through the unforgiving outback of Frozen Head State Park for more than 59 hours straight. With all 13 book pages in his pack and only maybe twenty minutes…

High School Pole Vaulter Annihilates Pro Field, Breaks A Bunch Of Records

Mondo Duplantis is not only the best-named high school athlete in the country, he’s also one of the best. Last weekend, Duplantis was competing in pole vault at the Texas Relays in the men’s elite division. Duplantis is a junior at Lafayette High School in Louisiana, yet he smoked a field that contained numerous top…

WADA And The IOC Will Do Whatever They Please With Positive Tests

A report from German broadcast network ARD—which previously broadcast bombshells about FIFA corruption in Qatar and unpunished doping activity—claims that the IOC covered up doping cases from the 2008 Beijing Olympics. German journalist Hajo Seppelt reports that “in 2016 during the re-analysis for banned substances,…

DyeStat has a nice profile of Henna Rustami, a Columbia University distance runner and the daughter

DyeStat has a nice profile of Henna Rustami, a Columbia University distance runner and the daughter of immigrants who is tearing up the Ivy League. [DyeStat]

Ahead For 9,400 Meters, Joshua Cheptegei Wobbles To Finish At World Cross Country Championships

With 2000 meters left in the weekend’s World Cross Country Championship, 20-year-old Ugandan Joshua Cheptegei was leading the most important race of his young life, in front of the home crowd. The glory was his; he had almost 50 meters on pre-race favorite and cross country legend Geoffrey Kamworor. The crowd in…

Endurance Running Legend Ed Whitlock Dead At 86

Ed Whitlock owns more track and field records than almost anyone else. He’s held age-group records at every distance and middle distance event, from the 800 to the marathon. Whitlock died this morning in Toronto, a week after his birthday. He was 86 years old.

Who The Hell Is Woody Kincaid?

Wiping sweat and spit from his face with his t-shirt, 23-year-old Woody Kincaid seemed to be trying hard not to sound arrogant, or stupid, or insulted by reporters’ surprise at his come-from-behind victory in a semifinal heat of last year’s Olympic Trials 5000 meters.

Team Sky Is Only Looking Shadier

Team Sky are one of the richest and most successful cycling teams in the world, and they’ve billed themselves as a completely clean cycling team—everybody on the team has to sign an agreement that they’ve never been involved in doping—the sort of squad that shows that riders can win without doping. Sky riders have…

Eliud Kipchoge Lends Nike's Breaking2 Some Desperately Needed Credibility

Whatever Nike is paying Kenyan star Eliud Kipchoge to crack the two-hour barrier in the marathon, it isn’t enough.

The IAAF Seeks To Restrict The Market For African Runners

Kenya-born Yasemin Can and Meryem Akda, competing for Turkey, won gold and silver respectively at the 2016 European Cross Country Championships in November. The Irish Independent wrote that Ireland’s Fionnuala McCormack, who finished fifth, was “denied” a medal by the naturalized Turks, and Irish running icon Sonia…

Cyclist Takes Nosedive Into A Ravine, Films The Whole Thing

Road cycling season started this week with the Tour Down Under (it’s in Australia, which, duh), and it began without Spanish superstar Joaquim Rodriguez for the first time in 16 years. Rodriguez was waffling on whether or not to ride for Bahrain-Merida, but ultimately decided not to.

How Sports' Idiotic War On Drugs Might've Helped Give Us President Trump

It begins with the cyclists, of course. Just before the 1998 Tour de France, a Belgian trainer named Willy Voet was arrested while crossing the border into France because his car was filled with a tremendous amount of performance-enhancing drugs. The subsequent investigation (which became known as the Festina Affair)…

Why Does Triathlon Have Such A Clean Image?

It is almost impossible to believe that cycling, track and field, and swimming aren’t rife with doping. A large swath of top cyclists have tested positive for PEDs or admitted doping; track and field had state-sponsored doping programs in Eastern Germany, China, and Russia, along with hundreds of other athletes testing positive for PEDs; swimming has had fewer widespread doping scandals, but dozens of swimmers have tested positive for PEDs, and the doping suspension and reinstatement of Yulia Efimova, and the doping accusations leveled at Katinka Hosszu, were huge stories at the Olympics.