Allyson Felix will run more 400m races this year

By Nick ZaccardiMay 7, 2014, 10:07 AM EDT

Olympic 200m champion Allyson Felix will run a few more 400m races in 2014, an opportune year to try the one-lap event with no Olympics or World Outdoor Championships.

“I feel like it’s a great time to explore that event,” Felix said at a press conference Tuesday. “It’s a great time to learn it a little bit more. I can always improve in it. For me, I think experience is the big thing that I need. The more I run it, the more I learn. So I’m definitely going to take advantage of it during this off year.”

Felix, the most decorated U.S. female track and field athlete with six Olympic medals and 10 World Championships medals, tore her right hamstring in the 200m final at the 2013 World Championships on Aug. 16 (video here).

She was set to run a 200m in Kingston, Jamaica on Saturday but pulled out due to a reported injury last week. Felix is in Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands, to run a 100m against longtime rival Veronica Campbell-Brown of Jamaica and 2013 World Championships silver medalist Murielle Ahoure of Cote d’Ivoire on Wednesday night.

“I’m feeling really good,” Felix said. “It’s been ups and downs along the way back [from the injury]. Recently, I have had some soreness and tightness in my hamstring. So I’m just dealing that and being cautious and being careful as I make my way back to the track.”

Felix did a 200m-400m double at the 2011 World Championships, winning a 400m silver medal in a personal best time, just . 03 behind gold-medal winner Amantle Montsho of Botswana. She dropped to bronze in the 200m later in the meet, after winning the previous three world 200m titles, and switched to a 100m-200m double at the 2012 Olympics. She finished fifth in the London Olympic 100m final before winning the 200m gold that had eluded her in 2004 and 2008 in her favorite event.

Felix, 28, said before last year’s World Championships that she was leaning toward going into the lead-up to the Rio Olympics with the 400m as her complementary event rather than the 100m.

“It’s still so far away, but we have kind of thought about it,” Felix said last year. “Definitely, I think I would be leaning more toward the 400m. I still have potential in it, unexplored potential. My chances in 2016 would be better in the 400m than the 100m.”

Felix is scheduled to run a 400m at a Diamond League meet in Shanghai on May 18, against a field that includes Montsho.

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2023 French Open men’s singles draw, scores

By OlympicTalkJun 5, 2023, 4:59 PM EDT

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The French Open men’s singles draw is missing injured 14-time champion Rafael Nadal for the first time since 2004, leaving the Coupe des Mousquetaires ripe for the taking.

The tournament airs live on NBC Sports, Peacock and Tennis Channel through championship points in Paris.

Novak Djokovic is not only bidding for a third crown at Roland Garros, but also to lift a 23rd Grand Slam singles trophy to break his tie with Nadal for the most in men’s history.

FRENCH OPEN: Broadcast Schedule | Women’s Draw

But the No. 1 seed is Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz, who won last year’s U.S. Open to become, at 19, the youngest man to win a major since Nadal’s first French Open title in 2005.

Now Alcaraz looks to become the second-youngest man to win at Roland Garros since 1989, after Nadal of course.

Alcaraz missed the Australian Open in January due to a right leg injury, but since went 30-3 with four titles. Notably, he has not faced Djokovic this year. They could meet in the semifinals.

Russian Daniil Medvedev, the No. 2 seed, was upset in the first round by 172nd-ranked Brazilian qualifier Thiago Seyboth Wild. It marked the first time a men’s top-two seed lost in the first round of any major since 2003 Wimbledon (Ivo Karlovic d. Lleyton Hewitt).

All of the American men lost before the fourth round. The last U.S. man to make the French Open quarterfinals was Andre Agassi in 2003.

MORE: All you need to know for 2023 French Open

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2023 French Open Men’s Singles Draw

Coco Gauff, Iga Swiatek set French Open rematch

By OlympicTalkJun 5, 2023, 3:25 PM EDT

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Coco Gauff swept into the French Open quarterfinals, where she plays Iga Swiatek in a rematch of last year’s final.

Gauff, the sixth seed, beat 100th-ranked Slovakian Anna Karolina Schmiedlova 7-5, 6-2 in the fourth round. She next plays the top seed Swiatek, who later Monday advanced after 66th-ranked Ukrainian Lesia Tsurenko retired down 5-1 after taking a medical timeout due to illness.

Gauff earned a 37th consecutive win over a player ranked outside the top 50, dating to February 2022. She hasn’t faced a player in the world top 60 in four matches at Roland Garros, but the degree of difficulty ratchets up in Wednesday’s quarterfinals.

Swiatek won all 12 sets she’s played against Gauff, who at 19 is the only teenager in the top 49 in the world. Gauff said last week that there’s no point in revisiting last year’s final — a 6-1, 6-3 affair — but said Monday that she should rewatch that match because they haven’t met on clay since.

“I don’t want to make the final my biggest accomplishment,” she said. “Since last year I have been wanting to play her, especially at this tournament. I figured that it was going to happen, because I figured I was going to do well, and she was going to do well.

“The way my career has gone so far, if I see a level, and if I’m not quite there at that level, I know I have to improve, and I feel like you don’t really know what you have to improve on until you see that level.”

FRENCH OPEN DRAWS: Women | Men | Broadcast Schedule

Also Monday, No. 7 seed Ons Jabeur of Tunisia dispatched 36th-ranked American Bernarda Pera 6-3, 6-1, breaking all eight of Pera’s service games.

Jabeur, runner-up at Wimbledon and the U.S. Open last year, has now reached the quarterfinals of all four majors.

Jabeur next faces 14th-seeded Beatriz Haddad Maia, who won 6-7 (3), 6-3, 7-5 over Spaniard Sara Sorribes Tormo, who played on a protected ranking of 68. Haddad Maia became the second Brazilian woman to reach a Grand Slam quarterfinal in the Open Era (since 1968) after Maria Bueno, who won seven majors from 1959-1966.

Pera, a 28 year-old born in Croatia, was the oldest U.S. singles player to make the fourth round of a major for the first time since Jill Craybas at 2005 Wimbledon. Her defeat left Gauff as the lone American singles player remaining out of the 35 entered in the main draws.

The last American to win a major singles title was Sofia Kenin at the 2020 Australian Open. The 11-major drought matches the longest in history (since 1877) for American men and women combined.

In the men’s draw, 2022 French Open runner-up Casper Ruud reached the quarterfinals by beating 35th-ranked Chilean Nicolas Jarry 7-6 (3), 7-5, 7-5. He’ll next play sixth seed Holger Rune of Denmark, a 7-6 (3), 3-6, 6-4, 1-6, 7-6 (7) winner over 23rd seed Francisco Cerundolo of Argentina.

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2023 French Open Men’s Singles Draw

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