Yohan Blake, Lolo Jones beaten at Adidas GP; no high jump WR

By Nick ZaccardiJun 14, 2014, 6:23 PM EDT

NEW YORK – Yohan Blake suffered a surprising 100m defeat at the Adidas Grand Prix, while Lolo Jones placed a satisfactory third in the 100m hurdles less than 24 hours after flying in from China.

Blake, the Olympic 100m silver medalist, stumbled out of the blocks and clocked a slow 10.21 at Icahn Stadium on Randall’s Island on Saturday evening. He finished second to countryman Nesta Carter, who ran 10.09.

“Everybody saw what happened at the start,” said Blake, in a hurry to escape the media mixed zone. “There’s not much more to say.”

Blake, the top rival to Usain Bolt since 2011, owns a personal best of 9.69 from 2012. He missed most of last season with a hamstring injury.

Blake and Bolt likely will not race against each other this season. Bolt recently pulled out of meets in June and July due to a lack of training coming off a foot injury. The next Diamond League meet, in Lausanne, Switzerland, on July 3, features a 100m showdown between top Americans Justin Gatlin and Tyson Gay, who did not run at the Adidas Grand Prix.

In other events Saturday, Jones placed third in the 100m hurdles in 12.77, her first Diamond League meet of the season. Queen Harrison won in 12.62, .01 better than 2008 Olympic champ Dawn Harper-Nelson. World champion Brianna Rollins wasn’t in the field.

Jones, who finished 11th in the Sochi Olympic bobsled competition, flew in from a TV appearance in China on Friday.

“At the start line I was seeing 20 hurdles,” said Jones, whose next meet is the U.S. Championships in Sacramento, Calif., in two weeks. “My body just fell apart at the end [after the first five hurdles].”

The most exciting event was the men’s high jump, where Ukraine’s Bohdan Bondarenko and Qatar’s Mutaz Barshim took a combined five attempts at a new world record of 2.46m. All failed. Both cleared 2.42m, with Bondarenko getting the win with fewer overall misses.

Mary Cain, the 18-year-old who became the youngest athlete to make a U.S. World Championships team last year, was fourth in an 800m. Cain takes her driver’s test Friday, graduates from high school Saturday and plans to run the 1500m at the U.S. Championships.

“[Coach] Alberto [Salazar] wants me to take it slow,” said Cain, adding she wasn’t tapered for Saturday. “We’re training to peak in August.”

David Rudisha notched his first Diamond League victory in more than one year, essentially going wire-to-wire in the 800m in 1:44.63. Rudisha, the Olympic champ and world record holder, suffered a knee injury running in Central Park this time last year. The Adidas Grand Prix was his second Diamond League meet back.

Beijing Olympic champion LaShawn Merritt won for the third time in four Diamond League 400m races this season. Merritt clocked 44.19 against a field that did not include Grenada rival Kirani James.

“For me, it’s not really about times; I just wanted to get the victory,” said Merritt, who will run in the Czech Republic on Tuesday. “It’s a matter of getting these races in and handling business.”

World Indoor champ Francena McCorory captured her 400m by more than one second in 50.15. The field did not include Jamaican world leader Novlene Williams-Mills, who has run 50.04, or U.S. Olympic champion Sanya Richards-Ross.

Tori Bowie continued her surging season by winning the 100m in 11.07. Bowie competed at the World Indoor Championships in March in the long jump. But in the outdoor season she has won three Diamond League sprints with personal bests in the 100m and 200m and the fastest time in the world in the latter.

Olympic and World 100m champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce withdrew from the Adidas Grand Prix 200m earlier this week, citing injury.

Jamaican Warren Weir won the 200m in 19.82, the fastest time in the world this year.

Olympic pole vault champion Jenn Suhr was beaten in her Diamond League season debut by Brazilian Fabiana Murer. Suhr, who cleared 15 feet, 6 inches (4.72m) outside in Herald Square on Wednesday, posted 4.70m Saturday and failed at three 4.80m attempts.

Puerto Rican Javier Culson upset Olympic and World silver medalist Michael Tinsley, winning the 400m hurdles in 48.03, the fastest time in the world this year. Tinsley, previously the world leader, was second in 48.56.

New Zealand’s Valerie Adams won her 50th straight shot put competition. Adams, whose brother is Oklahoma City Thunder center Steven Adams, hasn’t lost since 2010.

Ethiopian-born Swede Abeba Aregawi bounced back to win the 1500m in 4:00.13. Top American Jenny Simpson was third in 4:02.54. At the Prefontaine Classic, Aregawi lost her first Diamond League 1500m since Aug. 17, 2012 to Kenyan Hellen Obiri, who was not in Saturday’s race.

USOC chooses 4 finalists for possible 2024 Olympic bid

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U.S. women’s rugby team qualifies for 2024 Paris Olympics as medal contender

By OlympicTalkMar 31, 2023, 1:31 PM EDT

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The U.S. women’s rugby team qualified for the 2024 Paris Olympics by clinching a top-four finish in this season’s World Series.

Since rugby was re-added to the Olympics in 2016, the U.S. men’s and women’s teams finished fifth, sixth, sixth and ninth at the Games.

The U.S. women are having their best season since 2018-19, finishing second or third in all five World Series stops so far and ranking behind only New Zealand and Australia, the winners of the first two Olympic women’s rugby sevens tournaments.

The U.S. also finished fourth at last September’s World Cup.

Three months after the Tokyo Games, Emilie Bydwell was announced as the new U.S. head coach, succeeding Olympic coach Chris Brown.

Soon after, Tokyo Olympic co-captain Abby Gustaitis was cut from the team.

Jaz Gray, who led the team in scoring last season and at the World Cup, missed the last three World Series stops after an injury.

The U.S. men are ranked ninth in this season’s World Series and will likely need to win either a North American Olympic qualifier this summer or a last-chance global qualifier in June 2024 to make it to Paris.

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Oscar Pistorius denied parole, hasn’t served enough time

Associated PressMar 31, 2023, 1:05 PM EDT

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Olympic and Paralympic runner Oscar Pistorius was denied parole Friday and will have to stay in prison for at least another year and four months after it was decided that he had not served the “minimum detention period” required to be released following his murder conviction for killing girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp 10 years ago.

The parole board ruled that Pistorius would only be able to apply again in August 2024, South Africa’s Department of Corrections said in a short, two-paragraph statement. It was released soon after a parole hearing at the Atteridgeville Correctional Centre prison where Pistorius is being held.

The board cited a new clarification on Pistorius’ sentence that was issued by South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal just three days before the hearing, according to the statement. Still, legal experts criticized authorities’ decision to go ahead with the hearing when Pistorius was not eligible.

Reeva Steenkamp’s parents, Barry and June, are “relieved” with the decision to keep Pistorius in prison but are not celebrating it, their lawyer told The Associated Press.

“They can’t celebrate because there are no winners in this situation. They lost a daughter and South Africa lost a hero,” lawyer Tania Koen said, referring to the dramatic fall from grace of Pistorius, once a world-famous and highly-admired athlete.

The decision and reasoning to deny parole was a surprise but there has been legal wrangling over when Pistorius should be eligible for parole because of the series of appeals in his case. He was initially convicted of culpable homicide, a charge comparable to manslaughter, in 2014 but the case went through a number of appeals before Pistorius was finally sentenced to 13 years and five months in prison for murder in 2017.

Serious offenders must serve at least half their sentence to be eligible for parole in South Africa. Pistorius’ lawyers had previously gone to court to argue that he was eligible because he had served the required portion if they also counted periods served in jail from late 2014 following his culpable homicide conviction.

The lawyer handling Pistorius’ parole application did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.

June Steenkamp attended Pistorius’ hearing inside the prison complex to oppose his parole. The parents have said they still do not believe Pistorius’ account of their daughter’s killing and wanted him to stay in jail.

Pistorius, who is now 36, has always claimed he killed Steenkamp, a 29-year-old model and law student, in the pre-dawn hours of Valentine’s Day 2013 after mistaking her for a dangerous intruder in his home. He shot four times with his licensed 9 mm pistol through a closed toilet cubicle door in his bathroom, where Steenkamp was, hitting her multiple times. Pistorius claimed he didn’t realize his girlfriend had got out of bed and gone to the bathroom.

The Steenkamps say they still think he is lying and killed her intentionally after a late-night argument.

Lawyer Koen had struck a more critical tone when addressing reporters outside the prison before the hearing, saying the Steenkamps believed Pistorius could not be considered to be rehabilitated “unless he comes clean” over the killing.

“He’s the killer of their daughter. For them, it’s a life sentence,” Koen said before the hearing.

June Steenkamp had sat grim-faced in the back seat of a car nearby while Koen spoke to reporters outside the prison gates ahead of the hearing. June Steenkamp and Koen were then driven into the prison in a Department of Corrections vehicle. June Steenkamp made her submission to the parole board in a separate room to Pistorius and did not come face-to-face with her daughter’s killer, Koen said.

Barry Steenkamp did not travel for the hearing because of poor health but a family friend read out a statement to the parole board on his behalf, the parents’ lawyer said.

Pistorius was once hailed as an inspirational figure for overcoming the adversity of his disability, before his murder trial and sensational downfall captivated the world.

Pistorius’s lower legs were amputated when he was a baby because of a congenital condition and he walks with prosthetics. He went on to become a double-amputee runner and multiple Paralympic champion who made history by competing against able-bodied athletes at the 2012 London Olympics, running on specially designed carbon-fiber blades.

Pistorius’ conviction eventually led to him being sent to the Kgosi Mampuru II maximum security prison, one of South Africa’s most notorious. He was moved to the Atteridgeville prison in 2016 because that facility is better suited to disabled prisoners.

There have only been glimpses of his life in prison, with reports claiming he had at one point grown a beard, gained weight and taken up smoking and was unrecognizable from the elite athlete he once was.

He has spent much of his time working in an area of the prison grounds where vegetables are grown, sometimes driving a tractor, and has reportedly been running bible classes for other inmates.

Pistorius’ father, Henke Pistorius, told the Pretoria News newspaper before the hearing that his family hoped he would be home soon.

“Deep down, we believe he will be home soon,” Henke Pistorius said, “but until the parole board has spoken the word, I don’t want to get my hopes up.”

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