Olympic 100m

Having lunch today, I caught a few of the 100m heats, and saw the performance of Shawn Crawford of the United States -- what's with some athletes? He won his heat. Nice. But as his bio describes him, "Crawford has become one of the most dangerous 200m runners in the world." He looked dangerous. He screamed after winning -- and it didn't look like a happy scream. It looked like an angry scream. The camera that was at the finish line got the benefit of his close up grimace at winning. Other winners were happy. They jumped up. They cheered. Crawford looked like he was ready to punch out his opponents. I hope that was only a one time performance -- because what I saw today just made me think he's an asshole.

The other thought that occurred to me as I watched the runners today was that black athletes dominate the sport. I think there are only black athletes in the top 10 list of all time best performers, or 2004 best performers. With a few exceptions, the fastest runners are from first world countries (most from the USA) -- which implies that countries with more money to devote to athlete training get the top spots. It's one country pitting their black runners against another's. Francis Obikwelu, for instance -- a Nigerian runner, is now competing for Portugal. He's not native of Portugal. Which is not a wrong thing -- the athletes have to look out for their own careers as well. It just strikes me as interesting -- a little humorous maybe.

I also saw round two of the women's 100m. I was impressed by Merlene Ottey. She's 44-years old. It impressed me that she kept up with the younger runners, even though she didn't qualify for the final. In the semifinal, the youngest runner she ran against was 24 years her junior, who bested her by 0.18 second. Originally from Jamacia, Ottey now runs for (hold on to your hat) Slovenia. In 2000, she became the oldest female athletics medallist when she won the silver in the 4x100 relay.