Olympic update- 2012 London games- USA men's Track 4 by 100M relay team stripped of silver medals/Gymnastics (FIG) to reduce teams by one

The USA men's 4 by 100 relay team at the 2012 London Olympics were stripped of their silver medals today by the IOC because of the Tyson Gay doping case. The USA athletes besides Tyson Gay stripped of their medals are: Trell Kimmons, Ryan Bailey, Justin Gatlin, Darvis Patton and Jeffrey Demps. Other athletes have been stripped of their medals on track relays but the rule was changed recently to disqualify all athletes on a relay team, not just the primary doper. This is not the first time medals have been stripped from USA relay teams. Marion Jones was stripped of a gold medal from the 2000 Sydney games in the 4 by 400M relay and bronze in the 4 by 100M relay. The rest of the relay team appealed successfully to keep their medals in 2010. Also the USA was stripped of the men's 4 by 400M relay gold from the 2000 Sydney games after Antonio Pettigrew admitted to doping. In 2012 the USA women's 4 by 400 relay team from 2004 was stripped of the gold medal because of Crystal Cox admission of doping.
Tyson Gay served a one year ban that ended in July 2014 but all of Gay's results were erased from June 2012 to July 2013.
The USA had finished second in 2012 in the 4 by 100M relay in a USA record 37.04 seconds while Jamaica won gold in a world record 36.84 seconds.
The silver medal now goes to Trinidad and Tobago finishing in 38.12 seconds while France wins bronze in 38.16 seconds.



FIG to reduce gymnastics teams by one

Starting with the 2020 Tokyo games, both men's and women's gymnastics teams will only have four members, This is a reduction from five gymnasts on a team at the London Games and six gymnasts on a team at the Beijing and Athens games. In Atlanta seven gymnasts were on each team.

According to the Federation of International Gymnastics(FIG) the four gymnasts will compete on each apparatus and three scores count. Countries will be able to qualify two gymnasts for Individual competition as well. Individuals can qualify through certain cups and championships. The exact details hasn't been finalized. Reaction by USA gymnastics coaches and athletes have been negative as elite gymnasts will be left off of the USA teams. More gymnasts will be able to compete as Individuals but on gymnastics teams there will be no room for specialists to compete on a certain apparatus.

Centennial Olympic Park visit observations

On May 8, 2015 I visited Centennial Olympic Park in downtown Atlanta. I had previously visited the park in March 1998, Sept. 2001, 2005, Nov. 2011 and May 2013. Over the past several visits I noticed the slow aging of my brick and several sections of bricks in the park. Last week I was able to speak to a park employee. This park employee had been there 12 years. He said that the bricks were not supposed to be life lasting and that my $35 contribution was to build the park. He had concern that the bricks were aging and that if enough bricks could not be read the park could take action to replace the bricks, but it was unlikely. There is significant wear on some bricks like mine but others were in much better shape. I thought the weather played a part but in my opinion, that is not the case. The park is heavily used for concerts and events. My brick is in section 54 light bricks, which is near the fountains in the main part of the park. Some 54 light bricks are in much better condition than mine. I also noticed some cracked areas where numbering was along the grass in certain areas of the park. The park does replace those. They were replacing the grass when I visited last week.
When people purchase commemorative bricks it usually means a lifetime. In 5-10 years at this rate most bricks wont be readable. The park needs to replace the most worn ones soon. My brick will not be readable in 5 years. If Centennial Olympic Park does not slow the aging process I will take action to save my brick. In my opinion, it is the reason lots of people visit the park. Please don't let the bricks become unreadable. Some already are.

Update: On May 22, 2015 I scrubbed my brick and rinsed it off. Actually I cleaned about 9 bricks total but only could really rinse mine. Looks a lot better! The engraving is in better shape than I thought. Also that day a family from New York was visiting the park and was trying to find their brick. I was talking to them. They had not ever seen their brick. After a few minutes they found it, It was readable but dirty. Another reason for the park to power wash the bricks.

Boston 2024 Update - April poll numbers

According to a new poll taken by Gravis Marketing on April 9 and 10, numbers have not moved at all for support of Boston 2024. According to the poll sample of 2,182 Massachusetts residents 37% support bringing the games to Boston and 49% do not with 14% unsure.
According to the new poll, in a question about use of taxpayer dollars to bail out the Olympics The margin is 66%-24% against using public funds.
Poll respondents support a statewide referendum on the 2024 games by a margin of 61%-23% while poll respondents do not think that the Olympics would not benefit the state by a 46%-40% margin.
Gravis Marketing is a non partisan Florida based research firm. This poll was compiled for the Howie Carr radio network.

The other poll taken by WBUR April 10-13 of 509 registered voters living in Boston area inside/along route 128 has support for a Boston games at 40% while 50% oppose. This is an improvement from March poll numbers of 36% supporting the bid while 52% oppose. In the city of Boston support is at 47% while 41% oppose. This is the first time since January more people support the games inside of the city of Boston! Also the poll indicates 90% of respondents think there will be cost overruns.

Olympic updates - AVP Beach Volleyball And Athlete Update

In 2015 all AVP beach finals will be televised by NBC and the NBC Sports Network. There will be 17.5 hours of coverage on NBC's networks. NBC will televise 10 hours while the NBC Sports Network will televise 7.5 hours. Universal Sports will also air the AVP as well. NBC Sports live will stream the finals online. The first AVP Finals televised by NBC will be the New Orleans Open on May 22-24. There are currently 7 stops on the AVP tour in 2015.

The 6 other planned US AVP Tour Stops are:

New York City Open - July 17-19
Seattle Open - Aug. 7-9
Manhattan Beach Open - Aug. 14-16
Chicago Open - Aug. 28-30
Cincinnati Open - Sept. 4-6
AVP Championships at Huntington Beach - Sept. 11-13

Also the AVP will be presenting the FIVB St. Petersburg Grand Slam held from June 15-21.


Athlete Update:

Chinese hurdler Liu Xiang has announced his retirement at age 31. Xiang won gold at the 2004 Athens games in the 110M hurdles. Injuries kept him from medaling at the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games.

Olympic updates - Doping samples and Boston 2024

Doping samples

The IOC is going to retest hundreds of doping samples from the 2008 Beijing games as part of a crackdown to catch cheaters. The IOC has retested a small amount of the 4,000 samples from the Beijing games already and now has a window of 10 years to retest doping samples under a new world anti-doping code. The old code limited doping testing to 8 years. The IOC hopes to retest the majority of the Beijing games samples before the statute of limitations runs out in 2018. The IOC realistically would like to test several high profile athletes competing in Rio in 2016. No positive tests have been found from any Beijing 2008 samples as of now.
Testing samples from the 2004 Athens games wrapped up in 2012 and five athletes were caught and stripped of their medals.
The IOC has already carried out retesting on a few samples from the 2010 Vancouver games and 2012 London games with no positive results. For the 2016 Rio games, the IOC will be testing roughly 5,000 and that number is the same number tested in London.


Boston 2024 Update

The USOC selected Boston as the US city to bid on the 2024 Summer Olympic games back in early January. Since then support for these games has been declining. In January 51% supported the bid and 33% disapproved. A poll was taken in February and those numbers slipped to 44% approve and 46 % disapprove. The last poll taken this month(March) with 36% approve and 52% disapprove. Boston 2024, the organization leading the bid, has agreed to a statewide referendum to take place in Nov. 2016. For the IOC to consider strongly the Boston bid, approval ratings need to be close to 70%. Hamburg, Germany has officially decided to bid on the 2024 games and Hamburg has approval ratings of 64%. Boston 2024 has said the bid will not go forward If the majority of statewide voters don't approve. They won't go forward if there is not a majority of voters approving the bid within the City of Boston itself. Boston has to submit their final bid to the IOC by January 2016. This means if the referendum fails the USOC will not be able to bid on the 2024 games at all.
Boston 2024 has an extensive public relations and social media/marketing campaign set up to try and stop the decline in poll numbers. Boston 2024 is led by John Fish. Fish is the CEO of Suffolk Construction. It is the largest construction company in the northeast.
There are several opposition groups that have formed. No Boston Olympics and No Boston 2024 are two of the groups. Bostonian's say they think they will be on the hook for cost overruns while Boston 2024 says there will be none. Opposition groups plan to talk to state legislators who could introduce legislation to make sure state taxpayers are not responsible for cost overruns. Boston 2024 has said that they won't submit a final bid if they cannot insure the bid against overruns. Boston 2024 has a 10 point plan of a cost effective, compact Olympics with temporary venues and plenty of jobs and housing created. Bostonian's do not want resources taken away from their city and are unsure about a transportation system that shut down several times during the winter of 2014/15.
Boston 2024 has said they have a plan to ease the concerns of Bostonians through 20 meetings spread out through Boston and the State of Massachusetts over the next several months. Boston 2024 will listen to concerns and change the bid to meet Bostonians needs.
Boston 2024 has recruited over 1,000 volunteers to fan out all over the city to pitch the 2024 Games to Bostonians.
The latest development is a rumor that the USOC might pull the bid on Boston 2024 soon if poll numbers don't go up. This was reported in a CNBC tweet. The USOC has denied the report.

Lastly, 2012 Olympian Jordyn Wieber has retired from gymnastics at the age of 19.

500 Days Until Rio Games!

Today marks the 500th day until the Rio 2016 Olympic Games! The games will be held August 5-21 2016.

IOC considers cutting track and field events from Olympics

In December 2014 when the IOC passed their Olympic 2020 agenda I was not aware that the IOC was thinking of cutting any events to cap the summer Olympics participants to 10,500 across 310 events for future Olympics. This story eluded me for two months until I read a tweet from Dwight Stones that the IOC is considering just that, cutting major track and field events in time for the Tokyo 2020 summer games. The events being considered being dropped are: 200M, 10000M, shot put, triple jump and 20K race walking. The IOC wants to cut 231 athletes from the 2,231 track athletes that competed at the 2012 London games, leaving 2000 athletes as a cap for track and field at future summer games. Track and Field has the most athletes competing with over 20% of all athletes participating at the summer games. This is so the IOC can add more sports like surfing and karate that suit younger viewers at future games.

I learned the 10000M event is being cut out from European meets so that may be ok for the IOC to cull along with any race walking events. The 200M is a marquee event and should not be tampered with along with the shot put and triple jump. I'm hoping the IAAF stands up to fight this injustice to the sport of track and field and the history of the Olympic Games.