A tremendous next leap

BARCELONA -- The first-ever high-diving competition at a FINA world championship went down Monday and, yes, said Gary Hunt of Great Britain, one of the 14 divers who took part, there is absolutely an element of crazy involved in throwing yourself off a platform 88 feet high and twisting and spinning your way down for all of like, maybe, three seconds until you hit the water at about 50 miles per hour. "It seems crazy for anyone who hasn't tried it," he said, adding a moment later, "You are taking a risk. But it's a calculated risk."

Maybe this high-diving thing -- which might someday be in the Olympic Games -- is, in fact, crazy smart. Perhaps it's a great lesson in the way a savvy international sports federation moves. Quite possibly it offers a striking comparison: on the one hand, there's FINA's dynamism, and on the other, there's track and field's governing body, which goes by the acronym IAAF and in recent years has often seemed more static, the sport itself relentlessly plagued by doping scandals involving some of its biggest stars.

Track and field's most passionate adherents, including Lamine Diack of Senegal, the IAAF's longtime president, often say that the Summer Olympics begin for real only in the second week, when the action at Olympic Stadium, on the track and in the field, gets underway.

It is unequivocally the case that athletics, as it is known everywhere in the world but the United States, has global reach, and a passionately dedicated -- some might say exquisitely particular -- fan base.

That said, a typical night at the track is too often a carnival, unintelligible to the average spectator, with far too many events going on at the same time.

Meanwhile, aquatic sports -- along with gymnastics -- were this year, in the aftermath of the success of last year's London Games, elevated into the top rank of Olympic sports. Previously, track sat there alone, getting a special share of the hundreds of millions of dollars generated by television rights and other deals from each summer Games.

No more.

As for global reach, consider this line-up of countries from the third heat -- of eight -- in Sunday's men's 50-meter butterfly here at the Palau Sant Jordi: Northern Mariana Islands, Gambia, Tahiti, Guyana, Sri Lanka, Mozambique, Mali, Iraq, Pakistan, Tanzania.

The way a championship swim meet works is that the final few heats are the so-called "seeded" heats, with the expected winners. The early heats feature the qualifiers. The butterfly is without question the hardest of the strokes but, as the times in Heat 3 of 8 proved, this was no mere develoment display:

Christopher Clark of Tahiti finished first, in 25.81 seconds. Folarin Ogunsola of Gambia touched last, a more-than-respectable 2.69 seconds behind. Ameer Ali of war-torn Iraq placed sixth, in 27.06.

As these names and numbers show, swimming is doing something right.

What it's also doing right is playing smart politics -- especially in this, an IOC election year.

The IAAF should be surveying the scene and paying attention.

Track has no worries about its place on the Olympic program. But look, for instance, at what wrestling -- which is now fighting to stay in the Games -- is doing. It recently put on an exhibition, deliberately including female wrestlers, at ancient Olympia, in Greece. The message? Sport assuredly must be in touch with its roots, yes. But, and this is the critical part, it has to find new ways to remain ever-relevant.

Surely there are other creative sparks in track like those being shown by Sergei Bubka, the IAAF vice president and IOC presidential candidate, whose 28-page IOC election manifesto is punctuated with creative ideas. Then again, Bubka's mid-winter pole-vault event in Donetsk, Ukraine, is the model for how to take track and field forward -- it's one night, one event and it's a combination of the vaulting itself and whatever music the athletes want to jump to. You don't have to know the basics about pole vaulting to have fun watching it.

Same thing here Monday about high diving. You didn't have to know the intricacies of how you might actually yourself do a front double somersault with one-and-a-half twists to know you were watching the future.  Here were ripped bodies in the hot sun -- these 14 guys from nine nations -- flinging themselves off the platform, then crashing feet-first into the sea, then bubbling up to flash the OK sign. The scores came up to a thumping beat as palm trees swayed in the gentle Mediterranean breeze.

It was postcard-perfect.

"Anything that sticks out of line," away from vertical, "is going to hurt," said Orlando Duque, one of the 14, a Colombian who now spends most of his time in the Hawaiian islands. "If your face is sticking out, it's going to hurt."

Just getting up to the diving platform itself is a test of nerves. It's 120 steps. Learning how to dive from that height, Duque said, took him three full years.

Your lines have to be clean, just like in platform and springboard diving. That's what you get judged on.

Still, he said, the main thing is the rush.  It's like, he said, "when your dog sticks its head out of the window and is enjoying the wind."

Blake Aldridge was Tom Daley's partner in synchro diving at the 2008 Beijing Games; the British pair finished eighth. Now Aldridge is a high-diver. "It's massively different, mentally and visually," he said, adding, "If you get it wrong, there are no second chances."

This is, to be obvious, action sports for the water crowd. Indeed, at high-dive events there are scuba divers bobbing on the surface, just in case.

FINA is run by president Julio Maglione and executive director Cornel Marculescu. Want to know why, under their direction, swimming has moved into the Olympic top-tier?

At the medals ceremony here Sunday night, who appeared on stage to present the medals to the men's and women's 400-meter freestyle medalists? That would be one of the leading IOC presidential contenders, Thomas Bach of Germany, and none other than his ally, the IOC power broker Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Sabah of Kuwait.

On Monday, who presented the medals to the men's 100 breaststroke winners? Singapore's Ser Miang Ng, another top IOC presidential contender.  To the women's 100 butterfly winners? Sir Craig Reedie of Great Britain, an IOC vice president, chairman of the 2020 Summer Games evaluation commission and presumed candidate for the World Anti-Doping Agency presidency.

To the winners of the women's 200-meter individual medley? Marius Vizer, the recently elected president of Sport Accord, the umbrella federation of the international sports federations. Vizer is also president of the International Judo Federation.

This is what's called being smart all around and covering your bases.

This, too:

In recent years, FINA has added open-water events. Here, it announced the addition of mixed relays.

Now, high-diving. "Hopefully, down the line we'll get into the Olympics," said Hunt, who leads the 2013 Red Bull cliff diving series after four events. Hunt has won the last three titles; Duque is the only other man to have won, in 2009.

What has track done to grow the sport? To remain fresh and current? To reach out -- in a concrete way -- to young people?

"The truth is that every year, every day, we are thinking to do something new," Maglione said at a weekend news conference.

Marculescu added a few moments later, "It's no secret today that we are living in a sport business environment. If you don't improve your product every day, or as soon as you can, the value disappears."

One of the jury members in Monday's men's high-diver preliminaries:  the man widely considered the greatest diver of all-time, Greg Louganis, the 1984 and 1988 platform and springboard champion. It's another smart play to get Louganis involved; he is an activist and his voice should be welcomed in the movement.

With Duque atop the leader board, the 14 men now move on to Wednesday's finals; preliminary scores carry over. The women's event, from 20 meters, or 66 feet, is set for Tuesday.

One of the six women who will dive Tuesday, Tara Tira, 27, of San Francisco, said, "It's a tremendous leap," literally and figuratively. She smiled at the inadvertent pun, then said, "It's really cool. It's really exciting for us. It's the next step."

Déjà two all over again

BARCELONA -- With Michael Phelps watching from the stands, the U.S. men took a lead into the final leg of the men's 4x100 relay here Sunday night at the Palau Sant Jordi. As the old building roared, what happened in the next 48 or so seconds was either a bad case of déjà two all over again or a matter of the Americans playing not for short-term glory but for long-term reward. Depends on your point of view.

Just like last year at the Olympic Games in London, the French ran the Americans down in the final 50 meters. Last year it was Yannick Agnel showing Ryan Lochte no mercy. This time, Jeremy Stravius showed Jimmy Feigen how it's done, the French winning in 3:11.18, the Americans 24-hundredths back.

Russia took third, another 20-hundredths behind. Vlad Morozov ripped off a 47.4 third leg but it was not enough.

"We wanted to win. What can I say?" Agnel -- who has been training in Baltimore this year with Phelps' longtime mentor, Bob Bowman -- said afterward.

Bowman, who is the U.S. men's coach here, said, "We could definitely do better. We are disappointed with that."

You think the U.S. men could have used, well, Phelps?

"Those four guys did an amazing job," Natalie Coughlin, the veteran U.S. racer said after the American women's 4x100 relay team won gold, buoyed by Megan Romano's thrilling anchor leg. Coughlin quickly added in a reference to the U.S. team overall but one that served as a punctuation to the men's relay, "Yeah, we miss Michael."

That's because Michael -- who was quite the presence Sunday in Barcelona, signing autographs, posing for photos, doing his thing as swim ambassador, his right foot in a walking boot -- understood fully that the 4x100 free relay traditionally has been an American priority, whether at the worlds and the Olympics, and that winning it is technically fairly simple to diagram if nonetheless difficult to execute.

The men's freestyle relay now has evolved to the point that it takes all four guys swimming in the 47-second range. If one guy rips off 46-something, all kinds of things are possible.

This is what Jason Lezak showed in Beijing in 2008 with his out-of-this-world 46.06 anchor leg, after Phelps himself opened up with a 47.51. Garrett Weber-Gale, swimming second, went 47.02; Cullen Jones, third, 47.65. The Americans won by eight-hundredths of a second over the French.

In 2009, at the world championships in Rome, Phelps led off in 47.78. Lochte went next, in 47.03. Matt Grevers followed in 47.61. Nathan Adrian closed in 46.79. The Americans won.

In 2011, at the worlds in Shanghai, Phelps led off -- in 48.08. Weber-Gale went next, in 48.33. Lezak went third, going 48.15. Adrian swam 47.64. The Americans took third, in 3:11.96. The Aussies put together four 47s, and won in 3:11 flat.

Last year at the Olympics, Adrian kicked things off in  47.89. Phelps went next, in 47.15. Jones, back in form, turned in a 47.6. Then Lochte went 47.74. Should have been good enough, right?

Except that Agnel went 46.74.

The French won in 3:09.93, the Americans taking silver in 3:10.38. Just like this year, the Russians took third.

The American line-up Sunday night was Adrian, Lochte, Anthony Ervin and Feigen.

Feigen swam in the prelims in the 4x100 relay in London, going 48.49. He also has pulled recent national-team duty at the world short-course championships -- that is, in a 25-meter pool -- with comparatively few fans in the stand.

This would be his first turn on the big stage.

In Sunday's prelims, Ervin went 47.38. Ricky Berens, a national-team veteran, rocked a 47.56. Like Feigen, Berens swam in the London prelims. Berens is a two-time gold medalist in the 4x200 relay.

Bowman and the other U.S. coaches opted to go with Feigen and, moreover, to put him in the anchor slot.

The French countered with Agnel, Florent Manaudou, Fabien Gilot and Stravius.

Manaudou won gold in the 50 free in London, in 21.34. Gilot went 47.67 in the London relay win. Stravius was the unknown -- having gone 48.32 in the London relay prelims. At a news conference a couple days ago, he had said he was "happy to be here."

Agnel turned in -- by his measure -- a sub-par 48.76; after his swim the French were seventh. Manaudou went 47.93, lifting them back up to fourth. Then Gilot ripped off a 46.9.

Meanwhile, Adrian went 47.95, Lochte 47.8, Ervin 47.44. It seemed the Americans were heading toward victory.

Stravius, though, went 47.59.

Feigen? 48.23.

Three Americans went 47, one went 48.23 and the U.S. lost by 24-hundredths. There, essentially, is your race.

To his credit, Feigen -- who absolutely is an up-and-comer -- was straight-up about it all afterward. He said Stravius "ended up wanting it more than I did, and that showed." He said, "I've got to learn to swim my own race," acknowledging his breathing pattern was slightly off as he came toward the final wall.

"You know what?" said Ervin, the 2000 Sydney Games 50 free gold medalist who is now 32 and has since seen a lot of life. "You can't win them all. When you can't win, what you get is experience."

"It's kind of a learning experience," Feigen said. "And hopefully, I can get better every time."

Which, Bowman said, is the point. If you're not going to win, there's Rio and 2016 to consider.

Asked if the Americans were missing Phelps Sunday night, he laughed and said, "We were on that relay, I think.

"You know, it's the way it goes. These guys are learning. We are trying to figure out where people should go, really, in 2016. We want to win all these. But, these guys, it's the first time in a new [quadrennium]. Everybody gets kind of a shot to see where they are."

Asked if the French were glad Phelps wasn't swimming, Agnel said, "I don't understand the question." Which he totally did, because he then smiled a very big smile.

Bowman added that Phelps had been texting critiques of the race from his perch in the stands.

"He was disappointed we got beat," Bowman said, adding a moment later, "He was just giving me his analysis of the race, things I could have done better." Which was? Another laugh. "I'll keep that to myself."

Most drug-tested: Ryan Lochte

BARCELONA -- Amid statistics strongly suggesting that American star Ryan Lochte is the most-tested swimmer on Planet Earth, the chairman of the doping control board of swimming's international governing body, FINA, issued a blunt warning here Saturday to all racers on the eve of the swim competition at these 15th world championships: don't take nutritional supplements. Just don't do it, Dr. Andrew Pipe said. Too many supplements are made or marketed in the United States, where the unregulated environment means elite athletes can have no guarantees whatsoever that what's on the label is really what's in the can or bottle, he said.

Pipe said nutrition "gurus" and others suggest that supplements are not only helpful but necessary. For many, he said, "Nutrition isn't a science. It's a religion."

Reality: the anti-doping code makes plain, as track stars such as American Tyson Gay and Jamaican Asafa Powell have learned anew in recent weeks, that athletes bear ultimate responsibility for what's in their systems.

Without making explicit reference to the two sprinters, Pipe said swimming wants to be free of the "scourge of doping that surrounds so many other sports," adding, "We want to demonstrate to the world that we're swimming in clean waters." Racing gets underway Sunday at the Palau Sant Jordi.

The fact is, of course, swimming has in recent years seen its share of notable supplement-related cases.

Two years ago, Brazil's sprint champ Cesar Cielo and three others tested positive for furosemide said to have been included in a supplement. Cielo and two of the others got warnings; the fourth, Vinicius Waked, was suspended because it was a second offense.

Five years ago, American Jessica Hardy lost out at her chance for the 2008 Beijing Games after a positive test for clenbuterol; after proving she had innocently ingested it in a supplement, her suspension was reduced from two years to one, and she would go on to swim at the London 2012 Games.

Pipe's comments come amid the publication of revealing anti-doping statistics from both track and swimming's governing bodies. These facts and figures are readily available on the websites of both federations.

FINA, for instance, conducted 1,859 tests in 2012. Of these, 1,240 -- exactly two-thirds -- were out-of-competition.

Anti-doping authorities love to boast about how many tests they conduct at a major meet. Why? It makes it seem like they are being aggressive.

The truth is, such in-meet tests -- while of course useful as a deterrent -- have to be considered in context. The more sophisticated doper is busy doing his or her thing during training season. That's when the time is optimal to use performance-enhancing drugs to help in recovery or to build mass or strength.

To FINA's credit, it spells out not just who it tested out-of-competition but the actual dates.

That tells you perhaps who is not just high-profile but who might be on FINA's watch list -- for whatever reason. The list does not offer any explanation why a particular athlete might be subject to more tests, or fewer.

So, for instance:

Cielo got tested three times last year: Feb. 14, April 22, Nov. 18.

Hardy, three times, too: Jan. 25, April 12, June 2.

Michael Phelps -- who made a career of saying he absolutely, unequivocally raced clean? Four. Feb. 9, April 14, May 21, June 11.

Missy Franklin -- Four. May 21, June 11, July 12, Dec. 4.

Lochte? Six -- making him FINA's most-tested swimmer in the world. Jan. 18, Feb. 9, March 19, April 17, June 11 and Nov. 28. (He was tested five more times during the short-course championships in Istanbul in December.)

Lochte, it should be noted for the record, has similarly proclaimed that he swims clean and has never offered even a hint of doping-related misconduct. It's unclear why he is the subject of such out-of-competition attention.

France's Yannick Agnel, who swam the stunning last laps in the men's 4x100 relay at the London Games to beat back Lochte and the U.S. team? Four. Feb. 16, March 12, May 10, June 20.

Australian sprint star James Magnussen? Four. Jan. 30, March 7, May 21 and June 25.

Fellow Australian Ian Thorpe, trying to make a comeback? (He announced this weekend it was, finally, over.) Five. Jan. 30, April 11, May 21, July 3, Dec. 19.

Chinese teen Ye Shewin, who won gold in London in the 400 individual medley (in world-record time) and the 200 IM (Olympic-record), her last 400 IM lap drawing comparisons to Lochte? Three tests, two before the Games and intriguingly just once after: Feb. 26, March 10 and Dec. 6.

In all, FINA performed those 1,240 out-of-competition tests on 692 athletes; 64 were in China, and 120 of the 1,240 tests, just under 10 percent; 65 in Japan, and 116, about the same percentage; 68 and 131 in the United States, just over 10 percent; 74 and 146 in Australia, nearing 12 percent.

These figures do not, of course, include testing at the London 2012 Olympic Games, done by the IOC, or any tests carried out by national anti-doping agencies or the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Track and field's governing body, which goes by the acronym IAAF, on July 25 published its own table showing it had conducted more of its tests on Kenyans -- 348, 14.7 percent -- than athletes from any other nation.

As a point of comparison, FINA tested only one Kenyan swimmer, Jason Dunford, on Jan. 23 and again on April 13. A Stanford grad, he finished fifth in Beijing and 12th in London in the 100 butterfly.

Back to track:

Russians were the second-most tested -- 336, 14.2 percent.

Then Americans, 222, or 9.4 percent.

Jamaicans? Fifth on the list, 126, 5.3 percent.

The IAAF does not break down test dates the way FINA does. Instead, in a list updated July 19 it noted only whether an athlete was tested out-of-competition "one to three" times or "four-plus."

Gay? One to three.

Powell? Four-plus. Just like Usain Bolt, Yohan Blake, Veronica-Campbell Brown, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Kerron Stewart -- other mainstays of the Jamaican sprint program.

Another Jamaican gold medal-winning sprinter, Sherone Simpson, who, like Powell, has also registered a positive test? One to three.

Campbell-Brown -- who has long been friends with Gay -- recently failed a test, too.

London 800 meter world-record setter David Rudisha of Kenya? Four-plus, just like several other Kenyan standouts, the list of Kenyan names running across four pages.

The list of Russian names spills onto five.

Turkey's Asli Cakir Alptekin, provisionally suspended in May after abnormalities reportedly were detected in her blood profile and now facing a lifetime ban because she served a two-year suspension for a 2004 doping offense? She was tested four-plus in 2012.

The very first name on the IAAF list, meanwhile, is surprise men's London 1500 meter winner Taoufik Makhloufi of Algeria. How many tests for him? One to three.

BCN 2013: life after Phelps

BARCELONA -- The world after Michael Phelps gets underway here shortly in sun-splashed Spain, or at least that part that everyone outside serious swim geeks would be inclined to pay attention to, the 2013 swimming world championships, and from all over the globe they sought Friday both to downplay expectations while asserting that quite naturally the point in racing is to win. "It's kind of a down year but everyone is getting ready to race," American Matt Grevers, the London Games 100 meters backstroke gold medalist, said, summing it up perfectly in just one short sentence.

This classic wanting-to-have-it-both-ways is the result of several factors:

It's the year after the Olympic year. Some people are in tip-top shape and others, well, maybe not so much. The thing about swimming is it has no pity. It reveals who has put in the work.

That's what Phelps understood during and after the world championships in Shanghai in 2011, and -- candidly -- what these championships are likely to show, indeed what the build-up to this meet already has made plain. American Allison Schmitt, who won five medals last summer in London, including gold in the 200 freestyle, her signature event, didn't make the 2013 team.

"She hasn't trained very much," her coach, Bob Bowman -- who is of course Phelps' longtime mentor as well and is the U.S. men's coach here -- told reporters at the time. He also tweeted a quote from the Chinese master Lao Tzu, "I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures."

As these Barcelona championships unfold, with the U.S. team's 31 medals from London now just numbers in the history books, with Russian sprinter Vlad Morozov throwing down times like 47.62 in the 100 free just a couple weeks ago at the University Games -- simplicity, patience and compassion might be the watchwords for many.

Then again, the U.S. might rise up as it usually does.

The 2013 U.S. world team is made up of veterans such as Ryan Lochte, Nathan Adrian, Natalie Coughlin and Dana Vollmer, breakout stars such as Missy Franklin and Katie Ledecky and a whole bunch of newcomers -- eight national team rookies on the 51-person roster.

Phelps -- he of the 22 Olympic medals, 18 gold -- is of course playing golf. He has said many times that he is doing so contentedly.

That Phelps is not churning down Lane 4 in the final 50 meters does not mean, as France's Fred Bousquet rightly put it Friday, that there aren't any more stars in the worldwide swim constellation. Phelps always said his primary goal was to grow the sport and, as the London Games underscored, his brilliance  has brought forth swimmers from all over the world -- South Africa's Chad le Clos, Lithuania's Ruta Meilutyte and others.

"We should not be different now," Bousquet said. "Just chasing the dream like every other swimmer."

Even so, the world championships in the year following an Olympics is always something of an odd affair. Everyone is acutely aware that the dream -- the real dream -- is three long years away.

"We want to peak in 2016, not 2013," Michael Scott, the Australian team's director of high performance, said at that team's news conference following the Americans -- the Aussies trying to effect a wholesale change in what an independent review called a "toxic" team culture following just 10 medals won in London, only one gold.

The new Aussie way, Scott said, is "by being professional in and out of the pool and doing that with team unity and enjoyment," the theory being medals will follow.

Ryan Lochte, meanwhile, sounded a lot like Michael Phelps circa 2011 -- Lochte also emphasizing that his main goal was Rio in 2016, not Barcelona 2013. "I knew I had to get back in the water eventually," Lochte said, meaning that if he was going to swim here he had to resume training after his reality-TV show and other out-of-the-pool adventures.

"Joan Rivers -- she's awesome. She's a character. Being on her show, it was a lot of fun. Before the show, they told me to wear a swimsuit and I was, like, all right. I put it on under my actual business suit. During the show, she told me to take it off and -- I did. I mean, what can I say? It was a lot of fun.

"You never know what to expect with her. One time I was sitting on a chair talking to her, next thing I knew I was in a fountain still talking to her. It was a lot of fun."

To be fair to Lochte, he didn't just volunteer this story. He was asked about hanging out with Joan Rivers. Then again, before this year, Lochte acknowledged, he had been a beast in training. This year, though, he said, "I took a long break. I don't know if it's going to help me," adding, "My body needed to re-charge. Now I am back in the water and I am excited to race."

Phelps said almost the same thing at the world championships in Shanghai in 2011 before Lochte drilled him in the 200 individual medley, setting a world record, 1:54 flat, Phelps finishing 16-hundredths of a second back.

That loss spurred Phelps to get back in the pool for hard training. In London, Phelps won the 200 IM, in 1:54.27; Lochte took silver, in 1:54.9.

"I mean, Phelps -- there is no doubt about it, he is going to go down in history as the best swimmer ever," Lochte said. "I was just happy I was part of it. He is the hardest racer I ever had to go up against."

Bowman, asked for probably the jillionth time whether Phelps is coming back, offered his practiced reply: "Well, my answer to that is always -- when I see it, I will believe it, and I have had no indication to this point … that's where I will leave that one."

Which is where this meet gets going. Racing starts Sunday, with the first big event the men's 4x100 freestyle relay.

Michael Scott, the Aussie team leader, was asked the key to the relay. In the way that Grevers succinctly summed up the meet, so did Scott: "Swim fast."

Ryan Braun and real math

That Milwaukee Brewers slugger Ryan Braun, the 2011 National League Most Valuable Player, accepted a suspension for the remainder of the 2013 season, 65 games, marks a step forward for baseball's credibility in waging its anti-doping campaign. The action also makes it plain that baseball is dead serious in its investigation of the now-defunct Biogenesis clinic in South Florida, which is accused of supplying performance-enhancing drugs to a list of other players, foremost among them Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees. Rodriguez has denied any involvement. Stay tuned.

It also means baseball manifestly now understands what Olympic authorities have for years -- that you don't need positive tests but can rely on notebooks, receipts and other evidence to make a powerful case. And that the commissioner's office and the players' union jointly comprehend, and can work together to do something about, the real threat doping poses to the integrity of the game.

But it's just a start, and pending what's yet to come with Rodriguez and the others -- it's not enough.

Baseball needs, at the minimum, to adopt an Olympic-style approach to doping-related jurisprudence. Athletes who cheat need to be suspended for two years, at least, without pay. Baseball also needs to strip players of whatever awards and achievements they won while they were juiced, just like Olympic "champions" have to give back their medals.

Otherwise, why bother?

This, like many things in baseball, is an exercise in math -- probabilities, possibilities, tendencies and statistics. And, like many plays in baseball, there are short- and long-term implications.

First, giving baseball credit. The sport has made significant advances since the BALCO scandal erupted 10 years ago, and again since the 2007 Mitchell Report. Baseball at least has in place now testing protocols and a three-tier suspension program: 50 games for a first steroid-related offense, 100 for a second, a purported lifetime ban for a third.

Then again, as evidence of how flawed the system remains, there's this:

Last season, pitcher Bartolo Colon failed a drug test. Baseball hit him with a 50-game suspension. He served it (the final five games came this year) and signed a new deal with the Oakland A's. Now Colon is a candidate for the Cy Young Award for the American League's top pitcher; on Sunday, he shut out the Angels, improving his record to 13-3 and lowering his earned-run average to 2.52.

The game Sunday was Colon's first start since returning from the All-Star Game -- Colon's third career All-Star Game appearance. Again, and for emphasis: last year, a drug cheat, this year an All-Star.

Asked by reporters Sunday to explain how Colon is able in this, his 16th big-league season, to pitch at such a high level, A's manager Bob Melvin said, "I've been trying to explain it all year and I can't."

Colon, like Braun, like Rodriguez, has been linked to Biogenesis.

Most of the U.S. press harshly criticized Braun after word of his suspension came down on Monday.

ESPN's Buster Olney, for instance, called him the "Lance Armstrong of baseball."  Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports said Braun's name is "ruined," his reputation "shattered," and he will "forever be an object of scorn." Christine Brennan at USA Today: "They threw the bum out."

Why such intense reaction?

Because, perhaps, Braun had escaped liability for a 2011 test on a technicality, then said at a news conference in the Arizona desert before spring training in February 2012, "Today is about anybody who has been wrongly accused," and, "The simple truth is I'm innocent."

In a statement issued Monday by Major League Baseball, Braun said, "I realize now that I have made some mistakes."

He realized that because he was flat-out caught, of course. Moreover, the statement does not acknowledge in plain language what those "mistakes" might be, even if they're obvious.

All of that, yes.

And yet, from here, while Braun may -- and let us emphasize, may -- be embarrassed, what is his real punishment? Again, probabilities, possibilities, tendencies. There's short-term damage control, for sure. But in the long run, who's the winner?

Consider:

The Brewers are terrible, as of Tuesday 16 games under .500, 19 games back of St. Louis in the National League Central. Braun's right thumb, moreover, is hurt. So sitting out 65 games in a lost season? Big deal.

Commissioner Bud Selig gets to crow that he got one of the game's big names for more than 50 games. Sixty-five is 15 more than 50. That's a bonus for the commissioner, who also undeniably sends a signal to Rodriguez. But for Braun -- so what?

The announcement by MLB suspending Braun doesn't spell out why. For Braun -- that's a win.

When Lance Armstrong was found out to be a serial doper, the seven Tour de France titles were no longer his. When Marion Jones was found out to be a cheater, her Olympic medals were stripped. Ryan Braun's MVP award? That's still his.

And here's Braun's biggest win:

Braun's suspension means he has to forfeit nearly half of his $8.5 million 2013 salary. Again, so what? He's getting a guaranteed $127 million from the Brewers through 2020.

Rosenthal, in that same column, estimated that the money Braun would forfeit this year would amount to 2 percent of Braun's career earnings.

This, bluntly, is the problem.

Do the math. Run the analysis. If you can take steroids (or whatever), and those performance-enhancing drugs can help you bang your way to a deal worth more than $100 million, and then you get caught, and getting caught means you have to give up 2 percent of the money -- would you make that trade?

Absolutely you would. Two percent? That's an ATM fee.

Who cares, meanwhile, what all those sports writers say? That's just noise.

Unless and until baseball enacts a policy that means a big name like Braun is giving up two years and something like $40 million -- now we're talking real money -- there's no meaningful deterrent. Frankly, it's debatable whether $40 million from $127 million is significant enough -- after all, that still leaves 87 million reasons to take steroids -- but at least it's enough to start the conversation.

Next spring, Ryan Braun will come back and there will likely be another news conference in the Arizona desert, and he will say something and we will all get back on with the business of baseball. Contrary to what my good friend Christine Brennan wrote -- she and I went to college and graduated together -- baseball did not throw the bum out.

Look around. Mark McGwire is now the hitting coach of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

In a perfect world: Mellouli rocks

Everyone knows Michael Phelps. Pretty much only swim geeks, and Tunisians, know the story of Ous Mellouli, which is the way it is but not the way it should be. In a perfect world, Mellouli would be celebrated like Phelps. He is charming, funny, good-looking, well-spoken, plain-speaking, at ease in different languages and, as a University of Southern California guy, completely and totally comfortable in celebrity culture.

All of that, and Mellouli, now 29, is one of the most accomplished athletes of our or any time, with a knack for coming up big when the lights are brightest. In winning the open-water five-kilometer swim Sunday at the 2013 world championships in Barcelona, Spain, Mellouli added to his considerable resume with a victory that nobody saw coming.

Maybe -- truth be told -- not even him.

With a final kick evocative of the way that runners in the 5k distance race finish off the race on the track, Mellouli won in 53 minutes, 30.4 seconds, holding off Canada's Eric Hedlin, who finished 1.2 seconds back. Germany's Thomas Lurz, another six-tenths behind, took third.

"You get in that zone and your thoughts get dialed in," Mellouli said Sunday in a phone call. "In that moment, all the other things don't matter. It doesn't matter if you are swimming in mud. You just have to get to the finish first."

The victory closed a circle of sorts.

It was 10 years ago, at the 2003 Barcelona world championships, that Phelps won the 400-meter individual medley. Laszlo Cseh of Hungary took silver in that race. Mellouli took third.

Barcelona 2003 was, in many ways, the meet that announced Phelps to the world. Since then, of course, Phelps has gone on to win 22 Olympic medals, 18 of them gold.

Mellouli?

From Tunisia, he went to school in France, then came to USC. There he would connect with coach Dave Salo, who has a remarkable record of helping swimmers -- among them Mellouli, U.S. breaststroker Rebecca Soni and the likely breakout star of the 2013 meet, Russia's Vlad Morozov -- achieve their best.

At the 2004 Games, Mellouli finished fifth in the 400 IM, then turned to longer distances -- which, it would turn out, would prove his calling.

In 2007, at the world championships in Melbourne, Australia, Mellouli came from behind to win the 800; he also earned a silver in the 400. Then, though, his results would be nullified after a positive test for amphetamines. It turned out -- and he has always totally owned up to this -- that he had taken an Adderall pill to finish writing a term paper at USC.

A dumb mistake that any college kid could have made.

Because Mellouli was forthright, authorities reduced his suspension from the usual term, two years, to 18 months.

In retrospect, Mellouli says now, the episode served as a powerful lesson: "I gained perspective and built momentum from it. It was a mistake and cost me my first world title. I came out of it a stronger and better and more professional athlete. I'm actually grateful for it."

At the 2008 Beijing Games, in the 1500 -- the swimming equivalent of a mile -- much of the focus was whether Australia's Grant Hackett, the two-time defending Olympic champ, would become the first man to win the same individual event at three consecutive Games.

Mellouli won the race, in 14:40.84. Hackett took silver, in 14:41.53.

It was Tunisia's first-ever swimming medal.

At the 2012 Games, Mellouli, showing his versatility and range, swam both in the open-water event and in the pool.

The 10k open-water marathon wound through London's Serpentine, in Hyde Park. Mellouli won, in 1:49.55.1; Lurz took silver, 3.4 seconds behind.

In the pool, meanwhile, in the 1500, China's Sun Yang turned in an other-worldly 14:31.02 to win gold. Canada's Ryan Cochrane, who had won bronze in 2008, finished in 14:39.63 to claim silver; Mellouli finished third, in 14:40.31.

That made him the first to win pool and open-water medals at a single Games.

After London, Mellouli took some well-deserved time off. He traveled -- Rio de Janeiro, the Bahamas, Montreal, Hawaii, back to Tunisia, Europe. By his own admission, he gained -- well, 30 pounds.

Thinking he was going to retire, he didn't swim meaningfully for six months.

What makes Sunday's victory all the more astonishing is that he has been training -- really training -- for only eight weeks.

That's right. Eight weeks.

He did a stint at altitude in Colorado with Phelps' coach, Bob Bowman; some time with his Tunisian coaches; some work with Salo; with Catherine Vogt, who also helps train Sunday's 5k women's winner, Haley Anderson; and with Jon Urbanchek, the former University of Michigan head coach, now based in Southern California.

It was, Mellouli said, "something completely different, no structure at all, going by feel," and "everybody really helped out."

He said he intends to race the 10k on Monday. And now Rio and 2016 beckon.

"The coolest thing about it is I really love open water," Mellouli said, adding, "It's a great challenge. That's why you see my reactions at the end -- it's a scream of a mixture of just rage and just happiness and everything.

"It tests you. You get tested mentally and physically and everything. To be part of it, helping the sport grow and giving the sport credibility and now making a name for myself in the open-water world, I see the sport growing year by year -- I take a lot of pride in that, for sure."

--

Update:

Mellouli finished third in Monday's 10k.

Greece's Spyridon Gianniotis, the Shanghai 2011 world champion in the 10k, repeated in Barcelona, winning in 1 hour, 49 minutes and 11.8 seconds. He had finished fourth at last summer's London Games.

Lurz took second, in 1:49:14.5. Mellouli's third-place time: 1:49.19.2.

Olympic boycotts do not work

The Honorable Lindsey Graham Republican, South Carolina

United States Senate

290 Russell Senate Office Building

Washington, D.C. 20510-4001

--

Dear Sen. Graham:

Please allow me to start with a joke. I guess the 2024 Summer Games won't be in Charleston, South Carolina!

Now, sir, seriously:

Olympic boycotts only harm athletes. Please read your history books. Thank you.

Senator, you are flat-out wrong in suggesting in an interview with The Hill newspaper that the United States boycott the Sochi Olympics, which begin next Feb. 7 in southwestern Russia.

Your remarks show a profound misunderstanding in suggesting there is, or possibly could be, a connection between the Olympics and exerting any sort of political or diplomatic leverage on the Russian government in resolving the matter involving Edward Snowden, the former intelligence contractor on the run from the U.S. authorities.

Moreover, your remarks -- like a stone cast upon a pond -- may yet have a ripple effect in ways you did not intend. That's because, though you told NBC you "love" the Olympics it is a fair question how much you genuinely know, sir, about the actual Olympic movement -- not just the pageantry of the Games, what you see on television every two years, but its import and reach throughout our world, and the unique American role in it.

For if you did the idea of a boycott would never have passed your lips.

In the first place, it is somewhat amazing that you -- a Republican who served as co-chair of Arizona Sen. John McCain's 2008 presidential bid -- would reach back in history to an idea backed by a Democratic president, Jimmy Carter.

Even Sen. McCain knows an Olympic boycott does not make for sound policy. He told The Hill in that same story, “There’s many things we can do, but I think the experience of canceling the Olympics the last time around wasn’t very good."

Why isn't it sound policy? Because punishing hard-working, dedicated athletes -- who have nothing to do with global politics or diplomacy -- is not the means to any end. What did the 1980 Moscow boycott bring about? The retaliation of a 1984 boycott at the Los Angeles Games by the Soviets and some of their allies. And nothing more.

The irony of the 1980 boycott, of course, sparked by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, is that it is now the United States military that finds itself in Afghanistan. What -- should the Russians tell the American team not to come to Sochi in February? That wouldn't be very peaceable, would it?

Predictably, senator, your comments sparked outrage and disbelief Wednesday in Russia.

"America is in an extremely uncomfortable situation because of its surveillance of citizens of the whole world and this has undermined its reputation as the 'beacon of democracy,'" Sen. Ruslan Gattarov, chairman of the committee on information society in the Federation Council, told the wire service Ria Novosti.

He added, "In the international arena, when the United States can't use its army and navy to strike at a country directly, it starts issuing political statements that belittle itself."

One of Russia's three International Olympic Committee members, Shamil Tarpischev, told the R-Sport news agency that your remarks were "absolutely devoid of understanding of the sports movement as a whole."

Tarpischev, you should know, is close to Russian president Vladimir Putin. Tarpischev went on to say, "In reality, there is nothing to this apart from tabloid chatter and an effort to attract attention and show off. Sports encompasses the world itself.

"It is obvious that the senator is not a sportsman himself. In reality, he merely wants to aggravate this situation for some interests of his own."

What those interests might be remains entirely unclear. At the same time, the interests of the U.S. Olympic Committee, and American athletes, are entirely transparent -- and, senator, it's worth asking whether you considered any or all of them before you went public.

The USOC is in the midst of trying to line up support for a bid, probably for 2024. Your comments may well be dismissed by some in the international arena -- who better understand American politics -- as just one voice among 100 in the U.S. Senate. But others may not understand and you may have set back the USOC's efforts amid its three year-long effort to repair and rebuild relationships.

Meanwhile, the odds of the United States boycotting the 2014 Sochi Games are, absent something extraordinary between now and Feb. 7, minute.

When the hundreds of young men and women representing Team USA walk out on the evening of Feb. 7 into the opening ceremony, wouldn't you, senator, want them to receive a warm reception? If you "love" the Olympics, how do you believe your remarks helped advance that?

One final thought:

The security situation in the region is already tense -- earlier this month, a Chechen warlord urged militants to disrupt the Games, which he described as "satanic dances on the bones of our ancestors" -- and American athletes typically draw extra attention at any Olympics, all the more so since 9/11. The Boston Marathon bombing may or may not also figure into the Sochi security scenario. Why rile things up further, senator?

The last words here, senator, go to Patrick Sandusky, the USOC's chief communications officer. He issued a statement Wednesday that said, echoing the sentiments in this space, "Olympic boycotts do not work," adding, "Our boycott of the 1980 Olympic Games did not contribute to a successful resolution of the underlying conflict. It did, however, deprive hundreds of American athletes, all [of] whom had completely dedicated themselves to representing our nation at the Olympic Games, of the opportunity of a lifetime.

"It also deprived millions of Americans of the opportunity to take pride in the achievements of our athletes, and in their dedication and commitment, at a time when we needed it most."

Just, sir, as we do now.

Bill Johnson off life support

If indeed the end is near for Bill Johnson, who nearly 30 years ago brashly predicted that he would win the Olympic downhill in Sarajevo, and then went out and did it, it has to be said that he is, to the last, as always, being true to himself, with spirit and soul. Johnson, now 53, had been hospitalized in Oregon with a severe infection. He elected to "shut himself down," his mother, DB Johnson-Cooper, said Tuesday in a telephone interview, removing himself Sunday from all life-support systems.

Johnson went into the hospital June 29, spending 11 days in intensive care. Doctors "gave him multiple antibiotics and quite frankly have run out of ideas of what to do," his mother said. He's due to go back now to Gresham Regency Nursing & Rehabilitation Center, where he has been living since suffering a major stroke three years ago. She said she was making hospice plans.

"He has no quality of life from this point on and never will," she said, adding, "It's a tough one."

In 1984, Bill Johnson was a genuine badass. He said he was going to win the Olympic downhill, and did, by 27-hundredths of a second, over Switzerland's Peter Müller. That made him the first American to win gold in an Alpine event. Sports Illustrated put him on the cover -- "Flat out for glory," it said.

As Bruce Springsteen once wrote about glory days, however, they pass you by, and in Johnson's case -- though the telling of what happened after Sarajevo has been told many times and in many ways, it nonetheless remains so, so sad.

In 1992, Johnson's toddler son, Ryan, just 13 months old, drowned in their home's hot tub. The door to the room housing the tub had been left open by a friend.

By 1999, his wife had left him. She took their two other boys.

The next year, he decided to try a comeback. He thought he might win back his ex-wife. He had the words "Ski to die" tattooed on his arm.

Near Whitefish, Mont., on a stretch of mountain called Corkscrew, he caught an edge and crashed, at 60 mph, into the safety netting. For three weeks, he lay in a coma.

He was never really right afterwards and in 2010 suffered the major stroke.

Now -- this huge infection and the decision to take himself off life support.

In a note sent Sunday to family and friends, DB wrote, "The doctor was very frank with him and Bill knew exactly what he wanted. He shed a few tears, which was a very hard thing to see."

On the telephone Tuesday, she said, "He has no physical use of any part of his body. He has difficulty even raising his head. His mind is still very keen but his body has literally shut down."

She said, "It's very sad, very sad. He is having a hard time."

Bubka, entourage issues up front

When he was a pole vault star, Sergei Bubka said he was so careful about what he ate and drank that, for instance, he would never sip from a bottle with an open seal. Now Bubka, who broke the pole-vaulting world record 35 times in a career that includes the 1988 Seoul Olympic gold medal, is a senior member of the International Olympic Committee and, since 2010, chair of its Entourage Commission. Now he is, as well, a vice president of track and field's governing body, which goes by the acronym IAAF.

Now, too, he is one of six candidates running for the IOC presidency in an election set for September, and if anyone figured to have keen insight into Sunday's news that some of the world's top sprinters, including American Tyson Gay and Jamaican Asafa Powell, had failed doping tests, it figured to be Bubka.

If you were looking for someone to make nice or to be an apologist, you mistook Bubka for the wrong sheriff in town. He was clear, decisive and direct, calling it "imperative" that "all athletes" take "total care and responsibility for what food, drink and other supplements they are given."

He also said, "While no one wants to create an atmosphere of mistrust, there is a lot at stake at the highest levels of sport and anyone who claims to support clean sport must ensure that they set an example by avoiding any possibility of taking something that is banned."

What makes the Gay and Powell cases so compelling is that they figure to prove fascinating studies in entourage -- shining a spotlight on this heretofore under-appreciated corner of the Olympic scene, perhaps with implications even for the IOC presidential race, with Bubka obviously smartly positioned.

Sometimes, that's just the way circumstance plays out.

Bubka's remarks came as Associated Press reported police raided a northeastern Italian hotel where Powell and another top Jamaican sprinter, Sherone Simpson -- who also failed a doping test -- had had been staying, and as Adidas suspended its sponsorship of Gay.

The German company had backed Gay since 2005. It invoked a clause in Gay's contract relating to doping, saying it was "shocked" by the allegations, adding "even if we presume his innocence until proven otherwise, our contract with Tyson is currently suspended," AP reported.

Gay, who had run a 9.75, the fastest 100 meters in the world this year, said he had tested positive for a banned substance in an out-of-competition test on May 16. The substance at issue has not been identified. He is still awaiting confirmation of his backup "B" sample.

Gay said Sunday he had "basically put my trust in someone and was let down," declining to identify that "someone."

Gay immediately sought to accept responsibility, saying Sunday he did "not have a sabotage story" nor "any lies," adding, "I don't have anything to say to make this seem like it was a mistake or it was on [the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency's] hands, someone playing games. I don't have any of those stories."

Powell, a former 100 world-record holder, and Simpson, a three-time Olympic medalist, both tested positive for the stimulant oxilofrine.

AP reported police seized unidentified substances in a raid at the Fra i Pini hotel in Lignano Sabbiadoro, Italy, where Powell's room, Simpson's room and the room of physical trainer Christopher Xuereb of Canada were searched.

The New York Times, in a story published late Monday, reported that Paul Doyle, Powell and Simpson's agent, was blaming Xuereb for the positive tests. An email Doyle got Sunday from Xuereb said the trainer had provided the two sprinters with a combination of about 20 supplements and injections, and had injected Powell with actovegin, made from calves' blood extract. Doyle told the newspaper it was "pretty obvious where we needed to look" in trying to "figure out what went wrong."

The paper asserted that none of the substances is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency.

In a statement issued before Monday's police action in Italy, Powell said, "My team has launched an internal investigation and we are cooperating with the relevant agencies and law enforcement authorities to discover how the substance got in my system. I assure you that we will find out how this substance passed our rigorous internal checks and balances and design systems to make sure it never happens again."

He also declared he was "not now -- nor have I ever been -- a cheat."

Last month, Jamaica's Veronica Campbell-Brown, the 2004 and 2008 200 meter champion, tested positive for a banned diuretic.

Gay and Campbell-Brown, meanwhile, are longtime friends.

Perhaps as many as 30 doping cases are awaiting resolution in Turkey -- on top of a number of high-profile others that have already come down there earlier this year.

The news Sunday broke about a month before the IAAF world championships in Moscow. The sport, and indeed the wider Olympic movement, found itself Monday confronting -- yet again -- the issue of doping among high-profile athletes.

Spokesman Nick Davies issued a statement saying the IAAF's anti-doping commitment was "unwavering" because it had an "ethical obligation" to clean athletes.

"The credibility of our anti-doping program, and the sport of [track and field], is enhanced, not diminished, each time we are able to uncover a new case and we have the committed support of every athlete, coach or official who believes in clean sport."

IOC president Jacques Rogge said in a statement issued to AP, "I am naturally disappointed, and I would like to reiterate our zero-tolerance policy against doping.

"Clearly, the fight against doping can never be totally won, but these cases do once again show the effectiveness of the strong, sophisticated and continually evolving battle against doping in sport being waged by the International Olympic Committee and its partners in the Olympic movement."

Bubka, meanwhile, observed, "Doping and corruption are two of the biggest challenges facing the Olympic movement and we must do all we can to stay one step ahead of those who seek to threaten the purity of sport.

"The fact that there have been so many positive tests in recent weeks is a good thing. It means that anyone who is caught using banned substances is one less athlete able to compete and gain an unfair advantage."

Track's dirty day

When people ask, and they ask all the time, is track and field clean, there's only one answer. It came on a day like Sunday, when sprinter Tyson Gay, once among the poster boys for a U.S. Anti-Doping run-clean program, tested positive for a banned substance, and five Jamaicans, including gold medal-winning sprinters Asafa Powell and Sherone Simpson, also returned positive samples.

Those developments followed by just days word that the sport's governing body, which goes by the acronym IAAF, had stepped up its drug-testing program in Turkey amid reports of dozens of positive cases there, perhaps as many as 30, ahead of last month's Mediterranean Games in the city of Mersin.

Results in Turkey remain ongoing; under IAAF rules, a doping case can be announced only after a "B" sample confirms the initial positive finding of a failed "A" sample. Turkey has been hit by a rash of recent cases -- eight in June, including 2004 Olympic hammer silver medalist Esref Apak, and in May, allegations against London Olympic 1,500 meter champ Asli Cakir Alptekin and two-time European 100-meter hurdles champion Nevin Yanit.

The rash of positives Sunday comes just weeks after 2004 and 2008 200 meter Jamaican Olympic champion Veronica Campbell-Brown tested positive for a banned diuretic. Gay and Campbell-Brown are longtime friends.

Powell and Gay, to be clear, are among track and field's biggest names. For them to be busted, and on the same day, is -- there's no way around this -- a double dose of ugly news for a sport that just can't escape the perception that doping remains the fast lane to victory.

The world championships will be run next month in Moscow. Now they surely will go off under a shadow. A thread on the letsrun.com message boards proclaimed: "Admit it, we are all now waiting to see if [Usain] Bolt is positive … "

Bolt, the multiple Olympic champion, self-proclaimed "legend" and world-record holder in the 100 and 200 meters, has maintained to all skeptics that he is running clean.

As Adam Nelson put it in a Twitter post Sunday, "Drug testing detects the symptoms. We have a lot of work to do to fight the cause."

Nelson would know. He was made the 2004 Olympic shot put champ earlier this year after the guy who for nine years had won, Ukraine's Yuriy Bilonog, was finally caught. Bilonog had been doping.

Gay, 30, has run a 9.69 100 meters, the second-fasted ever -- tied with Yohan Blake, behind Bolt's 9.58.

A three-time world champion in 2007, Gay had often been plagued since by hamstring and groin problems. He came in fourth in the 100 at the London Games by one-hundredth of a second. This year, he had run the world's fastest 100, 9.75 in Des Moines at the U.S. nationals in June.

A few years ago, he was part of USADA's "My Victory" program, in which athletes pledged to complete clean. In his testimonial on that website, Gay said, "I compete clean because I really believe in fairness, and besides that, my mom would kill me! Just being honest."

He told Associated Press on Sunday that he had been notified late last week that a sample came back positive from a May 16 out-of-competition test, adding that he will have the "B" sample tested soon, possibly as early as this week. He said he had voluntarily withdrawn himself from Moscow.

It remained immediately unclear what Gay had tested positive for.

"I don't have a sabotage story," he said. "I don't have any lies. I don't have anything to say to make this seem like it was a mistake or it was on USADA's hands, someone playing games. I don't have any of those stories. I basically put my trust in someone and was let down."

Asked by AP who that was, Gay said, "I can't really say it. Sometimes a human being naturally, generally trusts somebody. That's what people do."

USA Track & Field chief executive Max Siegel said in a statement, "It is not the news anyone wanted to hear, at any time, about any athlete."

Powell, for his part, held the world record -- running a 9.74 in 2007 -- before Bolt started his assault on the mark. Powell is still the fourth-fastest man all time and holds a gold medal as part of the Jamaican 4x100 2008 relay team.

Powell has run 9.88 this year. Even so, he did not make the Jamaican team for Moscow.

He and Simpson reportedly tested positive for the stimulant oxilofrine, and Powell issued a statement in which he denied being a "cheat."

It said, "I want to be clear in saying to my family, friends and, most of all, my fans worldwide that I have never knowingly or willfully taken any supplements or substances that break any rules."