Christian Coleman, and recasting the media narrative

Christian Coleman, and recasting the media narrative

DOHA, Qatar — The day after 23-year-old Christian Coleman became The Man, king of the 100 meters, the biggest deal in track and field, he was still the same guy he had been, always was, a grounded and sensible young man from a great American family.

As he made the rounds Sunday at the Team USA hotel, this was the Coleman ‘entourage’: his mom, Daphne, who holds a Ph.D. in education and is an instructional coach in the Atlanta schools; his dad, Seth, who is the media relations manager for the Atlanta public school system; an agent; and a manager. 

Where was the wacky scene so long associated with Usain Bolt? Where was the commotion? Where was — all of that?

People, don’t misunderstand. 

Christian Coleman is not Bolt, and the time has come for everyone to understand that is a good thing. 

The time is also now for everyone to understand that Coleman has been nothing but a good dude, and that the media narrative that has enveloped him to a significant degree over the past several weeks — totally unfairly — needs to be recast, particularly because Coleman’s victory Saturday at these IAAF 2019 championships arguably makes him the face of track and field heading into the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics.

Christian Coleman has something to prove -- and proves it, in 9.76 seconds

Christian Coleman has something to prove -- and proves it, in 9.76 seconds

DOHA, Qatar — There really wasn’t any doubt Saturday who was going to win the men’s 100 meters at these IAAF world championships.

Christian Coleman was it, in a runaway.

The only question, especially after Coleman came out blazing sub-10 in the prelims and went sub 9.9 in the semis and in that race ran hard for only 85 meters, was in what time and by how much.

Coleman, who burst onto the scene two years ago with a world championships 100 silver, dominated the late Saturday night final. He literally did run away with it, in 9.76 seconds, fastest in the world in 2019. It was his personal best time and the sixth-fastest in history.

Justin Gatlin, the London 2017 gold medalist, the man who dethroned Jamaica’s Usain Bolt in Bolt’s final championship 100, scraped into Friday’s final after coming in third in his semifinal. Incredibly, he then took second in the championship run, in 9.89. Andre DeGrasse of Canada got third, in a personal best 9.90.

Four more years for Coe, and first female VP in 107 years

Four more years for Coe, and first female VP in 107 years

DOHA, Qatar — So much to unpack from two hours of voting here Wednesday at the IAAF congress, so let’s get to it:

1. Seb Coe was unanimously re-elected as president. He gets four more years.

In 2015, Coe ran a tough race against Sergey Bubka of Ukraine. This time, Coe ran unopposed. 

He got 203 votes, out of 203.

This was a secret ballot. So for any of you who thought there might be even a single dissenter in a world body that over Coe’s first four-year term has seen multiple controversies — among them, the Russian doping matter and a legal dispute over differences of sexual development personified by the South African 800-meter champion Caster Semenya — think again.

Breaking: the stuff other Olympic sports wish they had

Breaking: the stuff other Olympic sports wish they had

BUDAPEST — Nine years ago in Vancouver, Yuna Kim performed the most ethereal, languid, beautiful free skate imaginable. To George Gershwin’s Concerto in F, she seemed to float above the ice, languid, beautiful, an artist expressing herself physically the way the greatest of the great painters, sculptors, architects and others have revealed their genius in art that moves the soul.

Ladies and gentlemen, we bring you breakdancing, or in Olympic jargon, breaking, the Summer Games heir to the very thing Yuna Kim did so elegantly at the Winter Games, on full display here Friday and Saturday at these inaugural World Urban Games, bound for the global spotlight at the Paris 2024 Olympics, and yo, feel the jam, people. 

Yuna Kim danced. It was just on ice.

What do you think this is?

Get over yourself if you don’t think otherwise.

No argument: Budapest as "beautiful, wonderful" global sport capital

No argument: Budapest as "beautiful, wonderful" global sport capital

BUDAPEST — Journalists are incessant what-ifers and how-abouters. And here was Balázs Fürjes, who oversaw the Budapest bid for the 2024 Summer Games and is an increasingly influential and important personality in the Olympic movement, briefing a bunch of journalists on a spectacularly sunny  Friday as the first events of the World Urban Games got underway.

The topic: Budapest as — like Fürjes — increasingly influential and important player in the Olympic scene.

Consider: 2017 FINA swim championships, widely acknowledged as best-ever. Coming up for sure: 2023 IAAF track and field championships. 2027 FINA champs, again. Keen interest in: 2025 FIG gymnastics championships. Along with so much more, including this inaugural edition of WUG, with roughly 300 athletes from 48 nations across five continents.

All in one go: sport, music, art, street culture, and finally

All in one go: sport, music, art, street culture, and finally

BUDAPEST — As ever, the International Olympic Committee speaks in code, and though this very first edition of the World Urban Games is not — repeat, not — an IOC event, you’d have to maybe be one of those people who doesn’t understand why breakdancing is the next big Olympic thing to see that the IOC believes WUG is an idea whose time is, like, now.

Also, that Budapest is a very cool city and, beyond that, that they have proven here to be super-responsible and trustworthy and get stuff done, even — especially — on short notice, which tells you they’re people you want to work with, and, you know, hmm.

Coleman case out because USADA doesn't do basic it demands of athletes: know the rules

Coleman case out because USADA doesn't do basic it demands of athletes: know the rules

It boggles the mind, truly, that the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency proved so inept, or something, that it moved Monday to announce it had “withdrawn” action against the world’s No. 1 sprinter, Christian Coleman. 

Was its official conduct negligent or more —was it reckless? Why the aggressive advocacy bordering — in recent months increasingly typical of the agency — on religious-style zealotry? Why the arrogance? 

How — seriously, how — could USADA not understand the rules? 

USADA’s basic mission, fundamentally before all else, is to understand the very rules that it says, time and again, over and over, that athletes must internalize, or else. 

And yet — because of USADA’s inability to understand the “whereabouts rules,” it very publicly brought a case against Coleman and, on Monday, embarrassingly — let’s be clear, embarrassingly, shamefully — dropped it.

Someone owes someone something, and before the very serious topic of money damages gets addressed, and that is a legitimate topic for discussion, because these past few weeks have been the height of the European professional track circuit, what there should be first is a very public apology, because — this was wrong.

Very, very wrong.

After Dayton and El Paso: guns must get out of the Games

After Dayton and El Paso: guns must get out of the Games

I was born and grew up in Dayton, Ohio, where nine people were killed and more than two dozen hurt  when a gunman with a military-style weapon opened fire over the weekend at a bar.

That attack came just hours after a gunman with an assault weapon killed 22 people at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.

That’s 31 people killed in a space of 13 hours — 31 innocent lives, their hopes and dreams gone forever — because of gun violence.

This has to stop. 

Shooting needs to be off the Olympic program. The guns need to go.

To the emotional rescue of a twilight zone swim championships

To the emotional rescue of a twilight zone swim championships

GWANGJU, South Korea — If ever there was an event that suffered from an Olympic hangover, these 18th FINA world aquatics championships would be right up there on the list of leading candidates. Indeed, a longtime FINA official said, these were the championsihps from the twilight zone.

Some 18 months after the hugely successful — and bitterly cold — PyeongChang Olympics over in South Korea’s northeastern mountains, the action shifted to this nation’s southwest, and Gwangju, into the heat and humidity and, as it turned out, virtually non-stop rain. Strike that. These championships went down to the percussive beat of seemingly endless thunderstorms. There was lightning, too, as immediately before the women’s water polo final, won by the United States over Spain.

They tried to sell this event as a peacemaker: “Dive into Peace,” read the white-on-turquoise slogans plastered all over the venues and, indeed, around town, a nod not just to events on the peninsula but, as virtually everyone in South Korea knows, the events of May 1980, when a democracy uprising climaxed in a bloody battle between the military and locals, the victims now honored in an expansive national cemetery near town.

Instead of peace, however, a balcony in a packed nightclub near the athletes village collapsed early on the morning of July 27, killing two Koreans and injuring at least nine athletes, including four American water polo players.

Meanwhile, inside the venues, athletes from Australia and Britain staged medals-stand protests, purportedly over doping matters tied to the Chinese swimmer Sun Yang. Attendance proved spotty at best; it would be charitable to say there were even hundreds of people on some days at the diving events that opened the meet’s 17-day run. Even the internet — and South Korea is known for its robust internet — didn’t work, and why?

It was thus left to Katie Ledecky, on the meet’s next-to-last night, to provide the emotional rescue — the stuff, the inspiration — that, truly, makes Olympic sport different from everything else. 

Essentially, Ledecky all but saved these championships.

Caeleb Dressel and the ridonculous hype machine

Caeleb Dressel and the ridonculous hype machine

GWANGJU, South Korea — As our gaze turns inexorably toward the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, you could feel here Saturday night at the 2019 FINA swim championships the red, white and blue hype machine kick-starting Saturday into full-on gear, the jet fuel pouring into hot engines already burning orange, ready to zoom to white hot, the Caeleb Dressel rocket about to blast off soon enough like a Saturn V, epic, enormous, ridoncolous in every regard.

You might even say — Phelpsian.

The problem with the comparisons that surely will be drawn between now and next July 24, when the Tokyo Olympics get underway, is elemental.

Caeleb Dressel can break — has broken — Michael Phelps’ race records. Here, for instance, he smashed one of Phelps’ singular achievements, 49.82 seconds in the 100-meter butterfly. Dressel went 49.5. In the semifinals, for goodness sake. 

That is hype-worthy. No doubt. But for all the hype, each and every bit of it, Caeleb Dressel has a math problem. Six is not eight. Seven is not eight. It’s that problematic.