Column: Jones is the Bonds of track

[bad hammy]

But these guys don't talk about the survival of baseball, football, and other profesional sports where the use of PED is much more prevalent.

Forgetting baseball for a minute, where the use of PEDs is at least talked about, what about football or basketball?? They are skating along with hardly a word in the press about PEDs, yet these athletes are so obviously PEDded to the gills that they make T&F and baseball athletes look like little girls.

[Daisy]

The fact is that the people who impair the health of the sport these days are the writers like Mr. Dahlberg, not athletes like Marion Jones.

If you think Dahlberg is bad read this one. He is just plain gloating and vindictive. You get the impresion he can't wait for track and field to disappear.
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/spo ... is_it.html

Hundreds of people, at most, may have been watching the WCSN.com webcast of Gatlin's race in Qatar, since track and field has become such a niche sport U.S. viewers even had to turn to the Internet for last year's world championships.

That would be the sound of a dying sport.

[gh]

Hersh actually likes track, and is pretty knowledgeable. It's always easier to write a column trashing something than to praise it of course, but in addition to that, I'm sensing there must be pressure from big city editors, who in this day and age seem to prefer dirt over everything else. There was a Pre meet, must be almost 10 years back now, where the fields were as awesome as always, and New York and CHicago papers were in evidence, as was SI. I was impressed! Until the meet started and none of them gave a shit and were all there just hoping to be able to track down the recently disgraced Mary Slaney for another in a long line of drug stories.

[MJD]

Was he on darkwing?

[gh]

I'm thinking he probably was.

[kling]

I honestly thought when I read the message topic thast it was a reference to James Bond..... my bad

[unclezadok]

Let's say that at some point in the future all use of performance enhancing drugs is successfully banished from track and field. I have no doubt that 50 years after that, sportswriters will still be writing drug stories. They love writing that stuff. They don't like track and field and have no idea what it's all about, but they can always sell drug stories.