Clueless writing about our sport

[Conor Dary]

But as dj noted...this is on the USATF site. They should know better or hire people who do.

[Atticus]

Here's a situation where the headline doesn't match the story:
FEBRUARY 07, 2020
KUNZ POSTS EIGHTH BEST ALL-TIME U.S. PENTATHLON AT USATF INDOOR COMBINED EVENTS CHAMPIONSHIPS
Annie Kunz . . . set indoor lifetime bests in all five events on the way to tallying 4,610 points, making her the No. 8 all-time U.S. performer.
The story is correct regarding Kunz becoming the #8 U.S. performer, but not with the 8th-best U.S. performance. It's an all-too-common error, but this is on the USATF site.

I see your point, but totally give this writer a pass, as even many T&F-savvy writers would use the same headline.

[dj]

Here's a situation where the headline doesn't match the story:

FEBRUARY 07, 2020
KUNZ POSTS EIGHTH BEST ALL-TIME U.S. PENTATHLON AT USATF INDOOR COMBINED EVENTS CHAMPIONSHIPS
Annie Kunz . . . set indoor lifetime bests in all five events on the way to tallying 4,610 points, making her the No. 8 all-time U.S. performer.

The story is correct regarding Kunz becoming the #8 U.S. performer, but not with the 8th-best U.S. performance. It's an all-too-common error, but this is on the USATF site.

[tandfman]

How's this for clueless:

Dacres, who won his first global medal in Doha 2019, threw the discus 69.67 meters to take the top spot. The winning mark lowered the 68.84m he recorded in 2017.

https://trackalerts.com/Articles/fed...ingston/115731

I guess in Jamaica, they're so focused on sprints that it didn't occur to this writer that field event performance improvements involve raising, not lowering, the mark.

[bambam1729]

If he was West German he wouldn't even have been at the 1980 Olympics!

Really think the person who wrote that would have any clue about that?

[Trickstat]

https://sports.yahoo.com/eliud-kipch...113213376.html

"Kipchoge will try to become the first repeat Olympic marathon champion since West Germany’s Waldemar Cierpinski in 1980..."

No, he was from EAST Germany.

If he was West German he wouldn't even have been at the 1980 Olympics!

[TN1965]

https://sports.yahoo.com/eliud-kipch...113213376.html

"Kipchoge will try to become the first repeat Olympic marathon champion since West Germany’s Waldemar Cierpinski in 1980..."

No, he was from EAST Germany.

[tandfman]

Let's not get into clueless posting. :-)

[jc203]

As I recall a poster here once claimed that Zola had deliberately tripped Mary.

[Halfmiler2]

I always remember the L.A. Times headline during the 1984 Olympics: “Is Zola Guilty?” For an authoritative expert to answer the question, they interviewed an L. A. traffic cop!

[Trickstat]

This is as clueless as anything I've seen recently. It's from the Jamaica Observer, and it's really not reporting by that newspaper, but rather passing along a comment from a clueless reader, who enclosed an aerial photo of the 2017 World Championships 100m. The photo shoes Bolt's foot on the finish line, and the writer says “. . .as Usain's foot was first over the finish line he should have been named the winner. . . . Yes, Gatlin's torso was over the line first but this is a foot race, so the first foot over should be the winner”

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/...8?profile=1511

It is possible that the writer was tongue-in-cheek. In any event, the Observer played along with it nicely by concluding "The verdict is yours."

Looking at that picture it looks like Gatlin won by a short head!

[bambam1729]

Despite all those connections Sime and I had, I had never had the opportunity to meet him.

[bambam1729]

Similar to tandfman's story, I was recently contacted by a "researcher" who has determined that Dave Sime won the Rome 100 metres because he has looked at photos and he is certain he crossed the line before Armin Hary. I ended up on the phone with him as he wanted to discuss this and he was intractable. He is planning on contacting the IOC to get them to change the result. He had played golf a few times with Sime and was friendly with him, apparently. I had to tell him that I was born in the same city as Sime (Paterson, NJ), and we both went to Duke and Duke Medical School, and I still disagreed with him.

This happens from time-to-time. The worst one was this guy from Israel who is adamant that football (soccer) was played at the 1896 Olympics - it was not. He was so profane we had to block him from multiple sites. He was even threatening to the IOC. David Wallechinsky kicked him out of the International Society of Olympic Historians (ISOH), which had never happened before. The guy had serious mental issues.

[tandfman]

This is as clueless as anything I've seen recently. It's from the Jamaica Observer, and it's really not reporting by that newspaper, but rather passing along a comment from a clueless reader, who enclosed an aerial photo of the 2017 World Championships 100m. The photo shoes Bolt's foot on the finish line, and the writer says “. . .as Usain's foot was first over the finish line he should have been named the winner. . . . Yes, Gatlin's torso was over the line first but this is a foot race, so the first foot over should be the winner”

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/...8?profile=1511

It is possible that the writer was tongue-in-cheek. In any event, the Observer played along with it nicely by concluding "The verdict is yours."

[tandfman]

Here's some clueless tv commentary about our sport:

https://twitter.com/Cathal_Dennehy/s...74792482131972