Mark Lewis-Francis still aiming high

Former Olympic 100 metres relay champion Mark Lewis-Francis is adamant his best years are still ahead of him – and insists he never even contemplated retirement when his lottery funding was withdrawn by UK Athletics. The 27-year-old, a member of Great Britain’s gold medal-winning quartet in Athens in 2004, saw his funding taken away last…

Runner's Tribe: 2009 Men's NCAA XC Preview:

All you can ask for as a fan is a competitive race. Team titles decided by battles from the first man to the fifth. Some years, though, one team is so stacked that while you hope for a battle, but you don’t really expect to see one. This NCAA Cross Country season, that team was…

BOLT – Man of the year – Lightning strikes twice

Lightning seems to strike twice in many ways for Usain Bolt. Breaking the 100m world record at a major championship, the Olympics in Beijing, China, in 2008, and doing the same a year later in 2009 at the World Championships in Berlin, Germany. Check. Decimating the 200m world record in Beijing in 2008 and repeating…

S. African ministry: Semenya to keep gold medal

JOHANNESBURG — South African runner Caster Semenya will keep her 800-meter gold medal from the world championships, and the results of her gender tests will be kept confidential, the South African sports ministry said Thursday. The ministry also said in a statement that the International Association of Athletics Federations has agreed to allow the 18-year-old…

Ramzi stripped of Olympic gold medal

DONETSK — Bahrain’s Olympic 1,500 meters champion Rashid Ramzi has been stripped of his gold medal for doping at the Beijing 2008 Games, a source within the Olympic movement said on Wednesday. “Ramzi has been stripped of his gold medal,” the source told Reuters. Moroccan-born Ramzi’s positive test for the banned blood-booster CERA was announced…

IAAF Cross Country season begins and ends in Portugal

The series of 12 individual meetings which make up the calendar of IAAF Cross Country Permit Series 2009/10 begin next weekend in Oeiras, Portugal, on Saturday 21 November 2009. The Permit series concludes in Albufeira, Portugal on Sunday 7 March 2010, and the season as a whole will culminate three weeks later at the 38th…

Australia's Josh Ross announces retirement from athletics

Australian five-time national 100m champion and member of the Australian Flame Josh ‘The Boss’ Ross has announced his retirement from athletics, effective immediately. Bursting onto the track and field scene with his win in the Stawell Gift in 2003, Ross was ranked No. 6 on the all-time list after less than a year in competitive…

Semenya's lawyer says she was tricked into interview with British paper

LONDON — Caster Semenya’s lawyers say she was tricked into speaking to a reporter at The Guardian for a story in the British newspaper. The 18-year-old South African runner, who won the 800-meter world championship title in August but had her accomplishment overshadowed by gender-test revelations, was quoted throughout in excerpts Friday and the full…

Dwain Chambers upbeat for 2010

Dwain Chambers remains full of enthusiasm for the forthcoming athletics season despite continued restrictions on where he can compete. The 31-year-old Londoner, who served a two-year suspension after testing positive for the designer steroid THG in August 2003, is remaining upbeat but again faces a slender competition schedule in 2010 due to a ban imposed…

Liu shines at Asian Games

GUANGZHOU: The Asian Athletics Championships appear little more than a training run in the grander scheme of star hurdler Liu Xiang’s comeback to competition. The former world and Olympic champion cruised into the final yesterday morning in this southern city with a pedestrian time of 13.82 seconds. That is far off his former world record…

Lauryn Williams welcomes the opportunity to train in Jamaica

KINGSTON: American former World 100m champion Lauryn Williams, says she would train in Jamaica if given the chance. Williams, who won the women’s 100m title at the IAAF World Championships in Helsinki, Finland in 2005, said she would be glad to take advantage of any opportunities in Jamaica. “If someone extend the invitation and the…

Asafa Powell Foundation launched

KINGSTON: The Port Antonio suite of the Pegasus Hotel on Tuesday evening provided the backdrop for former world record holder, Asafa Powell, to launch his track and field support initiative, the Asafa Powell Foundation, with the theme ‘’Preparing today’s athletes to be tomorrow’s champions’’. With a wide cross section of the local track and field…