Clueless writing about our sport

[shivfan]

On the front page....

"Fingers have been pointed and accusations made at the world’s sprinting powerhouse but some 5,000 miles away and some 20 degrees cooler, Jamaica’s athletes will make their first international bow of the season in the Midlands."

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/gene ... 29877.html

Every time I read an article in the British press about Jamaican athletics, it's riddled with inaccuracies....

This is NOT "the first international bow of the season" for Jamaica's athletes. For example, Aleen Bailey and Andrea Bliss have been running in Dusseldorf and Karlsruhe before this meet, and when I last checked, they were Jamaican....
:roll:

[dukehjsteve]

It is not incorrect, just a bit weird... today's Indianapolis Star has a small squib about the new PV record, and reports that the new record broke the old one by "one-hundreth of a meter."

And while I am here I will give a kudo to local Star writer David Woods. Whenever he reports Track results he does it with knowledge and accuracy.

[Master Po]

^^ It does sound odd -- like saying, "G. Dibaba broke the previous 2-mile record* by about one-tenth of a minute."

*yes, I know -- "best," not "record."

[pakillo]

From the article on the front page: "NASSAU, Bahamas (CMC):With less than 100 days to go before the staging of the inaugural International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF)..."
Is it really that hard to know what does IAAF stand for?

[Alan Shank]

On Let's Run, "On February 1, Dibaba smashed Abebe Aregawi‘s 3:57.91 world record by running 3:55.17. On February 6th, she took down Meseret Defar’s 3,000 world record of 8:23.72 by running 8:16.90."

Well, Aregawi ran that 3:57.91, AFTER, "Baby Baby's" 3:55, and BB' 3000 was 8:16.60.
Cheers,
Alan Shank
Woodland, CA

[berkeley]

Here's another clanger:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news ... mpionships
Either he doesn't know what a meter is, or he doesn't know what a pole is.

[Marlow]

Here's another clanger:
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news ... mpionships
Either he doesn't know what a meter is, or he doesn't know what a pole is.

To wit:
"The Frenchman, who set the new world mark of 2.16 metres in Donetsk on Saturday, later opened a wound on the inside of his left ankle after falling back while attempting to clear 2.21 metres."

I see that all the time - there's no common sense filter applied. When my daughter won the Florida State (HS) PV title as a freshman in 1997, and people would ask me how high she jumped, I would sometimes say "5 feet" and other times "16 feet" (it was 10 feet) and the response was always the same - "Oh, that's great!" :roll:

[Alan Shank]

From an article linked to from the front page:

"Former Olympic and World 800m champion Janeth Jepkosgei was among athletes who turned up for Athletics Kenya selection of probables for the IAAF World Relays at Kenya Prisons grounds, Lang’ata, on Saturday."

Last I heard, Jepkosgei had never been Olympic 800m champion, although she did win a silver medal in 2008, behind Pamela Jelimo.

Where do they get these guys?
Cheers,
Alan Shank
Woodland, CA

[tandfman]

Not really about track, but this caught my eye this morning:

http://www.universityherald.com/article ... ate-ad.htm

Both the headline and the story (3rd paragraph) refer to the University of Pennsylvania as Penn State. They are, of course, two entirely different schools.

[tandfman]

This one is a prize:

Experts from Mondo in Canada are expected to arrive at Eldoret’s Kipchoge Stadium in two weeks’ time to lay a tartan track.

http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/sports/a ... -stadium#/

I don't think they make Tartan tracks anymore. But if they did, they would not be laid by Mondo, which makes a competing brand of all-weather track.