Olympic Sports

Justin Gatlin's reign as the World's Fastest Man lasted five days.

Instead now he can say he is one of the World's Two Fastest Men.

Gatlin rocked the track world on May 12 when he ran the 100 meters in an apparent world record time of 9.76.

But after reviewing the race results, track and field's governing body, the IAAF, shocked the track world five days later when it said that Gatlin's time was actually 9.77, not 9.76. So instead of a world record, Gatlin gets to share the mark with Asafa Powell, who ran 9.77 last year.

Stop the presses. World records fell Friday in track and field and swimming.

Defending Olympic champion Justin Gatlin set a world record in track's most prestigious event, the 100-meter dash, posting a blistering time of 9.76 at the Qatar Grand Prix meet in Doha, Qatar. Gatlin's mark edged the record of 9.77 that Asafa Powell of Jamaica set last June.

At the French national swimming championships, Laure Manaudou broke Janet Evans' world record in the 400-meter freestyle. Evans' mark had stood for 18 years, which is an eternity in swimming.

Less than four years ago, I thought Tim Montgomery was the man.

Now he's getting hammered by the man.

The former world record holder in the 100-meter dash was arrested Friday in Norfolk, Va., on bank fraud and money laundering charges

This comes on the heels of Montgomery being banned from track for two years for doping violations. Montgomery's world record of 9.78 seconds from 2002 was also wiped from the books.

Step by laborious step, I ran along a two-lane trail Sunday for nearly 4.5 miles through the Northern Virginia suburbs. Ran is a subjective term. "Some" would say I plodded. "Some" would have been right.

"This is fun, this is necessary, this is fun, this is necessary," I thought as my feet ached and my breath labored. I like to call myself a runner, but these days, my "running" pace has slowed to ponderous jog. In the time it took me to finish my 4.5-mile course, the Boston Marathon winners probably would have finished seven miles or more.

I just finished my last story for the Scripps Howard wire and this is my last blog entry — provided we don’t get stranded.

In less than 12 hours, we are supposed to have a bus arrive at 5 AM Monday to take us to the Milan airport. My plane is scheduled to leave at 10:20 AM and land at Washington Dulles airport at 2:10 PM.

I am optimistic, but not holding my breath.

Covering the Olympics always requires adjusting and readjusting your plans, so it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if we have another wrinkle or two to smooth out Monday.

That’s alright. We can work it out. By this point, I’m so flexible I feel like I could do the Biellmann.

I have left the Alps and made it to Turin. But I almost got stranded in a forest.

I was the only reporter on the bus from Cesana Torinese to Oulx this morning. At the Oulx transportation hub I was going to switch to a bus headed to the Main Press Center in Turin. But the bus driver didn’t know that. Nor did he seem to care when he got off the highway and started heading away from the transportation hub.

“No, no, you need to go left to get to the hub,”? I said.

“No, I go over there,”? he said in broken English, pointing to a far-off parking lot filled with buses. “You walk through woods.”?

After covering the men’s four-man bobsled final Saturday night, I experienced the joys and woes of communication.

As I was waiting with three journalists for a table at La Cabassa in Cesana Torinese, I met the mother of U.S. bobsled driver Steve Holcomb, who competed in his first Olympics here. I asked if he would be joining her for dinner, and she said no, that she wouldn’t get to see him until Sunday morning.

So I shared with her what Steve had told me after the race. He said that he was thrilled to finish 6th, and mentioned that his coach, Brian Shimer who won a bronze at the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics, had told him he had finished 7th in his first Olympics in 1988.

For enterprising Italians, the Olympics have been a lucrative moneymaking venture. But I am stunned by all of the missed business opportunities.

We’ll be working in the mountains covering events Saturday night, and we may not make it back to Cesana Torinese until nearly 11 pm. I tried to make a late-night reservation at our favorite pizza place in town. They are closing at 11 pm.

In Cesana Torinese the four or five restaurants are packed every night and turn people away. Yet, one restaurant has been closed for the entire Olympics.

I had hoped to mail several work-related materials like reporter’s notebooks, media kits and the like back to my office rather than pack them in my overstuffed suitcase. But the private shipping company’s office in the Main Press Center is closed on Sunday, the last day of the Olympics.

The gelato. The gelato. The gelato.

You can’t go to Italy and not try the gelato.

OK. OK. OK. I get it.

I’m not the biggest ice cream fan so I didn’t understand the urgency of trying the gelato. But with my time in Italy winding down — less than 48 hours now - I finally succumbed to gelato-fever.

I stepped into the Gelateria Artigianale in Cesana Torinese around noon on Saturday and ordered a medium chocolate gelato cone for 1.50 Euros. The proprietor gave me a sugar cone filled with a massive chunk of chocolate that spilled over the side.

I grabbed a huge wad of napkins, knowing that there was no way I would be able to finish the cone without making a gooey mess.

Nielsend@shns.com

While I've been working in the Alps, my e-mail address has been my lifeline to my family in Virginia, Illinois and Kansas, my friends around the world, and my editor in Turin.

We send our stories via e-mail.

We receive updates from the U.S. Olympic Committee and International Olympic Committee via e-mail.

We get pictures and news from family and friends via e-mail.

Of course, e-mail has only been used at the Olympics for the past 10 years or so. Reporters survived and thrived for decades without it. Now it's unimaginable to be without it.

This is the first Olympics to utilize Wifi wireless technology to access the Internet. Less than two years ago in Athens we needed to hook up to a phone.