9781422284292

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TRACK AND FIELD’S GREATEST MOMENTS In the United States, the sport of track and field barely registers on the public radar, other than every four years when the Summer Olympic Games roll around. It is true that every generation has its recognizable names in the sport: Jesse Owens, Bruce Jenner, Carl Lewis, Florence Griffith, Jackie Joyner, Mary Decker, and Michael Johnson. In the 1980s, Mary Decker was on the cover of the venerable sports publication Sports Illustrated three times in a four-year span. An American track and field athlete has not been featured on the cover in this century. Among all track and field athletes, only the world’s fastest man, Jamaican Usain Bolt, has managed to make the cover since 2000, and he had to run faster than anyone in history to be noticed. Justin Gatlin might have the most name recognition in U.S. track and field, but not all of it is positive. He served a four-year drug-related suspension in 2006. The prevalence of illegal drug use has tainted the sport in the eyes of many would-be fans. Nonetheless, there have been plenty of successes to write about and cover, but most Americans would have no idea who Ashton Eaton, Aries Merritt, Christian Taylor, Sanya Richards, Dawn Harper, or Jenn Suhr are. All won individual Olympic gold medals for the United States this century, and four of the six set world records. America is still competitive in track and field, but the mainstream public sports interest in the country is dominated by football, baseball, and basketball. In Europe, however, Eaton is a household name, and Taylor and Merritt are stars that fans of athletics (as the sport is called there) pay to watch. In a newspaper interview in 2012, Jenner said, “You have to admit, we’ve gone up against the marketing machine of football, basketball, and baseball, multibillion-dollar budgets, and in golf, you had a superstar with Tiger (Woods) that has really brought the sport back. We need to find a couple of those kinds of superstars with great personalities, too.” Whether or not the sport can make a comeback in the future remains to be seen, but the stars will keep on running, jumping, and throwing, creating the greatest moments track and field has ever seen.

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