Fastest Man in the Whatever
"Like lightning, out of nowhere, Usain Bolt is now the world's fastest man."
Bolt, a 6-foot-5 Jamaican man, ran the 100 meters in 9.72 seconds Saturday to break Asafa Powell's mark and take over as the "Fastest Man in the World."
Usain Bolt: He's fast, but is he really the world's fastest? Moreover, do we care? (Gary Hershorn -- Reuters)
It's too bad, then, that nobody cares, says Post columnist Michael Wilbon.
More specifically, the title "doesn't mean jack anymore." (How many times have you seen that term in the Washington Post?)
Thanks to widespread use of performance-enhancing drugs in sports, so much is tainted. There's nothing to suggest that Bolt did anything wrong, but we've been lied to before. How do we determine what's valid and what isn't?
Readers weigh in:
dandrbelf: To Americans, the most prestigious records in sports were most home runs in a season and most in a career. Now both are held by an obvious cheater. So, as Wilbon says, who cares anymore about either record. Or about career wins or strikeouts. All can be put within reach of average talent with the help of a syringe.
randysbailin: Sports have become corrupted because the riches are so great for the elite athletes that they have every incentive to cheat. It's kind of odd that only certain sports have had these drug scandals: bike racing, track and field, baseball. Why is there nothing coming out of the NFL, NHL or NBA? You'd have to be an idiot to not believe that these performance enhancers don't exist in those sports, where the salaries are as obscene as in MLB
Reader kjohnson3 brings up an interesting point:
kjohnson3: Maybe this is simply an indication that, as a society, we have grown beyond the need for superlatives -- fastest, strongest, best. Or maybe it says that individual accomplishment is not as important as teamwork in our increasingly polarized global world. Or maybe we just don't care.
What do you think? Are team accomplishments more important, or rather, more legitimate these days?
By Lindsay Applebaum |
June 5, 2008; 11:53 AM ET
| Category:
Cheaters
Previous: The Value of (Agent) Zero |
Next: Redskins Video Progress Report
Posted by: JonInVB | June 5, 2008 5:06 PM
The comments to this entry are closed.
"Lightning" Bolt is a phenom. Former World Junior Record holder in the 200 and has only recently started running the 100 and look what he did the other night. Americans, by and large, dont care about T&F because of people like Mike Wilbon that think they are all drugged up. The same weekend that Bolt set the WR in NYC, they had 65,000 for a meet in Germany. Want to know the hardest tickets to get for the Olympics and Olympic Trials? It's Track and Field.
Mr. Wilbon, spend a minute with Alan Webb, Ryan Hall, Keneise Bekele, Tyson Gay, Usain Bolt or a host of others and you will see how committed 99.9% of the people in T&F are to stopping the cheating. Just like any other sport, including your precious NBA!