Nike designs new running spikes for Asafa

[Mosiah]

FIT FOR SPEED
Nike designs new running spikes for AsafaDANIA BOGLE, Observer staff reporter bogled@jamaicaobserver.com
Tuesday, January 22, 2008


SPORTSGEAR manufacturer Nike has designed a pair of running spikes, the lightest and strongest ever made by the company, specifically for 100-metre world record holder Asafa Powell to be worn at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, in China in August.
The shoe, MVP club president Bruce James told the Observer in an exclusive interview, was prepared by Nike's technical team using an imprint of Powell's foot, taken while the athlete was on a previous visit to the company and was designed to fit his size 11 feet exactly.
Nike will refine the shoe after each meet Powell competes in during the build-up to the Olympics, and will present the athlete with the finished pair ahead of the Olympics which take place from August 8-24.
The world's fastest man, Jamaican Asafa Powell, is all smiles in this file photo. The world record-holder at 100 metres has received a new pair of specialised running spikes from sponsor and sporting goods giant Nike. Photo at left shows the previous monogrammed shoe made for the track star.
The finished shoe will also have any design and be in any colour the athlete requests.
Powell, who holds the world record of 9.74 seconds, was presented with the first prototype of the shoe by Nike in Los Angeles on the weekend where he and the fastest woman in 2006, Sherone Simpson, were among a group of athletes, including Olympic long jump champion Tatyana Lebedeva of Russia and Olympic triple jump champion, Sweden's Christian Olsson, doing a photo shoot to help promote the brand for the upcoming Olympics.
Nike has stipulated that the prototype cannot be unveiled publicly until Powell competes in his first race of the athletic season at The Queen's/Grace Jackson meet at the Stadium East this Saturday where he will compete in the 400m.
According to James, when the athlete tried the shoes, he immediately stated that he would lower his personal best 47.17 seconds in the 400m, while wearing them this weekend.

Powell, who clocked the world 100m record at a Grand Prix meeting in Rieti, Italy last September, two weeks after claiming 100m bronze at the World Championships in Osaka, Japan, is also scheduled to compete at track and field meetings in Australia in February, as well as the Penn Relays in April.
"This will give him every possible advantage an athlete can get from a spike," James told the Observer.
He said that it was a mark of Nike's confidence in the athlete, who has been signed to the brand since 2003, adding that Nike was looking forward to world record and gold medal performances from Powell in Beijing.
Nike has in the past produced specific running shoes for five-time Olympic gold medallist Michael Johnson for the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, where he clocked a world record 19.32 seconds in the 200m and claimed gold in the 400m.
Olympics and World Championships 100m silver medallist Lauryn Williams and Olympics and World Championships 4x400m gold medallist Sanya Richards are among the cadre of athletes who promote the Nike brand.

[Gamma]

funny how is NOW dem give him fast shoes AFTER him already have the world record!!!

[Hortical]

Hopefully his management team negotiated well, and him fi get at least US$500,000 fi wear and promote dem shoes.

[Don1]

Wanted: Afaster Powell

Nike tapping into one of Jamaica's best current brands.

Afaster should have them donate some regular spikes for some yaad kids.... 1000 pairs would be a good start.

Penn Relays is a MUST this year.

[Karl]

Hopefully his management team negotiated well, and him fi get at least US$500,000 fi wear and promote dem shoes.

...at least U$500,000.00?
Raise di bar, boss!

[Tilla]

Hummuch Nike signed Tiger Woods for again in 1996 when he went pro? If I can remember correctly, it was US$80 million and Woods had not yet won anything. Not that I am saying Tiger did not deserve it, as he is still my favorite golfer. I think though that Asafa's negotiating team could use that and other cases like that as a base.

[Peter R]

"Woods has not yet won anything" ?!?! em Tilla, is there another Tiger Woods we don't know about?

BTW Long time no see..happy new year.

pr

[Bricktop]

As JUSTIN GATLIN plots his return. This is the most asinine article I have ever read. Americans are something else:

Gatlin's cooperation nets him next to nothing

By Shaun Assael

When George Mitchell released his long-awaited report on performance-enhancing drugs in baseball last month, he suggested that MLB not punish the players he wrote about. After all, he said, everyone makes mistakes.

The ex-Senator didn't use the word "amnesty" in making his appeal for leniency, and for good reason. According to my dictionary, amnesty means "a period during which crimes can be admitted without prosecution." Virtually no one whose cooperation he sought talked to him. They all hid -- and if you believe Roger Clemens' trainer, Brian McNamee, are still hiding -- behind a mile-wide strike zone of silence.

In Olympic sports, we have the exact opposite problem: Too much punishment and not enough common sense. That, at least, is the impression left by the four-year ban meted out to track star Justin Gatlin on Tuesday.
Gatlin's sentence stems, in part, from a drug test he failed when he was a 19-year-old scholarship student at the University of Tennessee. With summer school midterms coming up, he took medication for attention deficit disorder, a condition he's had since he was 9 years old. Even though he stopped taking the meds three days before the junior nationals, he had enough in his system to trip a test for elevated levels of amphetamine.

At least for now, Justin Gatlin's sprint to the 2008 Summer Olympics has run into the brick wall of a suspension.With that 2001 "violation" on his record, Gatlin couldn't afford a second mistake. Yet in July 2006, he flunked a test at the Kansas Relays for elevated testosterone. The grinding machinery of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency promptly went into gear.

Gatlin's most persuasive argument as he challenges the four-year ban is that the first bust wasn't really a bust at all -- but something that would be considered a "no fault violation" under today's rules. As such, the Kansas case should be considered his first violation and subject to a two-year ban. With that math, he'd be eligible to compete in the Olympic trials in May.
Everything that's wrong with the World Anti-Doping Agency's code can be found in the tortured analysis of this argument by the 2-1 majority on the arbitration panel that handed down the decision. It goes on and on -- and on -- about how the arbitrators in the 2001 case clearly intended to show Gatlin wasn't at fault. "Mr. Gatlin neither cheated nor intended to cheat," wrote the judges, Ed Colbert and Sam Cheris.

But here's the Catch-22. Since the WADA code wasn't in effect back then, the 2001 panel didn't make an explicit "no fault" finding under the code that would let the 2007 panel discount it as a violation. You getting this? Gatlin is being punished by the WADA code for the simple fact that the WADA code wasn't in effect in 2001.Right about now, you should be imagining Lucy picking up the football on poor ol' Charlie Brown.

The arbitrators end up telling Gatlin that he should go back to the original agency that imposed the sentence -- the IAAF -- and get the no fault finding. But that's a little bit like me rooting around in the basement for an old tax return so I can file for a six-year-old deduction. Who knows how long that will take? And time isn't on Gatlin's side, which is why his lawyer, John P. Collins, is appealing to the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport, and might open up a second front in U.S. federal court.

Gatlin, who hopes to defend the 100-meter gold medal he won at the 2004 Olympics, was supposed to be the new face of American track-- the clean antidote to all the drugged-up record holders of the past, starting with Ben Johnson and ending with those conviction-crossed ex-lovers, Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery. Even the arbitrators who ruled against Gatlin concede he "seems like a complete gentlemen [sic]."

Maybe he was naïve in picking the most drug-connected coach of all time, Trevor Graham, to work with him. Or maybe he was just bowing to a perverse reality in track: It takes a dirty coach to help a clean athlete beat his or her dirty rivals. It doesn't matter. Once he tested positive a second time, he did precisely what the prosecutors from the USADA wanted: He wore a wire to gather evidence against Graham.

This is exactly the kind of behavior we're told we're supposed to applaud, and the very thing that Mitchell castigated MLB's players for not doing. Gatlin accepted the reality of his second positive finding (not precisely the same as admitting guilt, but close enough) and agreed to help IRS special agent Jeff Novitzky investigate Graham. According to the Washington Post's Amy Shipley, who broke the story, Gatlin taped his coach on at least 10 occasions.

Here's where the case gets ludicrous. Instead of holding Gatlin up as a model, the USADA's prosecutors invoked yet another rule in the endlessly flexible WADA code. This one states that a defendant's cooperation has to yield evidence of a new, undiscovered doping violation. Never mind that Gatlin's tapes will no doubt be used in an upcoming federal trial in which Graham stands accused of obstructing justice. (They've already been handed over to Graham's defense.) The USADA's general counsel, Bill Bock, argued that Gatlin didn't do enough to merit a reduction of his ban.

To their credit, Colbert and Cheris saw through that claim, arguing it is disingenuous and misplaced, since the agency was positively lazy in how it availed itself of Gatlin. "The panel finds that Mr. Gatlin has provided substantial assistance to the United States Government in investigating doping in sport," they wrote. "He immediately cooperated with the IRS without hesitation. He made undercover calls. He wore a wire, putting himself at risk. While USADA contended that Mr. Gatlin did not 'cooperate' with it in any investigations and ought not to be given credit … the record reflects that USADA never sought to avail itself of Mr. Gatlin's assistance, and that is not within Mr. Gatlin's control."Guess it's time to stop taking such long lunches, guys.

The net effect of this decision might be to discourage the very cooperation that the USADA says it wants. During his years as the agency's general counsel, Travis Tygart, who was recently promoted to CEO, helped run up a perfect 36-0 win record in arbitration cases. But as defense lawyers get better at picking apart the science of these cases, the tide might be turning. On Dec. 15, the USADA suffered its first-ever loss when an arbitration panel ruled in favor of another Beijing hopeful, sprinter LaTasha Jenkins. The panel found that a urine sample that tested positive for nandrolone in Belgium was tainted by two European labs that didn't follow international standards.
So it's little wonder the USADA is trying to turn itself into more of a law enforcement agency, relying on cops such as Novitzky to bring it cases.
"We all know that testing alone will never provide a complete solution to the problem of doping," Tygart told dailypeleton.com in an interview last year. But after the way it "rewarded" Gatlin for sticking his neck out, I'm hard-pressed to understand why any athlete would risk helping it. Collins says he's already hearing about coaches who are advising their clients to clam up.

The net effect of this decision? It makes baseball players look smart for their stonewalling.

Shaun Assael, a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine, writes extensively about doping in track and field, baseball and other sports in his new book, "Steroid Nation," available here.

[Tilla]

Happy New Year to you too sir! Yes long time no see.

On to TW. When I say he had not won anything when he was signed by Nike; remember he joined the PGA in 1996. He was signed by Nike before winning his first Master's in 1997. I think we are talking two different things here. I am thinking winning after turning pro and you are thinking winning over his entire career. Not that I do not count the amateur winnings, but if we are talking big money, it came after he turned pro.