When bidding to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, Rio de Jaineiro promised the International Olympics Committee that it would eliminate 80 percent of the sewage found in the city’s notoriously filthy water, and would fully regenerate the lagoon in which rowing and kayaking events will be held. Now a few months from the…

A day before Sunday’s Los Angeles Marathon, USATF held the Trials for the U.S. Olympic marathon team, with 105 male qualifiers looking to book their trips to Rio. At the end of the day—closer to the end than the beginning, but that’s cool—was Chris Barnicle, solidly in 105th place.

Nikita Kamayev, the former head of the Russian anti-doping agency RUSADA, died on Monday at the age of 52. “Presumably, the cause of death was a massive heart attack,” wrote RUSADA in a press release.

The Olympic Marathon Trials have been tried and decided. By finishing in the top three, your 2016 Olympic marathoners are Galen Rupp, Meb Keflezighi and Jared Ward on the men’s side, and Amy Cragg, Des Linden, and Shalane Flanagan on the women’s. Should one of those Mister or Miss Americas be unable or unwilling to…

I had just dragged ass into the JW Marriott in downtown Los Angeles—race headquarters for the Olympic Marathon Trials—and got in the elevator with Des Linden. She is one of, if not the, favorites in today’s race to determine the Rio team. Linden came up to my shoulder, the size of many 10-year-olds, but thinner, and…

The New Yorker has a nice profile of Kevin Castille, who will compete in this weekend’s Olympic Marathon Trials as the oldest ever men’s qualifier. Castille’s success at 43 might be because of the low mileage on his legs: he spent most of his 20s selling crack cocaine, and then in jail.

It’s not the thought that counts; it’s the thought plus some small-denomination greenbacks. Boulder-based Roll Recovery (they make those rolling muscle massagers) really dig runners, and running. On February 5, the small company announced they would reimburse all Olympic Marathon Trials qualifiers the $30 entry fee…

In 1993, the Chinese women’s track team ran crazy; they set insane world records, times so fast, over such a range of distances with almost no recovery in between that, well, they were widely believed to be dirty. The women themselves admitted doping in 1995, but we’re just seeing the evidence now. The South China…

This weekend, Femke Van den Driessche, a 19-year-old Belgian cyclocross racer, lined up at the U-23 World Championships. She’d previously won the Euros and the Belgian championships, and she was the favorite to get herself a set of rainbow stripes. But she had a bad race, and was forced to exit with a broken chain one…

Of the 259 women and 217 men who qualified for the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials, only about 10 in each field have an honest chance at finishing in the top three and going to Rio. But hundreds or even thousands more arranged the past four years of their lives around running a marathon or half-marathon fast enough to…

January 14th occasioned anticipation on the order of the Second Coming for track fans and athletes. Indeed, it was the second revelation (press conference) of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s independent investigative commission, headed by former WADA director Dick Pound.

Executives of the International Association of Athletics Federations—world track and field’s governing body—“could not have been unaware of the extent of doping” among Russian athletes nor “the level of nepotism that operated” within the organization, according to a report released Thursday by the World Anti-Doping…

Late last year, the World Anti-Doping Agency released a bombshell report detailing all manner of doping, bribing, and cover-ups by Russian track and field athletes, the Russian federation, and the Russian government. Russia received an indefinite ban from track and field for their wrongdoing, and could miss the 2016…

Stephan Shay has de rigueur facial hair. He can be found in Southern California coffee shops, sometimes wearing a beanie. He’s tan. He’s fit. He wakes up to the sound of waves playing on southern California sand, and takes road trips up and down the coast.

The real problem in track and field might not be the endemic corruption, but defeatism, the feeling that everybody’s in on it—administrators, coaches, athletes, watchdogs. The feeling that the problem is just too big to solve. There’s a nagging sense that telling the Russian federation it’s not okay to dope, and…

Canadian sprinter and USC student Andre De Grasse signed a pro contract with Puma recently. There are two reasons this is big screaming news in track and field: One is that the contract is for a stratospheric amount of money, compensation of the sort top NBA picks are accustomed to but track athletes imagine they’re…

It has come to track and field athletes’ attention that during all those gutting workouts, dark-thirty in the morning, when the rent was due and cupboards bare, and it seemed like no one had their back—they were right. No one had their back. While they were pounding out repeat 1000s, the organizations in charge of the…

Back in July, when in Sebastian Coe’s telling he was as pure and innocent as a spring lamb in the #2 spot at the International Association of Athletics Federations, he was in fact mulling over whether “we” in the West (meaning the US and Europe, maybe Canada, but definitely not Mexico) were being too hasty in our…

As I understand it, a Bulgarian farm worker grabbed Andrew Siess’s nuts with his left hand while holding a gun in his right hand. He wasn’t pointing the gun at Siess, mind you, just holding it. Siess pushed him away, but the Bulgarian guy—speaking the international language of aggression—again grabbed the low-hanging…