Sunday, September 28, 2008

Gebrselassie breaks marathon world record

Haile Gebrselassie broke his own marathon world record today, becoming the first runner to finish under 2 hours, 4 minutes.

The Ethiopian clocked 2:03:59 to win his third straight Berlin Marathon, beating the mark of 2:04:26 he set last year over the same flat course. He also became the first runner to win the race three times.

The Ethiopian chose to skip the Olympic marathon in Beijing because of the city's pollution. However, he finished sixth in the 10,000 meters, a race he won in Atlanta 1996 and Sydney 2000.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

why are men faster than women?

Women are slower than men in running, in swimming, in cycling. Whether it is a 100-meter race on the track or a marathon, a 200-meter butterfly swim or a 10-kilometer marathon swim, the pattern holds.

And even though some scientists once predicted that women would eventually close the gender gap in elite performances — it was proposed that all they needed was more experience, better training and stronger coaching — that idea is now largely discredited, at least for Olympic events. Researchers say there is no one physiological reason for the gap, although there is a common biological thread.

“To a large extent, it’s a matter of testosterone,” said Dr. Benjamin Levine, director of the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine at Presbyterian Hospital and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. “That’s why systematic doping of women is even more effective than systematic doping of men. That’s why the East German women were so much more successful than the East German men.”

The hormone affects everything from muscle size and strength to the size of the heart to the amount of oxygen-carrying blood cells in the body to the percentage of fat on an athlete’s body. Every one of those effects gives men a performance advantage.

Testosterone, Levine said, gives men what he calls a bigger and better-fueled engine. Their skeletal muscles, which do the work during exercise, are bigger. And their hearts, which provide fuel for the work, are bigger, too.

Sunday, September 07, 2008

Don Haskins

EL PASO, Texas — Hall of Fame basketball coach Don Haskins, credited with helping break color barriers in college sports in 1966 when he used five black starters to win a national championship for what was then Texas Western, died today, Texas-El Paso officials said.

UTEP spokesman Jeff Darby said Haskins, who was 78, died Sunday afternoon. He had no other details.

Haskins was an old-time coach who believed in hard work and was known for his gruff demeanor.

That attitude was portrayed in the 2006 movie "Glory Road," the Disney film that chronicled Haskins' improbable rise to national fame in the 1966 championship game against Kentucky. The movie, which was preceded by a book of the same title, also sparked renewed interest in Haskins' hall of fame career.