{"id":323,"date":"2012-08-09T14:15:23","date_gmt":"2012-08-09T21:15:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.boopidy.com\/aj\/blog\/?p=323"},"modified":"2012-08-10T19:15:45","modified_gmt":"2012-08-11T02:15:45","slug":"someone-worth-rooting-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.boopidy.com\/aj\/blog\/2012\/08\/09\/someone-worth-rooting-for\/","title":{"rendered":"Someone Worth Rooting For"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My pick for most heartbreaking performance of the Olympics: Tyson Gay in the men&#8217;s 100m.<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s one of the very few elite sprinters who doesn&#8217;t have a gigantic ego (just look up any of his interviews on YouTube). He seems like a genuinely nice, humble guy.<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s a former World champion and oh yeah,\u00c2\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.alltime-athletics.com\/m_100ok.htm\">the second faster man ever<\/a>, after Usain Bolt.<\/p>\n<p>Despite his speed, he didn&#8217;t win any medals at the 2008 Olympics. He injured his hamstring at trials and didn&#8217;t make it the Olympic 100m finals, and the US 4&#215;100 team (of which he was a part) botched the relay handoff and didn&#8217;t medal there either.<\/p>\n<p>This time around, he was 29, in his last years as a elite sprinter.\u00c2\u00a0All he wanted was a medal:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ns9MkQ6qm7I\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>But he didn&#8217;t get one.\u00c2\u00a0He ran the <em>fifth fastest time in Olympic history<\/em> &#8212; and yet finished fourth in this race.\u00c2\u00a0By one-hundredth of a second.<\/p>\n<p>And the third place guy, Justin Gatlin, was previously banned for four years for drug use.\u00c2\u00a0Gay\u00c2\u00a0has never been implicated in any drug usage.<\/p>\n<p>It was terrible to see him sobbing after it was over.<\/p>\n<p>One of his tweets after the race: &#8220;Thanks to my fans &amp; family\u00c2\u00a0<a dir=\"ltr\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/omegawatches\" target=\"_blank\"><s>@<\/s><strong>omegawatches<\/strong><\/a>\u00c2\u00a0<a dir=\"ltr\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/EASBrand\" target=\"_blank\"><s>@<\/s><strong>EASBrand<\/strong><\/a><wbr>\u00c2\u00a0<a dir=\"ltr\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Gillette\" target=\"_blank\"><s>@<\/s><strong>Gillette<\/strong><\/a>and\u00c2\u00a0<a dir=\"ltr\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/centurycouncil\" target=\"_blank\"><s>@<\/s><strong>centurycouncil<\/strong><\/a>\u00c2\u00a0<wbr>for all the support sorry for letting you all down.&#8221; Poor dude.<\/wbr><\/wbr><\/p>\n<p>In the aftermath, it&#8217;s things like this that are the most telling:<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sbnation.com\/london-olympics-2012\/2012\/8\/6\/3223166\/usain-bolt-100-meters-intros\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.sbnation.com\/<wbr>london-olympics-2012\/2012\/8\/6\/<wbr>3223166\/usain-bolt-100-meters-<wbr>intros<\/wbr><\/wbr><\/wbr><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A funny page, and I have to admit Bolt&#8217;s routine was hilarious. But look at how nervous\u00c2\u00a0Gay was. You can tell how much was riding on this race for him.<\/p>\n<p>There is a potential silver (gold?) lining: the 4&#215;100 relay. The US men are still in it, and with Powell injured, there&#8217;s a chance they could beat Jamaica. Go Tyson!<\/p>\n<p>More info here:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/espn.go.com\/olympics\/summer\/2012\/trackandfield\/story\/_\/id\/8237440\/2012-summer-olympics-heartbreaking-finish-tyson-gay\">http:\/\/espn.go.com\/olympics\/summer\/2012\/trackandfield\/story\/_\/id\/8237440\/2012-summer-olympics-heartbreaking-finish-tyson-gay<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/gulfnews.com\/in-focus\/olympics\/gay-finding-it-hard-to-accept-games-failure-1.1059993\">http:\/\/gulfnews.com\/in-focus\/olympics\/gay-finding-it-hard-to-accept-games-failure-1.1059993<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My pick for most heartbreaking performance of the Olympics: Tyson Gay in the men&#8217;s 100m. He&#8217;s one of the very few elite sprinters who doesn&#8217;t have a gigantic ego (just look up any of his interviews on YouTube). He seems &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.boopidy.com\/aj\/blog\/2012\/08\/09\/someone-worth-rooting-for\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1c91x-5d","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boopidy.com\/aj\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boopidy.com\/aj\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boopidy.com\/aj\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boopidy.com\/aj\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boopidy.com\/aj\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.boopidy.com\/aj\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boopidy.com\/aj\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boopidy.com\/aj\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boopidy.com\/aj\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}