News and Notes

Robert Kiprono Cheruiyot won the Boston Marathon. Ryan Hall finished fourth in the fastest American time ever.

Michigan won the men's NCAA gymnastics title while Wolverines Chris Cameron won the All-Around and Ryan McCarthy won high bar. Oklahoma's Steve Legendre won floor and Alex Naddour won pommel horse, Stanford's Eddie Penev won vault and Ryan Lieberman won parallel bars, and Ohio State's Brandon Wynn won rings. Pommel horse standout Daniel Ribiero failed to qualify for event finals.

Wayne Odesnik accepted a voluntary provisional suspension after pleading guilty to importing human growth hormone to Australia.

Misty May-Treanor and Nicole Branagh won their first beach volleyball tournament playing together. The past weekend's tournament marked May-Treanor's return to competition after tearing her Achilles and a calf muscle on Dancing with the Stars.

Undefeated Venezuelan boxer Edwin Valero committed suicide in jail after admitting to killing his wife.

Kevin McDowell and Kelly Whitley will represent the US in Triathlon at the Youth Olympics.

Contrary to popular belief, Shawn Johnson is not the only Olympic level athlete to attend normal school. Weighlifter Sara Cowles is a full time student at Northern Michigan University.

Short Update

Caster Semenya's lawyers have decided that she has been effectively unlawfully banned from competition and are taking legal action in hopes of competing in Johannesburg on April 6th. If legal action does not succeed, it will be close to a year between races for Semenya. That is just ridiculous. In other track and field news, Usain Bolt, Asafa Powell, and Tyson Gay will race each other in Brussels on August 26th.

USA Triathlon is launching a project to put together the history of the sport. For more information, click here.

Scam Cup

The American Cup can now be viewed on YouTube here . I really wish Jonathan Horton could go six-for-six one of these days. He has been working on his pommel horse routine and it was sad to just see him miss it on the parallel bars. If he does not have it together by this year's World Championships, he might unfortunately be a lost cause as an All-Arounder.

It bothers me that Elsa Garcia gave up a scholarship to UCLA to continue to compete internationally. Why can't women be both elites and collegians like men? I get that their skill sets develop at different ages, but I hate the fact that women have to choose between the NCAA and elite gymnastics and men do not. Doing both should not be a rarity. Even if the NCAA women use the JO code, it teaches a lot about consistency and hitting under pressure. Plus, the women could always choose to do harder skills at meets.

In other news, Brian Fleischmann and Sarah Haskins won the USA Triathlon Elite Development race. Christopher Lutz, Tommy Zaferes, William Huffman, Alexandra Weber, Gwen Jorgenson, and Lauren Gross earned their elite licenses at the race. Michael Phelps broke the short course 200 yard fly record, swimming the distance in 1:39.65 at the Maryland State Championships.

The next gymnastics selection camp begins in 10 days to choose teams for Jesolo. UGA beat UCLA and Oklahoma beat Alabama. Figure skating junior world championships begin tomorrow! Get excited!