When Bobby Kersee got a phone call last Thursday from Allyson Felix’s dad, among the coach’s first reactions was anguish.
"This cannot be happening,” Kersee said to himself. “This is her legacy year."
Paul Felix had passed on the information that his daughter thought she had broken her leg on a misstep during weight training at a fitness center in west Los Angeles.
Read MoreLOS ANGELES - Alysia Montano wore her trademark flower in her hair, this one a sun-burst yellow, sending out a vibe of brightness across a ballroom at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.
The mood darkened as soon as the subject of doping came up in interviews at the three-day U.S. Olympic media summit here. For Montano, it is a disease so virulent that the Zika virus outbreak in Brazil seems of far lesser importance for the 800-meter runner as she prepares to make the 2016 Olympic team.
Montano is among the athletes most affected by the revelations of widespread doping in Russia, the recent doping positives in Ethiopia and the allegations of corruption and ineptitude regarding doping control in Kenya. Discussing it moved her to choke back tears and criticize some compatriots with unrestrained candor and emotion.
Read MoreIn a very small corner of U.S. sports fandom, the biggest story last weekend was not the Super Bowl.
It was the performance of a high school runner named Drew Hunter in a mile race Saturday afternoon at the Armory in New York. Hunter clocked 3 minutes, 58.25 seconds, breaking Alan Webb’s 15-year-old U.S. high school indoor mile record by 1.41 seconds.
Read MoreReports out of China saying that its former distance running sensation, Olympic champion Wang Junxia, had written a letter 21 years ago saying her coach forced her to dope brought me back to the future – and present.
Which is to say, nothing seems to have changed in track and field, as the busts in the past two years of Kenyan marathon champion Rita Jeptoo and Russian marathon champion Liliya Shobukhova and the international federation’s Russia-centered doping corruption scandal make clear.
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Philip Hersh, formerly Olympic specialist for the Chicago Tribune, has covered 20 Olympic Games. He often uses sport as a way to write about the culture of a country or athlete. READ FULL BIO
