SUNDAY, JULY 22, 2012 • THE BULLETIN
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OLYMPICS
T E L E VI S I ON Today GOLF 3 a.m.: British Open, third round, ESPN. Noon: American Century Championship, final round, NBC. Noon: PGA Tour, True South Classic, final round, Golf Channel. 6 p.m.: British Open, final round (same-day tape), ESPN2. CYCLING 5 a.m.: Tour de France, Stage 20, NBC Sports Network. MOTOR SPORTS 8:30 a.m.: NASCAR, Nationwide Series, STP 300, qualifying, ESPN2. 9 a.m.: Formula One, Grand Prix of Germany (same-day tape), Fox. 9:30 a.m.: IndyCar, Firestone Indy Lights Edmonton, NBC Sports Network. 10 a.m.: American Le Mans Series, Grand Prix of Mosport, ESPN2. 11 a.m.: IndyCar, Edmonton Indy, NBC Sports Network. Noon: NASCAR, Nationwide Series, STP 300, ESPN.
Baseball • Bend South falls in opener: Bend South’s 11-to 12-year-old baseball team suffered a 1-0 loss to Sprague in Gresham on Saturday, dropping its opener of a double-elimination state tournament. Bend South gave up just two hits on the day, and one was a key home run that gave Sprague the one-run victory. Bend South will take on Ashland at 5 p.m. today in the losers bracket. • Indians’ Hernandez gets visa, suspended 3 weeks: The Cleveland Indians say pitcher Roberto Hernandez has received a visa to return to the United States and will serve a threeweek suspension for age and identity fraud from Major League Baseball before he can rejoin the team. Indians general manager announced Saturday that Hernandez will report to Progressive Field today and address the media. He would be eligible to rejoin the Indians on Aug. 11. Hernandez, formerly known as Fausto Carmona, was arrested in the Dominican Republic in January outside the U.S. consulate, where he had gone to renew his visa. It was discovered that Hernandez is 31 years old, three years older than his listed age.
Soccer • FC Dallas routs Timbers: Jackson had a goal and two assists to help FC Dallas get a season high in scoring in a 5-0 victory over the Portland Timbers on Saturday night. Andrew Jacobson, Scott Sealy, Ruben Luna also scored for Dallas (510-7). David Ferreira also had two assists and Dallas benefited from an own goal by Portland’s Hanyer Mosquera. The Timbers (5-11-4) lost their fourth straight. Portland remained winless in 10 road games (0-8-2) while being outscored 20-2.
Motor sports • IndyCar leader wins pole, but will start 11th: Ryan Hunter-Reay bounced back from a rough opening day at Edmonton by winning the pole in Saturday’s qualifying. But the IndyCar Series points leader will start 11th because he’ll be penalized for an unapproved engine change. The penalty is 10 spots on the starting grid for today’s race. Dario Franchitti will start first because of Hunter-Reay’s penalty. • Alonso gains pole in wet qualifying for German GP: Championship leader Fernando Alonso of Ferrari set the fastest lap in wet conditions to secure pole position for today’s German Grand Prix in Hockenheim, Germany. The Spaniard edged two-time defending champion Sebastian Vettel of Germany and his Red Bull teammate Mark Webber of Australia. Michael Schumacher of Germany was fourth in a Mercedes during qualifying Saturday.
Tennis • Roddick holds off No. 1 seed Isner: No. 4 seed Andy Roddick beat top-seeded John Isner 6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-4 in the semifinals of the Atlanta Open on Saturday night. Roddick will
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BASEBALL 5 p.m.: MLB, Boston Red Sox at Texas Rangers, ESPN. 7 p.m.: MLB, New York Yankees at Seattle Mariners, Root Sports. Nirmaendu Majumdar / AP File Photo
play Luxembourg’s Gilles Muller, who knocked off No. 8 Go Soeda of Japan 6-4, 6-3, for his 32nd ATP World Tour title today. • Top seed Bartoli advances to finals at Carlsbad: Top-seeded Marion Bartoli rebounded from a poor first set for a 1-6, 63, 6-3 victory over qualifier Chan Yung-Jan that sent her to the finals of the Mercury Insurance Open on Saturday night in Carlsbad, Calif. The Frenchwoman will face second-seeded Dominika Cibulkova, a 7-6 (8), 6-1 winner over Russia’s Nadia Petrova in the other semifinal.
Basketball • Bird’s back and U.S. women rout Croatia 109-55: Sylvia Fowles scored 15 points and Candace Parker added 14 to lead a balanced U.S. offense in the Americans’ 109-55 win over Croatia in an exhibition game Saturday in Istanbul. The contest marked the return of Sue Bird to the team. She left the women’s basketball squad after the death of her stepfather and missed the team’s exhibition wins over Brazil and Britain. • Mavs sign 1st-round pick Cunningham: The Dallas Mavericks have signed first-round draft pick Jared Cunningham. Terms were not disclosed. Cunningham was the 24th overall selection in the NBA draft by the Cleveland Cavaliers. He was acquired by the Mavericks last month, along with the draft rights to Bernard James, the 33rd overall pick, and 34th overall pick Jae Crowder, in exchange for guard Kelenna Azubuike and the draft rights to the 17th overall pick in the draft, Tyler Zeller. Cunningham was selected first-team All-Pac 12 as a junior when he averaged 17.9 points, 3.8 rebounds, 2.8 assists and 2.5 steals per game for Oregon State.
Horse racing • Belmont winner Union Rags retires: Belmont Stakes winner Union Rags has been retired because of a tendon injury in his left front leg. The announcement on Saturday came a week after the colt’s veterinarian had said he would be out with the injury but that his prognosis was “excellent” for a return to the races next year. Russell Jones, bloodstock adviser to the colt’s owner Phyllis Wyeth, says Union Rags is “a pretty attractive stallion prospect” and that there has been a high level of interest in the horse with his retirement.
Olympics • Rogge again rules out minute of silence for Israelis: IOC President Jacques Rogge won’t budge: There will be no minute’s silence for the Israeli victims of the 1972 Munich massacre at the opening ceremony of the London Olympics. Rogge rejected the latest calls Saturday for a special observance to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the murder of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches by Palestinian gunmen at the Munich Games. “We feel that the opening ceremony is an atmosphere that is not fit to remember such a tragic incident,” Rogge said. — From staff and wire reports
Team USA’s gold at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and the Redeem Team’s march to gold in ’08, the culture inside the NBA began to change. Players were no longer adversaries, they were merely business associates forced to play in different cities — for the time being. After the bronze-medal debacle in Greece in ’04, Jerry Colangelo was brought on to overhaul Team USA basketball and he did a magnificent job. He immediately sought long-term commitments from the NBA’s top stars. If they wanted to play in the Olympics, they had to prove it first with participation in events like FIBA’s World Championship. All of it has become a breeding ground for more collusion, more opportunities for players to destroy the small markets across the league. Perhaps this was the underlying reasoning to NBA Commissioner David Stern’s proposal to adopt an under23 rule, which would prohibit Olympic play for anyone over the age of 23. Bryant lashed back that the idea is “stupid,” but a 23and-under team this summer would still feature NBA stars such as Russell Westbrook, Kevin Durant, Kevin Love and Blake Griffin (prior to the knee injury). It would also most assuredly include the Cavs’ Kyrie Irving. Players 23 and under, coincidentally, are typically still locked into their rookie contracts and under their NBA team’s control for a few more years. The idea already has been met with enough resistance to probably keep it from happening, but if Stern pushed through the new rule, it could be just the first step. An under-23 team could evolve into an under-21 model, eventually making Team USA rosters more resemble the team of college amateurs from the 1980s. A significant amount of the time spent renegotiating the league’s collective bargaining agreement was devoted to making it more difficult for stars to leave their current teams and pair up with other stars in new markets. What couldn’t be bargained was the impact the Olympics make on players’ thinking. That isn’t going away as long as the league’s elite stars gather together every couple of years for a month at a time. The Americans should win another gold medal next month, but what will be the price of victory? The fallout and repercussions could be felt across the league for the next four years and beyond.
By Jason Lloyd
Monday
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COMMENTARY
Olympic gold ruining NBA
4 p.m.: NHRA, Mile-High Nationals (same-day tape), ESPN2. BASEBALL 10 a.m.: MLB, Los Angeles Dodgers at New York Mets, TBS. 10:30 a.m.: MLB, Seattle Mariners at Tampa Bay Rays, Root Sports. 5 p.m.: MLB, Texas Rangers at Los Angeles Angels, ESPN. TENNIS Noon: ATP, Atlanta Open, final, ESPN2. 2 p.m.: WTA, Mercury Insurance Open, final, ESPN2. RODEO 6 p.m.: Bull riding, George Paul Memorial, Root Sports (taped). BASKETBALL 9 p.m.: Men, Argentina vs. United States (same-day tape), ESPN2.
Listings are the most accurate available. The Bulletin is not responsible for late changes made by TV or radio stations.
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In this 2008 file photo, Iowa State’s Guor Marial (175) competes against Colorado’s Jordan Kyle (162) and Texas A& M’s Shadrack Songok (268) during the Big 12 cross country meet at Iowa State’s Cross Country Course in Ames, Iowa. Marial attended high school in Concord, N.H., after fleeing his war-torn birth country. His hometown is now part of South Sudan, but that nation doesn’t have an Olympic team. He qualified for the Olympic marathon, but can’t compete for the United States because he’s not yet a citizen.
Runner without country to compete The Associated Press LONDON — Guor Marial ran for his life to escape a Sudanese child labor camp. Now he will get to run at the Olympics. Marial’s heartwarming rise from a fearful kid who hid in a cave, fled his war-torn homeland and finally arrived in the United States as a refugee took another incredible turn Saturday. Despite having no passport and officially no country — and at one time very little hope — the 28-year-old marathoner was cleared by the IOC to compete at the London Games under the Olympic flag. “The voice of South Sudan has been heard,” Marial told The Associated Press from his home in Flagtaff, Ariz. “The South Sudan has finally got a spot in the world community. Even though I will not carry their flag in this Olympic Games, the country itself is there. “The dream has come true. The hope of South Sudan is alive.” Marial — who was born in what is now South Sudan, a newly independent African country that doesn’t yet have a national Olympic body — was one of four competitors let in at the London Games as independent athletes. Three others from Netherlands Antilles also were allowed to take part under the Olympic flag, but the case of Marial was the first of its kind at the Olympics, IOC spokesman Mark Adams said. “He’s actually running times I’m told wouldn’t get him a medal but could get him in the top 10 to 20,” Adams said. “He’s come from out of nowhere. He’s done two times, one of 2:14 and one of 2:12. Amazing.” Marial posted the Olympic qualifying time in his first ever marathon last year after being a cross-country runner at Iowa State University. He will get a chance to test himself against the best in the world in the Olympic marathon on Aug. 12, the last day of the games. But Marial has less than a week to get to London so he can march at the opening ceremony at the Olympic Stadium and be part of the first day. “I think they (his entourage and backers in the U.S.) will move heaven and earth for him to get here for the ceremony,” Adams said. The IOC’s executive board gave Marial a chance after he didn’t qualify for Sudan, South Sudan or the United States under its rules. He’s a permanent resident of the U.S. after arriving as a refugee when he was a kid, but doesn’t yet have American citizenship. He was ready to head out to
train when he heard he could go to the Olympics. “I was getting ready to go for a run,” Marial said. “Wow. This is so exciting. It’s hard to describe. I’m speechless. The body temperature is up. I have to train like an Olympian now.” He told AP he didn’t want to represent Sudan because he lost 28 family members to violence or disease during the civil unrest that left the country devastated and eventually led to the south splitting from Sudan last year. Marial said he’d ask his father — who still lives in South Sudan — to travel to the nearest city to watch him on TV if he got to compete at the Olympics. Two decades ago, Marial escaped from the labor camp in Sudan when he was 8, running away under darkness with another child about a week after he was kidnapped by gunmen and forced to work. The pair hid in a cave until dawn, he said, and then followed the path of the sun. Marial lived in Egypt before eventually reaching the United States. “I used to hate running. I was running back home to save my life,” he told the AP in an interview Friday. But he was good at it, grew to like it, and now loves it. At 16, Marial joined the Concord High School track team in New Hampshire after encouragement from a gym teacher who saw he never got winded during any sports activities. “I think there’s something that can make you tired,” he said the teacher told him. He earned an athletic scholarship to Iowa State, becoming an All-American in crosscountry in his junior year. Marial qualified, amazingly, for the Olympics in his first 26.2-mile event, running 2 hours, 14 minutes, 32 seconds at the 2011 Twin Cities marathon — inside the Olympic qualifying time. He has since run faster. But despite obvious natural ability, he still needed help to go to the Olympics. On Friday, a U.S. senator from New Hampshire lent support to his bid. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen sent a letter to the International Olympic Committee appealing for Marial to compete under the Olympic flag. “When you hear about his amazing personal story, what he has overcome, you just feel like the Olympic committee ought to look at his situation and figure out a way to accommodate him,” Shaheen said. They did, and Marial can now run at the Olympics in London — and run as fast as he can for the right reasons.
e had finished interviews with Team USA players, wrote our stories for the day and were picking over a latenight dinner at the hotel bar two blocks east of the Las Vegas strip last week when a prominent New York writer first mentioned it. “The Olympics,” he said, “are ruining the NBA.” Upon further review, he’s right. The formation of the NBA’s superpower teams can inevitably be traced back to the Olympics, where superstars from across the league gather in hotels for about a month — with plenty of down time involved to hatch these plans of some day playing together on the same team. It has been established that LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade first created the idea of one day playing together during the march of the Americans’ “Redeem Team” to gold at Beijing in 2008. Now Deron Williams is conceding he and Dwight Howard held similar discussions in Beijing. They would’ve pulled it off and could’ve been teammates next season in Brooklyn, but Howard inexplicably waived his right to free agency this summer at the NBA’s trade deadline in March. Now as the Americans prepare for the London Olympics, it’s fair to wonder who is whispering in whose ear now? Who is recruiting Chris Paul? One of the five best point guards in the NBA will be a free agent next summer. Think Carmelo Anthony and Tyson Chandler have mentioned how good he’d look in a Knicks uniform? When FIBA changed its rules in 1989 and opened Olympic competition to professionals, no one could have predicted this. The 1992 Dream Team was the most beautiful collection of basketball talent ever assembled on a single roster — despite Kobe Bryant’s delusional belief that this summer’s version could actually beat that one. This team couldn’t come within 20 points of Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, but that’s a debate for later. What made the Dream Team so unique was how they didn’t particularly like one another — going so far as to keep Isaiah Thomas off the team because if they could agree on anything, it’s that no one could stand him. This was a team that practiced harder than they played, a team of legends who couldn’t bear the idea of getting shown up in practice against one another for fear of the damage it would cause to their pride and street cred. But somewhere between
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