xiang hurdles

Call it the curse of the world record holders.

One day after Usain Bolt was disqualified in the 100 meters at the world championships because of a false start, Cuba'a Dayron Robles, the world record holder in the 110 meter hurdles, had his gold medal taken away after officials determined he illegally bumped into Chinese track hero Liu Xiang late in the race.

The disqualification enabled American Jason Richardson to go from the silver medal to gold. Xiang, who finished third in the original race, was awarded the silver.

Robles knocked arms with Xiang twice in the final 20 meters of the race, pushing the Chinese star off his stride and into the final hurdle. He was disqualified because it was determined he impeded Xiang's path to the finish line.

Watch the race below courtesy our friends at Universal Sports. If you're in a rush, watch the race at the start, then jump ahead to the 2:12 mark for the replays:

Though the video condenses the disqualification into a four-minute clip, it took

Every time I watch the pole vault, I marvel at how much the thin, 15-foot poles are able to bend in order to withstand the weight of the athlete being propelled high into the air. The process of making the approach, placing the pole in the small plant, propelling into the air, having the pole bend just enough to get an athlete over the bar and falling safely to the pit is one of the more remarkable scenes in sports.

Unfortunately for Dmitry Starodubtsev, it doesn't always work out that way.

The Russian was attempting a jump of 5.75 meters (a little less than 19 feet) Monday at the IAAF World Championships in South Korea when his pole snapped in half mid-jump.

The Russian injured his hand in the fall and had to withdraw from the competition. Watch that clip a few times and you'll realize he was lucky his hand was the only thing that got hurt.

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Usain Bolt had another stunning performance in the world championships. This time, it didn't involve him crossing the finish line in the fastest time ever recorded.

The world's fastest man broke out of the starting block early in Sunday's 100-meter final in South Korea and was disqualified from the race, providing an abrupt end to the dominance he's maintained in track's biggest event since the Beijing Olympics.

An angry Bolt refused to talk about the disqualification with reporters. "Looking for tears?" he said to a group of them following him around the track. "Not going to happen."

In 2008, Bolt broke the world record in the 100 three months before the Beijing Olympics. At that year's Summer Games, the brash Jamaican became the star of the second week, crushing competitors and showboating down the track during dominant performances. At the 2009 world championships in Berlin, Bolt ran what was considered a perfect race. His 9.58 still stands as the world record and likely won't be

usocThe Olympics won't be coming to the United States any time soon.

The Associated Press reported Monday that the U.S. Olympic Committee has begun informing potential bid cities that there won't be an American bid for the 2020 Summer Olympics.

With the Sept. 1 deadline to submit possible bid cities approaching and still no new revenue sharing deal between the USOC and IOC, American officials worried that any bid would be rushed.

No deal means no bid. It's likely to stay that way until the two governing bodies can come to an agreement about how to split money from television and sponsors.

Breaking it down in the most rudimentary of fashions, the USOC wants a bigger cut of the pie from the IOC and the rest of the world doesn't think they deserve it. Currently, the USOC receives 12.75 percent of broadcast revenues and 16 percent of global sponsorship money. They want more.

They back up the claim by arguing that because a bulk of the IOC's television and sponsorship money comes from the U.S.

120846964Last week's riots in London spread fears in Olympic fans. With the Games less than a year away, is their security ready for such a test? China even jumped into question London's readiness, kindly offering their facilities that have sat mostly dormant since the 2008 Olympics.

But London police did keep Olympic sites safe. They paid special attention locations that will be used during the Olympics after finding out via Blackberry Messenger and Twitter that those sites were targeted by rioters and looters.

"We were able to secure all those places and indeed there was no damage at any of them," she said, according to London's Evening Standard newspaper.

Police and politicians claim young criminals used Twitter and Blackberry's simple and largely cost-free messaging service to coordinate looting sprees during the riots.

It's good that people who are dumb enough to riot and loot are just that: dumb. They used unsecured, easy-to-monitor platforms to communicate, which made it easier for

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State-run newspapers in China have questioned whether the ongoing riots in London will make the city unfit to host the Olympics next summer.

"The three consecutive days of rioting has spread to east London area where the main sports stadium of London Olympic is located," the Xinhau news agency reported Tuesday. "After the riots, the image of London has been severely damaged, leaving the people skeptical and worried about the public security situation during the London Olympics."

Similar comments in the Communist-backed People's Daily provide a not-so-subtle reminder that China pulled off a massively successful Olympics in Beijing three summers ago. The insinuation is that the lack of dissent in China made the 2008 Games great and those freedoms could derail London 2012.

China did a fine job keeping politics out of its Olympics. For all the worries about the pre-Games crackdowns, censorship and government interference, those things were forgotten once the athletes arrived in town and

pistorius

The "Blade Runner" will finally get a chance to show if he can compete among elite, international competition. South African runner Oscar Pistorius, who competes using prosthetic legs because of a double amputation, has qualified to compete at the upcoming track and field world championships.

In 2008, Pistorius was banned from competing at international events because the carbon fiber prosthetics he uses were seen as giving him an unfair advantage. The Court of Arbitration for Sport overturned the ban, saying that there was no evidence that Pistorius had an advantage. However, he failed to qualify for the Olympics.

But in the last qualifying meet for the track world championships, Pistorius ran a 45.07s 400m, well under the needed qualifying time of 45.25s. He will represent South Africa in both the 400m and the 4x400 relay.

He's hoping for a consistent performance:

"If I manage to make it through the heats, I would be thrilled," he added. "A good performance for me would be to be

London's Olympic Stadium will be wrapped up after all.

Original plans to surround the main site of next summer's Olympics in a cloth-like material were scrapped last year to save on the $11.4 million cost. It was announced Thursday that Dow Chemical will be funding and providing a new design that will place 336 individual curtains around the stadium.

The original plan called for a wrap around the outside of the stadium that would be able to display mosaics, graphics, colors and images of athletes. Organizers hoped it would become an iconic image of the 2012 Games, but the plan was controversially scrapped last year because of its hefty cost to the taxpayers:

london olympic stadium cloth

Once the wrap was canceled, the exterior of the stadium was going to look like this, industrial Charlie Brown triangles and all:

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Critics thought the stadium would look too cold and uninviting without any exterior display and it's hard to argue. The picture above looks like it could be the outside of any stadium in the world. Not