“I am delighted to have signed a new contract,” Ferdinand said in a statement.

“Who wouldn’t want to play in this fantastic team in front of 75,000 fans each week, it has been an incredible journey and I am glad it will continue. I can now fully concentrate on my club career, which has worked well for me over the past few years.”

Former England defender Ferdinand retired from international football last week.

Ferdinand has made 432 United appearances since his debut in 2002 and Moyes, who starts his new job on July 1, is pleased he is staying on.

“It is clear for everyone to see that Rio has had one of his best seasons with the club and I think even from the outside you can see what a big character Rio is around the dressing room,” Moyes said in a statement.

“So I am delighted he has signed a new contract and I am looking forward to working with him.”

(Reporting by Sonia Oxley; Editing by Ed Osmond)

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2013/05/23/sports/soccer/23reuters-soccer-england-ferdinand.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

The committee also decided to raise the minimum ban for assaulting match officials from 10 to 15 matches. For insulting a match official, the minimum sanction will rise from two to three matches.

The venues for the finals of the UEFA club competitions in 2015 were also approved — Berlin’s Olympic Stadium for the Champions League and Warsaw’s National Stadium for the Europa League.

UEFA General Secretary Gianni Infantino says details on the format of the Europa League will be announced to its congress on Friday, with the winners set to earn a place in the Champions League.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2013/05/23/sports/soccer/ap-soc-uefa-meetings.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Rosberg, who has been at home on the twisty streets ever since he was a boy growing up in the principality, clocked a best time of one minute 16.195 seconds before lunch and then 1:14.759 in the second session.

That later lap, set early in the session, compared to last year’s fastest time in qualifying by Mercedes’ Michael Schumacher of 1:14.301.

Hamilton was 0.318 off Rosberg’s pace, with drivers using Pirelli’s softest tire compounds.

While Rosberg will be chasing his third successive pole position in Saturday’s qualifying, hat-trick chasing Spaniard Fernando Alonso was second and third fastest respectively for Ferrari.

Alonso, winner of his home race in Spain this month, is hoping to become Ferrari’s first Monaco winner since 2001 and the first Formula One driver to triumph in the glamour race with three separate teams.

Team mate Felipe Massa was fourth on a gloriously sunny afternoon with the Mediterranean serving as a sparkling backdrop to the action.

Frenchman Romain Grosjean was third fastest for Lotus in the morning, as he limbered up for his closest thing to a home race in the continuing absence of a French Grand Prix, but then crashed into the barriers at Sainte Devote after lunch.

On a historic course that threads its way up the hill and into Casino square before dipping and winding down to the darkness of the tunnel and blasting past the moored yachts on the quayside, Venezuelan Pastor Maldonado provided the morning’s surprise.

The Williams driver was sixth fastest, although he faded back in the afternoon, on one of the most treacherous and unforgiving circuits on the calendar.

Williams have not scored a point yet this season, a run of six races in a row including last year’s finale, and are in danger of chalking up their worst ever start to a championship this weekend.

Maldonado has form in Monaco, however, winning junior series races there on his way to Formula One and loving the challenge of keeping out of the barriers.

Red Bull’s triple world champion Sebastian Vettel, who has a four-point lead in the standings over Lotus’s Kimi Raikkonen, was only 10th and ninth quickest with Australian team mate Mark Webber – last year’s winner – seventh and fifth.

McLaren’s Jenson Button was eighth in both sessions, with Mexican team mate Sergio Perez ninth and 12th, ahead of what could be another difficult weekend for a team struggling to catch up after starting the year well off the pace.

(Editing by Ed Osmond and Sonia Oxley)

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2013/05/23/sports/autoracing/23reuters-motor-racing-prix-practice.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

New Zealand lost the first test at Lord’s by 170 runs on Sunday after being skittled out for 68 in their second innings.

Former captain Vettori joined the test squad in England this week after being called up as replacement for spinner Bruce Martin who has been ruled out of the rest of the tour with a calf injury.

The 34-year-old Vettori has not played a test for 10 months, however, and has been recovering from a long-term Achilles injury.

“Dan is out of tomorrow’s game unfortunately. We obviously gave it our best shot but he didn’t scrub up that well today and just the confidence to go into a five-day game, with the workload he’s had, is just a bridge too far,” McCullum told a news conference on Thursday.

“He did not want to let the team down. It’s disappointing but it does give Dougie the opportunity to make his way back after sitting on the sidelines. He’s been outstanding in warm-up games on this tour as well.”

CHAMPIONS TROPHY

Vettori, New Zealand’s second highest wicket taker with 360 victims, will concentrate on being ready next month’s Champions Trophy in England.

“He’s got a big month and bit coming up. That’s one of the things we looked at for this game… Would we sacrifice the coming few weeks as well?

“It wasn’t the right thing for Dan and it wasn’t the right thing for us,” added McCullum, who will keep wicket for the touring side as he did at Lord’s after BJ Watling suffered the knee injury which has also ruled him out of the Headingley game.

It was the first time McCullum had kept wicket in a test for nearly three years.

With Martin out of the tour, McCullum can also call on part-time off-spinner Kane Williamson who captured two wickets at Lord’s, including Jonathan Trott.

McCullum said it was a “gamble” to select an all-seamer attack but one the Blackcaps had to take.

“While it slightly adjusts our balance, we’re hoping that the overhead conditions over the coming few days… that the four seamers is actually a positive option for us,” he said.

“From the games I have played here seamers have prospered but the wicket looks a touch dry underneath the grass covering. It’s a gamble either way to be honest but it’s one, when you are one-nil down you have to take.”

McCullum and his troops have spent the time since Lord’s analysing what went wrong on the fourth day when they capitulated against Stuart Broad.

The first three days had been evenly contested on a low-scoring and slow wicket before Broad demolished the tourists with a seven-wicket haul.

“It’s been a delicate balance between not sweeping it under the carpet and acknowledging what went on,” McCullum said.

“Everyone looked at their own mode of dismissal. Some guys know that their footwork was lacking…some guys know that their hands were probably a bit far from their bodies at times.

“Was it the pressure of the situation or a technical deficiency? I don’t think it was a technical deficiency. I do feel we are making some significant gains as a batting group and the other day was a blemish for us, no doubt about that.”

(Editing by Ed Osmond)

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2013/05/23/sports/cricket/23reuters-cricket-zealand-mccullum.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Roger-Vasselin broke the third-seeded Querrey twice in the final set to lead 5-1 before converting his first match point with a forehand winner.

Roger-Vasselin will play either Paul-Henri Mathieu or Albert Montanes.

The Nice Open is a warm-up tournament for the French Open, which starts Sunday.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2013/05/23/sports/tennis/ap-ten-nice.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

“I am here for driving and racing and to try to win races and it’s as simple as that,” added Formula One’s 2007 world champion and current title contender, his penetrating gaze shielded by sunglasses even inside the team motorhome.

Raikkonen’s directness, his refusal to play the PR game and pretend to be someone he is not, may not have endeared him to all his sponsors over the years but his army of fans would not have it any other way.

They love the party animal who wants to be left alone, the technophobe who earns his living in the most technologically advanced sport in the world, the snowmobile racer and James Hunt fan with ‘Iceman’ tattooed in gothic script on his left forearm.

Beneath the taciturn exterior, and behind the growling monosyllabic replies in group interviews, Raikkonen is a racer who could be leading the championship after the weekend and is on course to chalk up his 23rd successive race in the points – one short of Michael Schumacher’s all-time record.

LEAVE ME ALONE

On his way to victory in Abu Dhabi last year, the 33-year-old added to the legend that is Kimi Raikkonen by telling his race engineer over the radio in decisive terms to “leave me alone, I know what I’m doing”.

The outburst spawned T-shirts and mugs with the phrase on it, one of the latter proudly owned by Frank Williams who tried to sign the Finn for his eponymous team in late 2011.

For many it has become Raikkonen’s motto, but he does not see it that way.

“It’s not that. For sure, sometimes I don’t know what I am doing,” he laughed, perhaps mindful of those old photographs of him drunkenly embracing an inflatable dolphin outside a nightclub or powerboat racing in a gorilla suit.

“But that happens to everybody. The whole story came out of proportion. It was a normal thing.

“It sounds like we are shouting, because the radio is not very good and you will shout as loud as you can to make sure that they hear what you say. It happens always. I am not a big fan of getting messages. I am sure I will ask if I need something.

“For sure it has happened in a Ferrari and a McLaren,” he added. “I said many things but on those days you didn’t get them on TV. Even now you get often in the races some odd things coming through but they don’t put it in a live form for whatever reason. It’s not like a new thing for the team.”

That Raikkonen is not a big fan of unnecessary communication becomes even more evident when he is asked about other drivers’ willingness to post photographs and put their private lives on display through social media.

“I don’t use Facebook. If I could throw my phone away I would probably do it,” he said. “It’s always on silent and I don’t like when it rings and people are calling.

“We could live without those things in the past when we just had a phone on the street somewhere, on the corner or at the house. I have no interest in telling all the people what I do every day and where I am.

“I want to do my stuff privately with my friends or family and that’s it.”

Surrounded by a backdrop of floating palaces swaying in the harbour, the Monaco Grand Prix tops the list of favourite races for many Formula One drivers.

Not Raikkonen.

An ideal race weekend, he suggested, would be at the Magny-Cours circuit in the heart of rural France – a now discontinued date on the calendar and unloved by sponsors and corporate types due to the dearth of hotels and nightlife.

“That was pretty nice. There were no people. The hotel is next door and it’s a pretty good place. I always enjoyed it there. It was purely racing and not a big hassle,” said Raikkonen.

The winner of the season-opening Australian Grand Prix is just four points behind Red Bull’s triple world champion Sebastian Vettel after five of the 19 races and hitting the sort of form that brought him the title as a Ferrari driver.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2013/05/23/sports/autoracing/23reuters-motor-racing-prix-raikkonen.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Readers’ Stories: Forgotten Heroes

In response to an essay by Margalit Fox, readers wrote of people who had an impact but had been lost to history.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/sports/cycling/visconti-wins-another-giro-stage.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Now Paille, a Boston Bruins left wing, and Girardi, a Rangers defenseman, are antagonists in an Eastern Conference semifinal playoff series, and their hometown is divided in its hockey loyalties as surely as it is carved up by the canals for freighters moving between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.

“It’s really cool to be playing against Dan in the playoffs,” Girardi, 29, said last week. “It could have happened once before, when we played Buffalo. But Dan wasn’t dressed for those games.”

Once upon a time, folks in Welland did not need to pick between Paille and Girardi.

“They were just two kids that really enjoyed their hockey,” Paille’s father, Ray, said. “At 6 in the morning, they would wake us up.”

Sleepovers and street hockey followed, and then an Ontario Hockey League championship when they were 19-year-old teammates on the Guelph Storm. Later, they were best men at each other’s weddings.

On Tuesday at Madison Square Garden, Paille was the better man on the ice. A speedy fourth-liner, he scored the game-winning goal and had an assist in a 2-1 victory that gave the Bruins a 3-0 series lead. Girardi and the Rangers will try to avoid a sweep Thursday night in Game 4.

In Welland, a blue-collar burg between Buffalo and Toronto, Paille’s and Girardi’s friends, relatives and fans will tune in to the latest installment of what some have labeled the Battle of Welland or the Battle of the Dans.

“We know a lot of people in the town, so I’m sure they’ll be happy with either one,” Paille said last week. “I know there’s a lot of Boston fans, from growing up, so hopefully they’ll be cheering a little more for Boston.”

Paille deepened affections after winning the Stanley Cup with the Bruins in 2011 and bringing the silver trophy to the city on July 27, 2011, which was proclaimed Daniel Paille Day. The stands at Welland Arena were packed when Paille and the Cup rolled onto the floor in the back of a yellow convertible.

A party was held with the Cup at Boston Pizza, a sports bar on Niagara Street, where two No. 20 Paille jerseys are displayed. One of the jerseys was stolen but was returned after a newspaper article about the theft stirred community outrage.

During Game 2 of the series Sunday afternoon, Boston Pizza drew a sparse but pro-Bruins crowd on Victoria Day weekend. Wearing a Bruins T-shirt, the bartender Laura Stonos poured drafts for Blair May, who had taken the day off from his job as a dealer at a Niagara Falls casino to watch his team beat the Rangers, 5-2. In a rough day for Rangers fans, Girardi was on the ice for all five Boston goals.

“A lot of Wellanders go for Boston because there are a lot of Niagara region players on the team,” Stonos said, noting that Bruins forward Nathan Horton is from nearby Dunnville.

Still, there are pockets of support for Girardi and the Rangers. A few blocks south on Niagara Street, at Kimono’s, a Chinese restaurant, the owner David Lai installed two televisions in the dining room, one in the kitchen and another in the office. That way he would not miss a single slap shot while working.

For four years as a teenager, Girardi was a dishwasher with a spartan work ethic at Kimono’s.

“Very calm,” Lai said of Girardi. “Doesn’t matter how many dishes we had; he would get it done.”

Dependability is a Girardi hallmark. He has missed only two games since 2007 and has twice led the N.H.L. in blocked shots, including this season with 125.

Locals attribute Girardi’s character and work ethic to his parents: Mark, who works at a General Motors plant in St. Catharines, and Carol, a nurse at Welland Hospital, where the staff has been wishing the Rangers luck.

“Even ladies who’ve never watched hockey before are watching,” Carol said.

Jeff Z. Klein contributed reporting from Boston.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/sports/hockey/bruins-daniel-paille-and-rangers-dan-girardi-divide-their-hometown.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Now, with the Rangers facing elimination against the Bruins, Powe discussed what it took to come back in 2010. Powe, a checking and penalty-killing center, spoke after taking part in his first practice since sustaining a suspected concussion in Game 3 of the first-round series against the Washington Capitals.

“What I remember is just going in every day and focusing on the game at hand,” Powe said. “Obviously we can’t win four games tomorrow night, so we have to focus on just the task at hand, which is coming out strong on our first shift. We go shift by shift; we just chip away. You’ve got to try to win every shift. That’s how we’re going to get back in the series.”

Powe was asked if there was a point when the Flyers started to believe that a comeback was possible.

“You have to go in with that belief,” he said. “You win that one game and things start to change. After that, you worry about the next game, and you realize as you keep going that your confidence builds and grows, and you see the other side kind of go the other way. You can’t do any of that without a big next game.”

Those Flyers not only rallied from an 0-3 series deficit; they also rallied from an 0-3 deficit to win Game 7.

“It was a pretty special feeling for sure,” Powe said. “It builds a lot of character, and we have a lot of character in this room. I know we’re going to come out hard tomorrow night and put our best effort out there, and do the right things that are going to help us win that hockey game.”

Asked if he had spoken with the Rangers about his experience coming back in 2010, Powe responded: “I’ve had a few conversations. I mean, obviously we didn’t fall down to 3-0 till last night, so it’s pretty new. But we’re a resilient hockey team here. We believe in ourselves. Like everyone says, it’s just one game. We’ve got to pull this off tomorrow night.”

Powe said there were similarities between the 2010 Flyers and the 2013 Rangers.

“I said it even before the playoffs started,” he said. “We have a lot of similarities, in terms of personnel and the potential on this team, a good group of guys, a close group of guys — guys willing to work hard and do the little things to win hockey games.

“It’s never a good feeling coming into a rink when you’re down 3-0,” he continued. “But you just have to put those feelings aside and focus on the task at hand. It doesn’t do yourself any good feeling sorry for yourself, or looking back in the past at what could have been. From here on out, it’s just look forward and focus on what we need to do to get back in.”

Powe added: “It’s probably human nature to look ahead and realize those things. But you just have to, like I said, focus on the process, what you need to do, and not look ahead at what results you need. It’s all about your next shift, your next battle. Those tiny little things, if you don’t even worry about that result, just what you’re doing. That makes it a lot easier.”

Powe was asked if that was how it was when the Flyers came back.

“Obviously when you’re going to climb a mountain, you’re not going to sit at the bottom and just look at the top and be like, ‘How am I going to do this?’” he said. “You’re going to look at the five, six feet above you and go at that first. You have to focus on what’s right in front of you, otherwise you’ll never get where you have to go.”

Article source: http://slapshot.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/22/powe-familiar-with-comebacks-says-rangers-can-fight-back/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Except the sleekly corporate beasts of the Premier League would never stand for such nonsense. Risk Carlos Tévez or Robin Van Persie breaking a leg on a stray divot in Droylsden? Run their finely tuned thoroughbreds into the ground for no financial gain? Hardly.

Those seeking a soccer planner’s dream gone mad should instead look to Brazil. The 27 deeply idiosyncratic estaduais (state championships) run from January until the middle of May (the biggest, the Campeonato Paulista, can last for up to 23 matches). After a generous seven days of rest, the bedraggled players stumble into the 38-game Serie A campaign. At the same time, the better teams will still be playing in the Libertadores (up to 14 games), and even their dowdier rivals will be plodding through the Copa do Brasil. And there’s still the unlovely Copa Sul-Americana to come.

Miguel Schincariol/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Corinthians’ capitain, Alessandro, with the Paulista championship Cup after the final match against Santos on Sunday.

The 2013 incarnation of the estaduais has just finished. A superficial glance at Sunday’s finals suggests not that much is wrong. In Belo Horizonte, Atlético and Cruzeiro slugged out an epic two-legged duel in front of packed houses at the Mineirão and Independência stadiums. Up in Salvador, Vítoria claimed soteropolitano bragging rights for the next few months by beating their hated rivals Bahia by a remarkable 8-4 aggregate score. And in São Paulo, Corinthians’ Big Black and White Machine overpowered Neymar’s punier Santos. Large crowds, wild celebrations and some of the most hyperbolic trophies on the planet completed the scene.

But the drama of the estaduais finals masks the tedium and futility of the preceding four months. The competitions are often blamed for all that is wrong with Brazilian soccer. The average Serie A crowd in 2012 was a pitiful 13,000 – around the same as Australia’s A-League, and considerably lower than the M.L.S. average. There are many reasons for this, including ticket prices recently judged to be the most expensive in the world (when compared with average earnings), but a saner footballing calendar, with more space between games, a longer off-season to allow anticipation to grow before the start of Serie A, and enough time for teams to take a day off when stars are away with the Seleção (Neymar played almost as many games for Brazil last year as he did for his club) is surely essential if the Brazilian domestic game is ever to fulfill its potential again.

Worse still, runs the argument, the estaduais and the state based power structure that sustains them feeds the cronyism of the CBF (the Brazilian footballing authority) and its profoundly toxic president, Jose Maria Marin, a man who makes Mr. Burns from “The Simpsons” look as civic minded and big hearted as Father Christmas.

Yet the estaduais have their defenders (and this writer is one of them, with a few hundred caveats).

Dating to the beginning of the century, the state championships are much older than the still wet behind the ears national championship, which only officially started in 1971. They carry a wealth of tradition and history in their lockers. In some parts of the country, such as most of the north and large parts of the northeast of Brazil, where teams barely compete on a national level (the Brasileirão representation of many states begins and ends with a solitary Serie D hopeful) they are often the only game in town. And in a few states, such as Pernambuco, the estaduais can be vibrant, noisy affairs that seethe with the lifeblood of the game, the local rivalry. Making the estaduais shorter would seem to be a reasonable compromise — preserving a uniquely Brazilian footballing tradition, and at the same time easing fixture congestion.

The future of the state championships has long been the subject of fevered debate in Brazil. “And so the estaduais are with us again, the same as ever, the same arguments, the same criticism of the calendar … the same bad pitches,” the former Seleção great Tostão wrote recently. But for many years it seemed that the aforementioned state power structure and cronyism meant nothing would ever change. The estaduais had come down from the mount, and woe betide he who suggested that the Brazilian game might have anything to learn from football administration in other parts of the world. “What can the gringos teach us?” ran some of the more knuckleheaded thinking. “We’ve won five World Cups!”

It might be, however, that things are beginning to change. Atlético-PR, from Curitiba, used this year’s Campeonato Paranaense simply to develop its under-23 team. Such is public apathy to the Campeonato Carioca, once the country’s best estadual, that crowds are often counted in tens, rather than hundreds or thousands. Among journalists, fans and even players, opposition to the estaduais grows louder by the day.

Miguel Schincariol/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Brazil’s state championships clutter the country’s soccer schedule and put stars like Alexandre Pato, center, and Neymar to the test on surfaces that aren’t always up to par.

Larger factors may be at play. Given the country’s often unhappy history with foreign governments, from Portuguese colonizers to United States support for the 1964 military coup, and lost within its own endless borders, it is perhaps unsurprising that Brazil (if not all Brazilians) sometimes has an insular, wary view of the world. That is changing. Economic growth (now sputtering rather than roaring) has raised self-esteem and increased foreign trade. The country’s international profile and role in the global game of thrones is increasing (a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council is hoped for). And now the World Cup and Olympics are on their way. Brazil has rarely been so visible to foreign eyes, and equally, rarely has the country been so conscious of being watched. Furthermore, in a footballing context, increased prosperity has meant greater access to overseas leagues via satellite TV, and now the packed houses of the Bundesliga, La Liga and the Champions League are just a click away.

All of this places Brazilian domestic soccer in a global context in a way that it has not quite been before. And the exchange of ideas need not be a one-way street. The Brasileirão remains one of the most competitive in the world, and any one of five or six teams might lift this year’s Serie A title. But in other respects much can be learned. Starting with a long, hard look at those sometimes loved, sometimes loathed, estaduais.

James Young lives in Brazil and writes for The Independent, The Blizzard, ESPN, World Soccer and others. He is currently working on a novel about soccer in Brazil’s northeast. Follow him on Twitter.

Article source: http://goal.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/why-time-may-be-running-out-for-brazils-state-championships/?partner=rss&emc=rss

After a slight hesitation, a man in sunglasses and a visor replied, “That’s what they say.”

The man was reluctant to call attention to himself. Asked his name by the basketball team’s coach, he said simply, “Leroy.”

Eventually, it emerged that this was Leroy Burrell, Cameron’s father and formerly the world’s fastest man, a gold medalist in the 4×100-meter relay at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, and the longtime track and field coach at the University of Houston.

On Saturday, Cameron Burrell will run 100 meters against other top high school sprinters at the New York Grand Prix on Randalls Island, where his father set a world record of 9.90 seconds in 1991 (later lowering the mark to 9.85 in 1994 in Lausanne, Switzerland). Beginning in the fall, Cameron will compete for Houston, setting up an intriguing and complex dynamic between coach and athlete, father and son.

“If we get it right, it will be a great story,” Leroy Burrell, 46, said. “But there’s also going to be some pressure.”

The Burrells are the first family of sprinting in the United States and possess rare versatility as sprinters and jumpers. Cameron, 18, a senior at Ridge Point High School southwest of Houston, has run the nation’s top scholastic time this season in the 100, a wind-aided 10.07 seconds at the Texas Relays. His personal best with a legal wind, 10.36 seconds, ranks fourth nationally and gave him first place this month in Class 4A at the Texas state high school championships.

In the state meet, Burrell also finished second in the long jump. His personal best is 24 feet 11½ inches, making him one of the top jumpers in his age group.

His mother, Michelle Finn-Burrell, won a gold medal in the women’s 4×100-meter relay at the Barcelona Games. His aunt, Dawn Burrell, competed in the long jump at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, and his father jumped 27-5½ while at Houston, a distance that gave him second place at the 1989 N.C.A.A. outdoor championships and would have won the 2012 London Olympics.

At 5 feet 8 inches, 155 pounds, Cameron resembles his mother as a sprinter, relying more on leg turnover than the propulsive power of his stockier father. When Cameron was 12 or 13, he asked his aunt Dawn if she thought he could one day make it to the Olympics. She ticked off the family’s accomplishments and said, “I think you have a pretty good chance.”

None other than Carl Lewis, a friend and former teammate of his father with the famed Santa Monica Track Club, has sent the family exhorting text messages about the 2016 Olympics, saying, “Rio or bust.”

And yet, Leroy Burrell understands more than most the unforgiving and Darwinian nature of track and field. He broke his own world record in the 100 at the 1991 world championships in Tokyo, only to be beaten by Lewis. A year later, Burrell flinched in the starting blocks in the Olympic 100 final in Barcelona, drew a false start, and finished fifth to Linford Christie of Britain after a cautious restart.

When Cameron decided to drop football after his sophomore season and concentrate on track, his father cautioned him to think twice. In track, the Olympics are considered the only real measurement of success, and they occur once every four years. Only three spots are available per country for each event. An entire career can be made or broken in 10 seconds.

In the United States, anyway, a silver medal is seldom celebrated but instead considered a lost opportunity at gold. And for the moment, the Jamaicans Usain Bolt and Yohan Blake dominate the sprints, finishing one-two in the 100 and the 200 at the London Games. Bolt has lowered the world record in the 100 to a startling 9.58, a time that would defeat Leroy Burrell’s best effort by three yards.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/sports/cameron-burrell-is-following-in-very-fast-footsteps.html?partner=rss&emc=rss