Sprinter gives up Olympic medal to rival for right reasons
Lost in the contrails of Usain Bolt's record-breaking 200-meter run in Beijing is a story that, turns out, is almost just as jaw-dropping.
U.S. sprinter Shawn Crawford finished fourth behind Bolt, but ended up with the silver medal because the two runners ahead of him, Churandy Martina and Wallace Spearmon, were disqualified for stepping on the lane lines.
A few days after the Olympics ended, Crawford did something hardly anyone does -- he gave his medal to Martina.
You hear about athletes giving up their medals. But usually it's forced and under less-than-honorable circumstances: Marion Jones, Jerome Young, soon-to-be medal-less Tim Montgomery, among others.
Not Crawford, who raced against Martina in a meet not long after the Games. A caller phoned Martina in his hotel room, saying to pick up a package at the front desk. The silver medal was inside.
"You never picture yourself coming home with a medal due to a DQ," Crawford told The Washington Post. "Every time I look at it, I'm going to be like: 'This medal was given to me. I don't deserve it.' "
That's a quaint notion, giving up your medal out of a sense of fair play. On Jan. 15, an
arbitration panel will rule on an appeal from Martina's Netherlands Antilles federation that he should not have been disqualified. (In protesting Spearmon's DQ, U.S. officials saw Martina's transgression on video and alerted judges, but after the designated 30-minute deadline for a protest.)
In this case, it's hard not to root for the technicality.
After the race when the medals and DQs were finally sorted out, you could tell Crawford, and teammate Walter Dix, who crossed the line fifth, took no joy in their back-door silver and bronze medals.
No wonder. After Bolt's 19.30-second win eclipsed Michael Johnson's then-astonishing 12-year-old mark (19.32), Martina had run the time of his life, in 19.82, and Spearmon posted a time of 19.95. Crawford's time was 19.96.
If Martina wins the appeal, it would be just the second Olympic medal ever awarded his country, the first in track & field.
Thanks to Crawford's sense of justice, Martina already has the medal in hand. Here's hoping the panel makes it official.
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Sprinter gives up Olympic medal to rival for right reasons
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