Off-form Rhasidat Adeleke finishes fourth in Pre Classic 400m in Eugene
Rhasidat Adeleke
had to settle for fourth place over 400 metres in Saturday's Pre Classic meeting in Eugene, Oregon, her time of 51.33 seconds once again well outside her best.
At the ninth stop on the
Diamond League
circuit, staged at the famed Hayward Field, Adeleke started out cautiously, a small tapping around her knee suggesting she may be carrying a slight injury of late.
Coming into the homestretch in fifth, the 22-year-old held her form to move up to fourth, but finished some distance behind Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone from the US, who dominated the race to win in 49.43.
McLaughlin-Levrone was also off her best of 48.74, set two years ago, but the breezy conditions were not ideal. Aaliyah Butler took second in 49.86, with US team-mate Bella Whittaker third in 50.81.
Adeleke's opening Diamond League appearances in the 400m last month, in Oslo and then Stockholm, were also under par. She faded to sixth in the homestretch in the latter, running 50.48. She had run 50.42 to finish fourth in Oslo three nights before.
Another McLaughlin Masterclass 👌
📷Logan Hannigan-Downs for Diamond League AG
— Wanda Diamond League (@Diamond_League)
At 25, McLaughlin-Levrone is the Olympic and World champion in the 400m hurdles, the event in which she has lowered the world record on six occasions, and had requested the event in Eugene, which was not part of the Diamond League programme.
From the outset of this particularly long season, the World Championships in Tokyo still over two months away, Adeleke has been talking about timing things differently. However, her Irish record of 49.07, set in June of last year, is for now looking well out of reach.
Next up for the Dubliner is a trip to Monaco next Friday, where she scored her first Diamond League victory last year, running 49.17 seconds. Only this time she'll have the Olympic and World champion Marileidy Paulino for company.
Kenya's double Olympic champion Beatrice Chebet has been knocking on world records already this summer, and delivered in style in Eugene, winning the 5,000m in 13:58.06. It marks the first sub-14 minute clocking on the track, taking down the 14:00.21 held by Ethiopia's Gudaf Tsegay.
Earlier, Ireland's Orla Comerford produced another excellent victory in the Para Athletics mixed-class 100m, winning in 12.14 seconds ahead of Brittni Mason from the US.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
RTÉ News
20 hours ago
- RTÉ News
K Club confirmed as new host venue for Women's Irish Open
The K Club has been announced as the venue for the 2026 Women's Irish Open, with the event taking place at the end of August. After being staged at Carton House for the last two years and Dromoland Castle before that, the Ladies European Tour have now confirmed the Palmer South Course at the Co Kildare venue will host the tournament from 27-30 August. The return to a late August date will no doubt act a perfect warm-up for those players who make the Solheim Cup team, with the match against the USA taking place in the Netherlands from the 11-13 September. Looking ahead to the KPMG Women's Irish Open, the K Club director MJ Fetherston said: "We are delighted to announce the KPMG Women's Irish Open is coming to The K Club in 2026. This is a tournament we want to support and elevate. There is so much brilliant talent in women's golf. We have been supporting Leona Maguire for the past few years and this is a terrific development on that. "The Palmer South course has been given a lot of love and energy over the past few years. We are excited to bring tournament golf back to this challenging course. Our family and the whole team at the resort want to make this the best Women's Irish Open yet."
Irish Times
2 days ago
- Irish Times
A counterfeiter's suicide note lifts the lid off a seedy corner of US sporting culture
At 9am last Tuesday, the City of Westfield police in Indiana pulled up to a warehouse on South Park Drive, armed with a search warrant and a fleet of semi trucks that indicated they knew exactly what they were looking for. As part of a continuing investigation into fraud and counterfeiting, they confiscated thousands of items of sports memorabilia. The following day, the same crew fetched up at a property on Hoover Street bent on adding to their pile of evidence. Upon entering those premises, however, they also discovered the body of Brett Lemieux, owner of both businesses, with a shotgun by his side. In the hours in between the first raid and the second, Lemieux apparently realised the jig was up, logged on to a private Facebook group and wrote a lengthy posting lifting the lid off an especially seedy corner of US sporting culture. The proprietor of Mister Mancave, an outfit that has supposedly generated $350 million (€299 million) selling autographed balls, bats and jerseys to fans across the country over the past two decades, admitted the majority of the merchandise he flogged was fake. The 45-year-old also named co-conspirators in the elaborate boondoggle, explained in some detail how they had scammed so many people, and then took his own life. 'I hope no one tries to hide this,' wrote Lemieux. 'I want to expose it all and how big of an operation – you all knew it was going on but grasp how big it was ... It was a thrill having every athlete in every sport from every authentication company at your fingertips to produce the signature flawless ... READ MORE 'I was addicted. It was a rush. I wanted out. But the money was too good. I can make $100,000 in a week if I wanted to. The fact that not one dealer that knew what we were doing to the industry, or when I took their exclusive, no one ever picked up a phone to confront me. That baffled me.' According to some business experts, the sports memorabilia market in the US is worth a staggering $30 billion a year and growing fast. Much more so than in Ireland or the UK, the appetite for paraphernalia touched or signed by famous athletes in the US seems to be insatiable. The bigger the name involved or the more significant the moment the item relates to, the more ridiculous the sums are. The ball that Shohei Ohtani hit for his 50th home run last season sold for $4.3 million. From rare trading cards to game-worn gear, just about anything with a player's signature on it is eminently collectible and deemed to be worth money. Many make these purchases as investments, believing they will most likely increase in value as years go by. Lemieux's revelations and the awful circumstances of his demise have thrown a cloud over an already shady business that has traditionally attracted plenty of flim-flam artists on the make. One expert reckons the authenticity of just about every signed bauble bought and sold over the past 20 years must now be called into question. While some of his rivals seriously question the veracity of the numbers being bandied about in his name, if Mister Mancave did indeed, as he claimed, launch 80,000 fraudulent items into the market following the tragic death of Kobe Bryant, the true origin of every ball or jersey related to the former NBA star is in serious doubt. Young baseball fans attempt to get autographs before a game between New York Yankees and Atlanta Braves. Photograph: Jeff Robinson/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images Established companies such as Fanatics, Panini, Tristar, James Spence Authentication, Mill Creek Sports, GT Sports Marketing and CardVault (50 per cent of which is owned by Tom Brady) are legit operators in the memorabilia space. These corporations fork out vast sums for the right to collaborate with individual athletes, teams and leagues, selling licensed merchandise bearing official signatures and imprimaturs. In a world where just about anybody can fake somebody else's handwriting, though, they also spend small fortunes combating armies of swindlers, trying to preserve the integrity of their business. [ Michael Jordan's 1998 Air Jordans sell for record $2.2m at auction Opens in new window ] Issuing certificates of authenticity (COA) with every purchase, they place identification holograms in products to prove their bona fides, and their security teams, often staffed by former FBI agents, trawl online marketplaces trying to catch grifters. It is believed Fanatics and other outfits assisted the authorities investigating Lemieux and his complex operation that was, for a long time, very effective. Partly this was due to him changing the business name any time suspicion grew up around his sales. Lemieux and his accomplices appear to have figured out ways to circumvent the elaborate precautions taken by the big companies. Using autopens purchased for $150 from Amazon to copy autographs, they also discovered an outlet in China that replicated the distinctive holograms deployed by their corporate rivals. Then they put their high-class fakes for sale online for half what they might cost from a more reputable source. When a signed Brady or Patrick Mahomes shirt was picked up cheap and subsequently gifted to somebody for Christmas, the recipient hung it in their home or office, none the wiser to any skulduggery afoot. Even after all the brouhaha surrounding Lemieux's scorched-earth posting and the talk of an authentication crisis in the industry, the market for gear seems unaffected. On eBay the other night, jerseys signed by Brady were going for anything from $599 to $10,000; some of them came with COAs, others boasted holograms. Genuine articles? Made with a nefarious assist from China? Who knows? In this business, you pays your money, you takes your chance. Always.
Irish Times
4 days ago
- Irish Times
How Rory McIlroy's putter tip helped Scottie Scheffler become $100m putting machine
For almost a year from March 2023 to March 2024, Scottie Scheffler failed to win a PGA Tour tournament, which is a hard thing to imagine as he picked up his fourth Major in as many years at Royal Portrush on Sunday. The American was much the same golfer as he is today tee to green, but he could not get the ball in the hole. It reared its ugly head at the Memorial tournament in June 2023, when he gained 20.7 strokes over the field tee-to-green, the second-best performance in the PGA Tour era, yet only finished third. It was because he lost 8.5 strokes on the greens. The previous week at the Charles Schwab Challenge, he finished 71st out of the 72 players who made the cut in putting. Woes on the green continued early in the 2024 season , with no solution in sight, when Rory McIlroy made a rare appearance in the US commentary box at the Genesis Invitational and was asked about Scheffler's putting. 'We've all been through it,' McIlroy said on CBS. 'I've certainly been through my putting woes during the years, and for me going to a mallet was a big change. READ MORE 'The mallet just gives you a little bit more margin for error and that to me gave me confidence I could go forward with that knowing that even if I don't put a perfect stroke on it, the ball's not going to go too far off line. I'd love to see Scottie try a mallet, but selfishly for me, you know Scottie does everything else so well.' In his next event, Scheffler made the move to the mallet, a larger-sized putter head than the average one you get in the shop, and the rest is history. According to No Laying Up podcast, he has made $49 million on the course since the switch, $8 million for the Comcast Top 10, plus $25 million for the Tour Championship, a total of $82 million. With similar bonuses to come at the end of the season and the FedEx Cup which he will be favourite for, the chances are he will have made $100 million in 17 months since the move. Scottie Scheffler celebrates on the seventh green after saving par during the final round of the Open Championship at Royal Portrush. Photograph:Watching Scheffler warm up on the putting green in Ireland three years apart, at the 2022 JP McManus Pro Am at Adare Manor and the 2025 Open Championship at Portrush, and there was a noticeable difference. In 2022, there was a slight hesitancy and awkwardness, the routine was longer and less comfortable. Before his final round on Sunday, Scheffler took ball after ball under the watchful eye of caddie Ted Scott and putting coach Phil Kenyon and rolled one after the other into the cup. Scheffler was right to be confident. After all, he was best in the field in putting at the Open, his weakness now a weapon. It is no surprise that the rest of the field was left in awe, deflated and not sure where to go next to beat him. In the final round, there were two 16-foot putts for par on the sixth and seventh that kept the round going and inspired Tiger-like fist pumps from Scheffler. Not much gets that sort of reaction out of Scheffler but he knows more than anyone, they were the sort of putts he missed a lot two years ago that he is no longer missing. More than just the change to the mallet was his work with putting coach Kenyon, which started in September 2023, but is only perhaps starting to truly come to fruition this season. Scheffler reserved special praise for the Englishman, formerly a putting coach of McIlroy, in his press conference, and he was one of the first to embrace Scheffler after winning at Portrush. 'He's a tremendous coach and a great friend as well,' Scheffler said. Scottie Scheffler poses with the Claret Jug on the 18th green after winning The Open. Photograph:'I had a couple years out here on Tour where I didn't putt as well as I felt I could have. I knew it was in there. It was a matter of figuring out the right things to go and find it. 'Phil's been just tremendous for me. Kind of helped me be more athletic, giving me the confidence I need to go out there and just be committed to what I'm doing.' Kenyon helped with green reading and helped change his grip, but the mallet putter particularly helped him to line up his putts. Having ranked 162nd in 'Strokes Gained Putting' in 2023, losing 0.301 strokes per round, he is 22nd on the PGA Tour now, gaining an average of 0.362 strokes per round. That is almost 2.5 strokes per tournament better on the greens than he was, often the difference between winning and losing. 'You know me, I get asked a question and I give an honest answer. Honest to a fault,' McIlroy said a few weeks later as Scheffler started a run that would lead to 11 PGA Tour victories, three Majors, an Olympic gold medal and an unassailable lead in the world rankings. On Sunday, he said Scheffler was the bar that the rest were all trying to get to. McIlroy may have helped unleash a beast that he wishes was back in its cage.
