<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>EUGENE, Ore. -- Fortunately for fans, other sports don't need to account for wind or weather or any other conditions. When Tyson Gay initially crossed the finish line Sunday, he thought he had a world record in the 100 meters. Baseball officials don't say, Joe DiMaggio safely hit in 56 consecutive games, but it doesn't count as the record because 20 of those games were against the St. Louis Browns and Washington Senators, teams so bad they should have had Walter Matthau as a manager. Golf officials don't say Tiger Woods' U.S. Open score doesn't count because it was a sunny 78 degrees without humidity and so his drives carried farther. And swimming officials don't say, Michael Phelps' newest world record doesn't count because it was tide-aided by a full moon over Omaha. Paging Tom Dempsey ... the NFL just called. It's taking away your record for longest field goal. The wind was over the limit. Track officials, however, do monitor such things. And given the differences a tailwind can make in a performance, track officials must. So, when Tyson Gay blazed across the finish line in the 100-meter final Sunday at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials -- he did not ease up this time -- the crowd had two swift reactions. First, the fans looked to the Hayward Field scoreboard, where they saw "9.68," and gasped. Then, they looked at the official wind conditions on the board, where they saw a reading of 4.1 meters per second (about 9½ mph), and groaned. The wind was roughly twice the allowable speed for the time to count as a record. The run is estimated to have been the equivalent of a 9.86 nonaided time.</div> Full Story
