RIO DE JANEIRO -- It shouldnt be that hard. The Americans make it look that way.The latest U.S. debacle in the Olympic relays reached its end point Saturday, when track officials rejected the protest from the American team and upheld their disqualification from the 4x100-meter mens relay race from the night before. The United States crossed the line third, but Canada keeps the bronze medal.At issue: The baton exchange between Mike Rodgers and Justin Gatlin between the first and second legs.According to rule 170.7 of the track and field handbook, its illegal for the baton to touch the second runners hand before it passes the yellow line that marks the start of the zone. Overhead shots of the exchange show Gatlin doing just that.The U.S. men now are medal-less in the last three Olympics in a race that was virtually made for the country with the deepest collection of sprint talent, even with Usain Bolt running against them. Tyson Gay and Darvis Doc Patton fumbled the baton in 2008. In 2012, the U.S. held on for silver, only to get that one stripped because of Gays subsequent doping positive.In all, this equals 10 finishes outside the medals since 1995 in either world championships or the Olympics.I couldnt even shed a tear I was so shocked, said Gay, who has been around for many of the most recent failures. I couldnt even cry. Damn, bad luck again. Its weird. I dont get it.It gets shoved in their face, time and time again. In a feature previewing the race, NBC had four of the U.S. sprinters look at some of the nightmares that have preceded them.Unfortunately, weve come to be defined by failure, said the coach, Dennis Mitchell.Mitchells naming to his post raised some eyebrows, not only because hes been part of the problems of the recent past, but because he has a doping history, too.Carl Lewis, who won two Olympic relay golds, has been a longtime critic of the way USA Track and Field does relays. Asked about the issue in March, he laid out the problems, saying the U.S. relay game is fraught with infighting among agents, volunteers and administration.USATF needs to stop the joking, stop the crap, Lewis said. What they need to do is get a retired college coach whos going to tell the agent to kiss off, whos going to tell the athletes to get in line and who knows how to put together a relay.Some say the pressure of holding off Bolt, year in and year out, takes its toll and takes people out of their comfort zone.True, but there was one little problem with that Friday.Take Bolt out of it, and we still wouldve been beaten by Japan, said Mike Tucci, a high school coach in Delaware, who has produced champion after champion, often by not even using his fastest runners.Not a single man on Japans second-place team made an individual sprint final at the Olympics. Japan focused on winning a medal in the relays, perfected the handoff and took it to the line. Legally.Not that all has gone wrong for the United States, either in the relays or the track meet itself. Even without the mens relay, the United States entered the weekend with 27 medals, on pace to surpass the 29 it took home from London four years ago.The womens team won the 4x100, but it overcame a lot along the way.First, there was a dropped baton in preliminaries that came because a Brazilian runner bumped Allyson Felix in the passing zone. That led to a protest, then a bizarre rerun of the heat, alone on the track.The U.S. made the final, and Tianna Bartoletta, Felix, English Gardner and Tori Bowie blew away Jamaica for gold. They recorded the second-fastest time in history (41.01 seconds) despite a less-than-perfect exchange between Gardner and Bowie, who had to reach back twice to get the baton.It helps being so much faster, and USATF was touting the success story with this fun anecdote: Shortly before the warm-up, Gardner opened her bag to discover there was only one shoe in there. As luck had it, Felix had an extra pair -- although a half-size bigger -- and loaned it to Gardner.Thats a great story, but only because they won.For the men, let the second-guessing begin.Some of my kids are coming up to me mad, saying `Why do we keep losing? said Tucci, the high school coach. When it happens once, its a mental thing or a goofy situation. When its twice, you cringe a little bit. When it happens three or four times, you start thinking its systematic. Hunter Pence Jersey . -- Patrick Reed got an early start in golf. Pablo Sandoval Jersey . 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PARIS -- Sunday morning, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and French President Francois Hollande retraced the path of the terrorists who attacked the city. At each of their six stops, they tugged a French flag away from the face of a marble plaque engraved with the names of the dead. The names were read aloud. In front of the Bataclan concert hall, where 90 people were murdered, the recitation took more than four minutes.When the streets in front of the Bataclan opened up again around midday, people were ready with candles and bouquets wrapped in cellophane. For close to an hour, they squeezed, one at a time, through a narrow opening in a barricaded area flanked by police and ringed by photographers and cameramen. Every gesture was documented several times over. Paris conducted its wake in a fishbowl -- the price it pays for being Paris.On Sunday afternoon, balloons floated upward from the town hall of the 11th arrondissement, the hardest-hit part of the city. Illuminated paper lanterns floated down the Canal Saint-Martin at dusk, accumulating along one bank, where the current pushed them. In the early evening at Le Barometre, a restaurant a couple of blocks from the Bataclan where panicked people took refuge the night of the shootings, owner Veronique Tafanel handed singer Cathy Gourier a message she had written to her customers. Thank you for your presence today, Gourier began.By 9 p.m. Sunday, it was 48 degrees, raw and misting at a nearby three-way intersection a year to the hour after two cafes there were raked with automatic gunfire. Most of the sidewalk tables were full under the diffuse glow of heat lamps.The curlicue writing on the chalkboard at La Bonne Biere advertised grilled flank steak avec frites et salade for 14.90 euros.People ate facing the street, as usual.This week, delegations from the three would-be hosts of the 2024 Summer Games -- Budapest, Los Angeles and Paris -- will present their cases to the General Assembly of the Association of National Olympic Committees in Doha, Qatar. Hidalgo will be there, transitioning from Sundays somber ceremonial duty to her own outward-facing lobbying effort for the city. The International Olympic Committee will make its selection in September 2017.Three previous Paris bid campaigns have been checkmated in the past 20 years. If this one succeeds, Paris would host on the centennial of the 1924 Games, an event elevated to myth through the portrayal of running rivals Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams in Chariots of Fire.Sentiment is a flimsy asset, as Greece, birthplace of the modern Olympics, found out when it lost the 1996 Games to Atlanta. Were perfectly conscious that its not enough, said Etienne Thobois, the CEO of the Paris 2024 bid committee. Were turned toward the future, not 1924. And its also a date that reminds us of how long weve waited.Its striking to see Paris ardent pursuit of the Summer Olympics, inviting the world in while its still in the recovery process, and how little internal resistance its bid has encountered. Financial overruns, human rights concerns, corruption and doping scandals have eroded the image of the Olympic industry and diminished the appeal for host cities. In this bid cycle alone, Bostons candidacy fizzled, Hamburgs citizens rebelled via referendum and Rome dropped out.Three terrorist attacks -- two in Paris and one in Nice -- in less than two years have dented tourism and prompted the government to extend the state of emergency status that grants sweeping powers to law enforcement. Authorities struggling to manage teeming migrant/refugee camps in Paris and the northern port of Calais took a hard line in recent weeks and cleared them out.Despite those obvious stresses, Paris 2024 opposition has been muted and scarce. Support has largely crossed party lines so far, with a presidential election looming next spring. Thobois and other bid leaders are pitching Paris plans as logical and efficient, an incentive to accelerate, rather than create, housing and transit development in the near suburbs that is already on the drawing board.We dont think theres a lot of risk in our particular case, said Thobois, a former Olympic badminton player.On a more symbolic level, the bid represents the resolve to finish something conceived before last years siege, at the very place where the Paris 2024 Games would open and close.The terrorists who launched multiple attacks in Paris on Nov. 13, 2015, intended the Stade de France, where Frances mens soccer team was facing Germany in a friendly match, to be a slaughterhouse. After the plan was thwarted by a vigilant security guard and an observant ticket-taker, three suicide bombers blew themselves up outside the walls of the stadium in the northern suburb of Saint-Denis, killing one and injuring 56.France has played several times in the 80,000-seat stadium since then, including last summers loss to Portugal in the Euro 16 final. Fridays World Cup qualifier against Sweden didnt have nearly as much competitive meaning, but its positioning on this particular weekend gave it weight, and it sold out.It was still a soccer match, not a memorial service, and the crowd packing the RER B line platform at the Gare du Nord station surged impatiently toward the doors when the train stopped. The forward momentum lifted one woman off her feet, propelling her into the car and downward into the floor on one knee. A man helped her up and apologized for the mob mentality, then cracked a beer in a paper bag.As the train sped toward Saint-Denis, there was a sharp but indistinct sound -- maybe glass breaking, maybe metal catching, maybe someone stepping on a crackly plastic bottle. People instinctively whipped their heads around. A low, mocking adolescent voice shouted, On va tous mourir! (Were all going to die!)The fans got off the train at the stadium and did what fans do at sporting events every day, consciously or not: They bet it wouldnt happen that night. They bet on the people who would peer into their purses and pat their ribcages. They bet on percentages.In the stands, Dehbia Yata, a 38-yeaar-old telecommunications engineer, said, I dont come often, but I came tonight to say, We are here, we are standing and we have to go on.ddddddddddddShe and most people hushed voluntarily after joining in a full-throated version of La Marseillaise. Distant, ambient noise drifted into the vacuum of the official moment of silence, something vaguely percussive, like a brush on a snare drum. It took a few seconds to realize it was traffic coursing by on the nearby A1 and A86 highways. People usually pass through this place, headed somewhere else.One of the most ambitious aspects of the 2024 bid is to change that dynamic. A new Olympic-size pool -- the only major competition facility Paris lacks -- the athletes village, media housing and several temporary venues are slated for construction in Saint-Denis.We arent building any white elephants that will be on the autoroute exit and wont be used once the games are done, said Stephane Troussel, president of the Seine-Saint-Denis council, whose department, or subregion, includes the city.Troussel, 46, grew up nearby and vibrates with enthusiasm about the bids potential to ramp up the quality of life in this industrial, polyglot area that is the youngest and one of the poorest in the country.The city is also irrevocably associated with the terrorist attacks. The leader and two other members of the group responsible for planning the spree died in a massive police raid five days later in the heart of the downtown area.A huge swath of playing fields and parkland earmarked for Paris 2024 use is a 10-minute bus ride away. On one clear, chilly day there last week, a group of young French-Pakistani men played cricket, French-Senegalese soccer players scrimmaged and a woman wearing a Muslim headscarf kicked a ball back and forth with her son.A group of young French kids of various colors walking toward the basketball court stopped to talk. Moussa, 14, said he hoped the Olympics would come to his hometown.I think there will be a lot of tourists, the economy will grow, maybe, and people wont be afraid of Saint-Denis anymore and their stereotypes that we all deal drugs or that there will be attacks all the time, he said.Sting reopened the Bataclan on Saturday night in a show that sold out in minutes. In the coming weeks, the club has scheduled African icon Youssou NDour, British legend Marianne Faithfull, and Israeli-French singer Yael Naim, who did one of her first gigs at the Bataclan.Naim and two other French female vocalists sang Jacques Brels Quand on na que lamour (When love is all we have) at last years national ceremony of mourning, to dignitaries and family members seated in the vast, echoing stone courtyard of the Invalides military museum complex.Im ready to welcome any emotions that will come, Naim said in a phone interview of her upcoming Bataclan show with partner David Donatien. I think it will be a mix of different emotions, and that will be fine.It became very precious to be able to continue to celebrate life this way, to go out and make music and share strong emotions together. People continued to come and fill the concerts, and that was a statement.The attacks altered the consciousness of Paris performers and audiences alike. Soul-funk band Urban Groove Unit canceled a date scheduled for the next night out of respect. But drummer David Lamy, who plays with several different bands, played his next gig at Paris famous Olympia concert hall and had to fight the unpleasant, selfish thought that he might need to protect himself.It wasnt in my head the whole concert, just two or three moments, Lamy said after Urban Groove Unit played the cozy LEntrepot club in the 14th arrondissement last week. He said the nerves passed quickly.Sophie, a 40-year-old working single mother, does not want her real first name used. Her former live-in partner was among the Bataclan victims. For days afterward, she compulsively watched footage of people fleeing the club, stopping when she realized she was still hoping to see him emerge.Im not one of those people who said, Lets go, Im not afraid, Sophie says as her cup of green tea with bergamot steeps in a café near Montmartre. I didnt have that reflex. Ill be very honest. I was afraid.Sustained fear gave way to anxiety that lurked and pounced more randomly. Waiting in line on the street outside a nightclub as security searched patrons one by one, Sophie felt a flash of anger: She felt more exposed, not less. She melted down in tears at the first big concert she attended at the Zenith hall, thinking, Im doing what he was doing.She doesnt believe an event like the Olympics would make Paris more of a target. Terrorists are more likely to hit people going about their daily routines, she said, because that has a greater impact. But if I had a vote, I would vote no, she added. Sports has become a huge industry, and Im not inclined to contribute to it.Veronique Tafanel feels differently. Itll help us to move on, she said.Within an hour of the attacks at the Bataclan, police arrived at the door of Le Barometre and told her they needed the space cleared to use as a command post. Tafanel ushered the traumatized people who had taken shelter in the restaurant up a back staircase to her apartment and told them they could stay as long as they needed to. Some didnt leave until dawn. Tafanel went downstairs and started cleaning.She lost 20 percent of her business while the Bataclan was shut down, but that isnt her chief concern. Tafanel has enough on her hands simply trying to be present instead of dwelling on the near inevitability that evil will reload.Sunday night, she stood quietly as Gourier, who performs regularly at Le Barometre, read her words to the 30 or so people eating and drinking as they listened: We have the audacity to smile. We have the audacity to laugh. This is our response.Gourier resumed her set, beckoning through the glass at people outside. Come in! she said. Its great in here! Camo China NFL Jerseys Disocunt Football Jerseys Cheap NFL Gear Wholesale Jerseys 2020 Cheap Nike NFL Jerseys Cheap Authentic Jerseys Cheap NFL Jerseys ' ' '