The Olympics—where sometimes even one of your fastest performances just isn’t good enough. Lolo Jones finished a disappointing fourth place in Tuesday’s 100-meter hurdles, only a 10th of a second short of a medal.
Jones is perhaps the United States’ most publicized athlete at the London Olympic Games, for both her accomplishments and personal life, the latter of which informed some highly critical media pieces about her. A tearful Jones spoke with Savannah Guthrie on the Today Show, calling out the New York Times for having “ripped me to shreds,” just before her big race. “They didn’t even do their research, calling me the Anna Kournikova of track,” she said. “I have the American record. I am the American record holder indoors, I have two world indoor titles. Just because I don’t boast about these things, I don’t think I should be ripped apart by media.”
Just like the gods of sport, the media giveth, and they taketh away.
