TRACK AND FIELD NOTEBOOK
Javelin Throwers Show Their Personality
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Saturday, July 5, 2008; Page E04
EUGENE, Ore., July 4 -- One guy paints his fingernails black and dyes his spiky hair a mix of blond, white, black and fluorescent pink.
Another is a balding, 47-year-old British expat with a beer belly and a habit of throwing fish.
These are some of the characters you can find among America's elite javelin throwers. The only drawback: neither Breaux Greer nor Roald Bradstock will be going to Beijing next month for the Olympics.
Both failed to qualify in Friday night's preliminaries, but made up for it by showcasing some of the most entertaining personalities this week at Hayward Field.
Greer, the U.S. record holder, eight-time American champion and Olympian in 2000 and '04, suffered from a sore shoulder, which hampered his throwing. "I wasn't ready to throw," Greer said. "It is what it is."
Was he upset that he won't be back at the Olympics? Not really, he said. He has another job. He just completed his second season as "Hurricane" on the television show "American Gladiators." He said he wasn't even sure if he'd be watching the Olympics.
"By that time I'll be trying to get 'Gladiator'-ready," Greer said. "Every bit of frustration I got out of this, I'm going to beat the [expletive] out of some competitors" on his TV show.
Bradstock, meantime, doesn't take his anger out on people; he likes to throw things. Despite having spina bifida diagnosed at age 6, he said he watched Bob Beamon in the 1968 Games and was determined to be an Olympian.
He qualified for the Olympics in 1984 (finished seventh) and '88 (didn't qualify for the finals) for Britain in the javelin, and was an alternate in 1992 for Britain, and for the United States in 1996, a year after he gained his citizenship.
That's not all Bradstock throws. He's tried a soccer ball, a golf ball, hard- and soft-boiled eggs, fish, even an iPod. His videos are an underground smash on YouTube.
The Guinness Book of World Records "has a lot of silly records," Bradstock said, "and I'm trying to get some."
Bradstock said he was invited by a bar on the Florida-Alabama border to throw a fish, a mullet to be exact, across the state line. He tossed it 196 feet 9 inches in front of a crowd that included television cameras. He said he was the lead story on the local news.
