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Groton Daily Independent
Saturday, July 29, 2017 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 029 ~ 58 of 67
Many residents want to see Aliso Canyon permanently shuttered. They have held boisterous protests at the facility’s gate, at public meetings and demonstrated in red T-shirts Friday that said “Shut it down.” “It’s very scary,” Porter Ranch resident Richard Mathews said after the hearing. “So many people are feeling such terrible symptoms from this. People are still getting sick, and if they start the injections, if
they increase the pressure 60 percent as expected, it increases the risk to all of us enormously.”
Usain Bolt is down to his last, blazing curtain call By EDDIE PELLS, AP National Writer
Muhammad Ali stood alone on many fronts, but Joe Frazier, George Fore- man and a few others still stood toe- to-toe with him in the ring. Jack Nick- laus contended with Arnold Palmer on the front end of his career and Tom Watson on the back end.
Usain Bolt? Nobody has been a match for him, on or off the track.
The man who reshaped the record book and saved his sport is saying goodbye. His sprints through the 100 meters and Jamaica’s 4x100 relay at the world championships, which begin Friday, are expected to produce golds yet again, and leave track with this dif cult question: Who can possibly take his place?
“You would have to have someone who’sdominating,andnoone’sdoing that,”saidMichaelJohnson,thefor- merworld-recordholderat200and 400 meters and perhaps the sport’s brighteststarinthe1990s.“You’d have to have someone who has that something special like he has, in terms of personality and presence. You’re not going to have that.”
In this Aug. 18, 2016, le photo, Usain Bolt celebrates winningthegoldmedalinthemen’s200-meter naldur- ingtheathleticscompetitionsofthe2016SummerOlym- picsattheOlympicstadiuminRiodeJaneiro,Brazil.The man who reshaped the record book and saved his sport alongthewayissayinggoodbye.Hisrunsthroughthe100 meters and Jamaica’s 4x100 relay at next week’s world championships are expected to produce golds yet again, along with leaving people to wonder who could possibly take his place. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip, File)
Though he will not retire unde-
feated, Bolt stands in the rarest of company: an athlete who was never beaten when the stakes were greatest. And with a showman’s air as transcendent as his raw speed — Chicken McNuggets for dinner, his fabled “To The World” pose for dessert and dancing away at nightclubs till dawn — he hoisted his entire, troubled sport upon his shoulders and made it watchable and relevant.
Since his era of dominance began in 2008, Bolt went undefeated at the Olympics — 9 for 9 — in the 100, 200 and 4x100 relay. (One of those medals was stripped because of doping by a teammate on the 2008 relay team.) He has set, and re-set, the world records in all three events. His marks of 19.30, then 19.19, at 200 meters, were once thought virtually impossible. He set a goal of breaking 19 seconds in Rio de Janeiro last summer, and when he came up short, it became clear the barrier will be safe for years.
At the world championships, Bolt’s only “loss” came in 2011, when he was disquali ed for a false start in the 100 meters. Jamaican teammate Yohan Blake won the title that year, as well as the Jamaican national championships at 100 and 200 meters leading to the London Olympics. Heading back to London ve years later, Blake is an afterthought.