OMAHA –- Had a chat in the mixed zone this morning about the man of the hour -- no, not birthday boy Michael Phelps -- but Gary Hall Jr., who managed to steal the spotlight on Day 1 without even hitting the water.
Hall, in an understatement, is a one-man headline machine. Those of us who have covered him since 1996 consider that a good thing … mostly. But my colleague, a person I consider an expert on all things Gary, was pointing out that Hall is practically a full-time beat by himself.
We were trying to think of an apt comparison and he came up with an excellent one: Charles Barkley.
Leave a media scrum involving Gary, or Sir Charles, at your own peril.
Hall stirred the pot in a long media session on Sunday, asserting that doping in swimming was on the rise (his gut feeling) and assailed the anti-doping agencies as inadequate. He then took aim at swimmer Amy Van Dyken, a multiple gold medalist and drew a comparison to imprisoned sprinter Marion Jones.
"She's inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame and the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame, and Marion Jones goes to jail," Hall said at a news conference. "The only difference was that Marion Jones admitted it, but they were both on the same list."
He was speaking about the BALCO investigation, in which Van Dyken appeared before a federal grand jury in 2003 but was not charged by authorities. Her testimony has never been revealed.
Beth Harris of AP contacted Van Dyken for a response to Hall’s comments and received an e-mail from her, calling the accusations "ridiculous" and "slanderous, outrageous, and unfounded!!!"
You might say the only thing she has been convicted of is bad behavior, often spitting into an opponent’s lane as a psych-out gesture before races.
But Hall can’t be completely ignored. He voiced his suspicions about Jones at the 2004 Olympic swim trials in Long Beach and spoke about the ensuing firestorm in an interview in Omaha earlier this month with The Times and USA Today.
"I got hate mail from the article you wrote," Hall said. "People accused me of being a racist. It was terrible. I felt horrible. It seemed pretty obvious to me. Maybe because I spent my entire life really paying attention to athletic performance.
"I’ve seen first-hand incredible performances from clean athletes and from dirty athletes. With enough time, as many years as you have, you can start to sense the difference. You’re not always right. But I have been right many times before and people seem to forget that."
He even took a joking shot at himself. Hall tested positive for marijuana, not a performance-enhancing substance, and was asked how he approached the issue of supplements.</p>
"Since I tested positive for marijuana, I’ve completely been paranoid, which is strange since it seems to be the opposite effect," he said. "I was completely paranoid because that was a case where I didn’t know what the rules were….Ever since then, I’ve been so cautious about everything I put in. Before the last Olympics, I was taking protein and Vitamin C and that was it."
-- Lisa Dillman
Top Photo: Gary Hall Jr. comes up for air during a practice run a few weeks ago. Credit: Bob Care/Florida Keys News Bureau via Getty Images
Inset: Amy Van Dyken as she won gold in 1996. Credit: Los Angeles Times
EUGENE, Ore. -- An odd footnote to the women's 800-meter finals.
Connecticut 
