Shawn Crawford

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Men’s Athletics
Olympic medal record
Gold	2004 Athens	200 m
Silver	2004 Athens	4x100 m Relay

Shawn Crawford (born January 14, 1978) is a sprint athlete from the United States.

1 Biography
2 Major achievements
3 Video Interview
4 External links

[edit] Biography

Shawn Crawford was born in Van Wyck, South Carolina. He attended Clemson University from where he claimed 11 All-America honors and three National Championships.

In a successful 2001 started the year with victory at the Indoor World Championships in the 200 m. Crawford then went to the World Athletics Championships where he tied with Kim Collins of Saint Kitts and Nevis for the 200 m. bronze medal. He then travelled to the Goodwill Games where he claimed his second gold medal of the year.

The next two years of Crawford's career were most memorable for his outrageous antics and lack of focus. At a 2002 meet in Milan, Crawford put on a Phantom of the Opera mask just prior to the beginning of his 200m race. The mask became dislodged during the race obstructing his vision and causing him to run out of his lane and be disqualified. Crawford claimed to have tested the mask in advance by sticking his head out of a car window while wearing it.

Later that same year at another race in Italy, Crawford purposely false-started to charge it to the entire field since he'd never done it before. Crawford accidentally false started a second time, earning another disqualification.

In January 2003, Crawford starred in an episode of the FOX TV show "Man vs. Beast," in which he raced a zebra and a giraffe in the 100m on dirt. In the first race Crawford easily bested the giraffe (which was separated from him by a metal fence and may have been a bit disoriented). The zebra race was very close with the zebra slowly pulling ahead for victory. Accusing the zebra of a false start, Crawford re-raced the zebra getting out of the blocks first and taking a lead. This caused the zebra to speed up, finishing in 9.9 seconds to Crawford's 10.8 second time. Later Crawford boasted to ESPN the Magazine, "Tell the Zebra I coulda whooped him." According to the USATF website Crawford refers to himself as "Cheetah Man".

Crawford has publicly expressed his desire to run in war paint and urges spectators to look out for him at every meet.

After the relatively unsuccessful and unfocused 2002 and 2003 he burst back in March of 2004 where he was fancied for the 60 m. world indoor title. Unfortunately he came up against an inform Jason Gardener from Great Britain who edged him into the silver medal position by just 3/100th's of a second.

In the trials for the 2004 Summer Olympics Shawn gained his place in the team by claiming third in the 100 m. with a personal best of 9.93 s. behind winner Maurice Greene and second placed Justin Gatlin but bettered that seven days later with first place in the 200 m. with a time of 19.99 s. this time pushing Gatlin into second with Bernard Williams taking third.

In June Shawn improved on his 100 m. personal best when running 9.88 s. in Eugene, Oregon, to leave him as a real medal contender for the Athens Games.

At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Crawford ran the 100m final in 9.89 finishing in 4th place just 0.04 seconds behind first place finisher, Justin Gatlin, his friend and training partner. That was the first race in history with 4 competitors under 9.9 seconds.

He went on to win the gold medal in the 200 m.

The 200m final was the most emotional race of the Games for the Greek crowd, many who had bought tickets prior to the Games in anticipation of seeing their leading athlete and sporting hero, Konstantinos Kenteris defend his 200m title. However, Kenteris' withdrawal on a missed doping test controversy before the athletics programme started, left many Greek fans in the crowd bitter and angry and the target of their anger was Crawford, who was seen by them to be the main beneficiary of Kenteris' absence ( prior to the Games, the 200m was anticipated as being a straight two man battle between Kenteris and Crawford ). When the athletes were initially getting ready to settle in their blocks, a chorus of boos rang out from the crowd and escalated into an unprecedented spectacle of them chanting "Ken-teris, Ken-teris" repeatedly for almost five minutes. This had a visibly shocking effect on the runners who were not able to contemplate starting the race until the tirade stopped.

Throughout this, Crawford maintained a quiet, detached dignity.

When the crowd finally quietened, the race began, but inevitably there was a false-start. The crowd immediately started chanting once more, knowing that if anyone false-started again, that athlete would be disqualified ( hoping Crawford would be the one to do so ). Knowing this, when race did occur, Crawford came out of the blocks in a pedestrian manner, 5th slowest according to official reaction times given, to ensure he wasn't going to be a potentially disqualified runner. Once that was achieved, he went on to win the race easily in 19.79s.

It has been speculated, that not for the extraordinary atmosphere around that race and with the normal aggressive start expected of a sub-9.90s runner, he was capable that day of joining only two other athletes who at the time had ever run under 19.70s for 200m.

Later, he claimed a silver as part of the US 4x100 m relay team.

During the 2006 Penn Relays 4x100m relay, Shawn engaged in more antics. After handing off to Justin Gatlin, who was anchoring the race, he re-accelerated and followed Justin for a few seconds.