ESPN Endurance Sports

KATMANDU, Nepal -- An 80-year-old Japanese mountaineer on Thursday became the oldest person to reach the top of Mount Everest -- although his record may last only a few days. An 81-year-old Nepalese man, who held the previous record, plans his own ascent next week.

Yuichiro Miura, who also conquered the 29,035-foot peak when he was 70 and 75, reached the summit at 9:05 a.m. local time Thursday, according to a Nepalese mountaineering official and Miura's Tokyo-based support team.

Miura and his son Gota called them from the summit, prompting his daughter Emili to smile broadly and clap her hands in footage on public broadcaster NHK.

"I made it!" Miura said over the phone. "I never imagined I could make it to the top of Mount Everest at age 80. This is the world's best feeling, although I'm totally exhausted. Even at 80, I can still do quite well."

The climbers planned to stick around the summit for about half an hour, take photos and then start to descend, his office said.

Nepalese mountaineering official Gyanendra Shrestha, at Everest base camp, confirmed that Miura had reached the summit, making him the oldest person to do so.

(Read full post)

GENEVA -- Cycling federation president Pat McQuaid says an independent panel will examine the allegations that the UCI was complicit in Lance Armstrong's doping.

McQuaid tells The Associated Press that senior UCI and World Anti-Doping Agency officials will meet in Russia next week to discuss potential appointments to a three-member expert panel.

He says longstanding claims about the UCI and Armstrong's relationship "absolutely will be addressed," including alleged collusion over suspicious test results and cash donations.

McQuaid says he's "very sure that the audit will show that there's nothing untoward ever been done with Armstrong."

McQuaid says the UCI will "in the coming weeks" send the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency laboratory results it requested of samples given by Armstrong during his career.

-- Associated Press

At the Wildflower Long Course Triathlon on May 4, defending champion Jesse Thomas came down the first steep downhill of the challenging 13.1-mile run course and thought, "Oh God, my foot does not feel very good."

Despite all of the adrenaline and excitement of capturing his third consecutive title, he was in significant pain, which he took as a pretty bad sign.

He spent the following week getting X-rays to discover a navicular stress fracture in his foot, an injury that first showed up more than 10 years ago at the end of his college running years at Stanford.

"It turns out [the fracture] is the same one from college that never healed," Thomas said. "It's been bugging me since I started training for triathlon about three years ago, but I've just modulated my training to deal with it. It flared up really bad on the Wildflower run, so I finally got a scan on it, and sure enough, still broken."

Because he started riding, went to grad school, and generally focused on other non-running activities after college, the fracture wasn't much of an issue for years. Even early on in his triathlon career, he was more concentrated on getting his other two sports up to speed, and running was naturally a lower priority. As he’s become a stronger all-around athlete, his coach Matt Dixon has helped him modify his run training to accommodate pain flare-ups. (Before at least four of his races last year, he took some time off running, and he rarely runs more than 20 miles a week.) For longevity in the sport, he says, surgery is the only real solution.

Thomas consulted with his doctor, Dixon and wife, Lauren Fleshman, and decided to undergo surgery this afternoon in Palo Alto, Calif. His doctor, who has performed the same procedure on many elite runners, told Thomas it would be better to deal with the fracture now instead of finishing the season and potentially allowing it to fully break, which would be much harder to bounce back from.

(Read full post)

SANTA ROSA, Calif. -- American Levi Leipheimer says he retired from professional cycling when his six-month ban for doping violations ended March 1 and he was unable to sign with a new team.

Leipheimer told The Press Democrat of Santa Rosa of his decision Sunday. His comments came after watching the final stage of the Tour of California, an event he won three straight times from 2007-2009.

The 39-year-old Leipheimer, from Butte, Mont., was fired by the Omega Pharma-Quick Step team in October after confessing to doping as part of the investigation that brought down Lance Armstrong. Leipheimer was Armstrong's teammate for five years during stints with the U.S. Postal Service, Astana and RadioShack teams before joining Quick Step last season.

-- Associated Press

DOHA, Qatar -- Anyone with a Google alert set for Nick Symmonds had to wake up one recent morning, read the following sentence, and have some serious questions about what is motivating the five-time U.S champion in the 800m these days.

From gossip columnist Liz Smith, "Two-time Olympian Nick Symmonds, an American middle-distance runner, is being pursued by ABC to become its new hot 'Bachelor' on the still-popular reality show."

While world-record holder David Rudisha is fresh off opening his season with a 400m PR of 45.15 and his Diamond League Doha 800m victory over the weekend, can Symmonds possibly think that chasing women is the best thing for his career right now?

In an interview with Race Results Weekly, he said flatly that he doesn't believe throwing his hat into "The Bachelor" ring will hurt.

"When my publicist, Hal Lifson, contacted me to let me know that the producers of 'The Bachelor' were possibly interested in me for the upcoming season, I thought a lot about it and had some mixed feelings," Symmonds told Race Results Weekly. "On the one hand it would pretty much completely strip my life of any privacy I have left, but on the other it would be a once in a lifetime opportunity and a chance to maybe meet my future wife.

"I then also thought how it might affect my track career. I know there will be people who would say negative things about my decision to appear on the show, but these are likely the same people who repeatedly told me I would never break 1:43 for 800m in my life. Very simply put, if I listened to these kinds of people, I would not be able to do my job well or live my life happily."

Lately, living happily has meant striving for success in both his professional and personal lives.

Last summer, in the midst of preparing for the U.S. Olympic Trials, Symmonds very publicly courted socialite Paris Hilton, first by writing to her father, hotel magnate Richard Hilton, to request permission to date his daughter, then by flying from Oregon to California to buy her a mint mojito in The Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

(Read full post)