Discus thrower had to contend with rough weather

Q: Carlinville High School graduate and Troy native Kelsey Card qualified for the Rio Olympics in the discus. Can you tell me how she finished? I never saw her on TV nor have I read an article on her since the Olympics ended, and I am curious to find out.

A: Whether the weather was the deciding factor, we’ll never know. But Mother Nature rained on Kelsey Card’s parade both literally and figuratively at the recent summer games, helping to produce a 25th-place finish in the qualifying round. Only the top 12 advanced to the finals.

Card, 23, came into the Rio Olympics after laying waste to her college competition last spring during her senior year at the University of Wisconsin. At the NCAA track and field national finals in Eugene, Ore., Card scored a fourth place in the shot put before launching the discus 208 feet 5 inches to beat her nearest rival by seven feet. The discus throw ranked 7th in NCAA history while her shot-put heave of nearly 60 feet 11 inches is now 10th on the all-time list. She went on to place third at the U.S. Olympic discus trials with a toss of 197-3.

“Kelsey was at her best today,” Mick Byrne, the Badgers’ director of track and field, said after Card’s NCAA title. “She looked like she was really enjoying herself out there.”

While she was undoubtedly overjoyed to be competing on the world stage, Card likely wishes it could have been under more favorable conditions. When it was time for the discus qualifying round on Aug. 15, the evening track and field program was delayed for more than 25 minutes because of strong winds and rain. Numerous throwers either fouled because of the slick conditions or landed their discuses in the nets because it was so wet. At the same time, the public address system was reportedly belting out “Singing in the Rain.”

If Card was singing, it was a sad tune. After fouling on her first attempt, she managed a throw of just 167 feet, 8.4 inches on her second. Needing a toss of 197.6 feet on her third and final attempt, Card managed only a 185.07 to finish 25th. It did, however, top the other two Americans — Shelbi Vaughn at 175 and Whitney Ashley, who fouled on all three attempts after winning the Olympic trials with a 204-2.

Croatia’s Sandra Perkovic wound up defending her Olympic gold medal with her toss of 227.07 feet — just over three inches longer than her winning throw in London in 2012. Had Card been able to match her NCAA-winning effort, she would have finished sixth in qualifying and earned a spot in the finals. In the shot put, Michelle Carter became the first American to win a gold medal in the event with her toss of 67.68 feet, an American record.

If you’re tired of the stories about disgraced U.S. swimmer Ryan Lochte, let me warm you heart with the story of Polish track and field star Piotr Malachowski.

Malachowski won the silver medal in the discus with a toss of about 221-6. When he heard of a 3-year-old Polish boy who needed treatment for eye cancer, Malachowski put his medal up for auction to raise money for the child to be flown to New York for surgery for his retinoblastoma.

The story has an even happier ending. When the bidding reached $19,000, Dominika and Sebastian Kulczyk, reportedly the richest couple in Poland, offered the $84,000 that Malachowski had set as his goal, allowing him to end the auction early. The total cost of the surgery is $126,000, but one-third already had been raised by the Polish foundation Siepomaga. The Kuczyks, a brother and sister who inherited their father’s fortune when he died in July 2015, are worth a combined $3.4 billion, according to Forbes magazine.

“We were able to show that together we can do wonders,” Malachowski wrote on his Facebook page. “My silver medal today is worth a lot more than a week ago. It is worth the life and health of a small Olek. It is our great shared success.”

Q. Perhaps as many as 25 years ago, I bought sets of lead crystal glasses for wine, mixed drinks and water. Now, I’d like to give them to my daughter, but with all the talk of the dangers of lead, I don’t want her family to be harmed. Is it safe to drink from lead crystal glasses?

A: Yes, under certain conditions, you can use leaded crystal glasses relatively safely. But if your daughter wants her family to be perfectly safe, she might want to show off your beautiful glassware in a china cabinet with the sign “For Display Purposes Only.”

As you obviously realize, crystal is prized for its glistening appearance, luxurious feel and just the whole idea of enjoying a fine cabernet at the end of the day from a crystal goblet. But it comes at a price. To acquire these attributes, British glassmaker George Ravenscroft in the 1600s started adding lead oxide to make what he first called “flint glass.” With the dangers yet to be discovered, crystal glass quickly became an art form around the world with lead making up to as much 33 percent of the glass.

In 1991 — perhaps about when you started buying yours — a study done at Columbia University and published in the British medical journal The Lancet found large amounts of lead in wine that had been stored in crystal decanters. Researchers found that this leaching of lead could begin within minutes of liquid being poured into glasses. The amounts were tiny at first, but after four months, levels ranged up to 5,333 micrograms per liter. (The Environmental Protection Association standard for drinking water is 15 micrograms per liter.) As a result, the Food and Drug Administration immediately issued the following recommendations:

Occasional use is probably safe, but not every day. Do not store foods for long periods of time — particularly alcoholic beverages and fruit juices with high acidity. Neither women of child-bearing age nor children should ever use them.

You would think plain water would be safe, but just the other day on KMOX I heard doctors recommend that people with lead pipes in older homes should run their taps for 30 seconds to a minute in the morning to flush water that had sat in them overnight, presumably acquiring lead. So, again, you’re likely OK using them occasionally, but don’t make it a habit. For a young family, it’s probably best they aren’t used at all. At least, they won’t be broken or chipped that way.

Today’s trivia

What U.S. vice president was first to use the abbreviated term “veep”?

Answer to Sunday’s trivia: The 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden, is remembered as a trend-setter in numerous ways. It was the first time athletes from all five continents competed, it featured a 198-mile bicycle race and it was the first to take advantage of a public-address system. But here’s something Bahamian Shaunae Miller was most thankful for two weeks ago as she lunged across the finish line ahead of the USA’s Allysson Felix in the 400-meter finals: The 1912 games were the first to use electric-timing devices and photo-finish cameras.

This story was originally published August 30, 2016 at 9:00 AM with the headline "Discus thrower had to contend with rough weather."