OLYMPIC ROUNDUP : Thompson Pulls Up in 100, Retires

In took only five seconds for Daley Thompson to realize his track and field career was over.

In a last-ditch effort to qualify for his fifth Olympic Games in the decathlon, Thompson pulled a leg muscle in Thursday’s first event, the 100 meters. The decathlon world record-holder and two-time Olympic gold medal winner pulled up in pain five seconds into the race and then retired.

“I wouldn’t change anything,” Thompson said. “Nothing at all.”

Except maybe the end.

The man once called the world’s greatest living athlete, finished his career running before about 30 spectators in a meet set up by British track officials to see if Thompson could qualify for the Barcelona Olympics.

Halfway through the 100, Thompson stopped, clutched the back of his right leg and told Coach Frank Dick he had a pulled muscle.

“It’s a big disappointment, but it’s one of those things,” Thompson said. “No one has a divine right. If you’re not good enough, you don’t go. At the end of the day, I wasn’t good enough.”

Thompson won Olympic titles in 1980 and 1984--when he set the world record of 8,847 points in Los Angeles--and was fourth at Seoul.

John Stockton has been cleared by Utah Jazz team doctors to play for the U.S. basketball team at Barcelona later this month.

Stockton suffered a broken right leg in a collision with teammate Michael Jordan during the Tournament of the Americas at Portland, Ore. He hasn’t played since.

Norwegian shot putter Lars Nilsen, a bronze medalist at last year’s World Championships, faces a lifetime ban from track and field after testing positive for drugs a second time after a meet at Fredrikstad on May 9, it was reported in Oslo.

Nilsen, 27, was suspended from 1987-89 after a doping test showed traces of anabolic steroids.

An athlete who tests positive twice receives an automatic lifetime ban from the International Amateur Athletic Federation, the world governing body for the sport.

Natalya Artyomova, 29, of the Commonwealth of Independent States, one of the world’s top middle distance runners, reportedly tried to manipulate drug samples at the Bislett Games in Oslo last weekend and could be suspended by the IAAF.

Lars-Martin Kaupang, who worked as the special observer for the International Amateur Athletic Federation during Saturday’s meet, confirmed the report at a news conference Thursday.

Mary Slaney, suffering from a virus, withdrew from her planned confrontation against Zola Pieterse in a 2,000-meter race at the TSB track and field meet in London.

The two were to compete today in their first meeting in seven years.