Bob Paul - thanks for the memories

Bob Paul's years as press chief at the U.S. Olympic Committee came well before my time covering the movement. Even so, when I started on the beat in 1998, he made a point of introducing himself. If I ever needed to know anything about the early years of the USOC, he said, be sure to call. If he didn't know the answer, he said, maybe he could help point me in the right direction.

Bob died last Friday. He was 93.

Over the last several months, the American Olympic scene has lost the likes of George Steinbrenner, Bud Greenspan, Dorothy Franey Langkop and, now, C. Robert Paul.

It's worth taking a moment or two, here at what is still the start of this new century, to think back on the incredible span of Olympic history that got us to where we are now, and to some of the people who delivered the USOC to where it is today -- indeed, got it to Colorado Springs from New York, from Olympic House on Park Avenue.

Bob Paul is one them, one of the few who was there at the beginning of the modern USOC.

When I was a (much) younger writer, it was not uncommon for editors to be at their desks smoking big fat cigars. Bob was one of those kind of guys.

Mike Moran, who succeeded Bob as the USOC's spokesman, has written a fantastic tribute to Bob. It's here, and you can almost smell the cigar smoke.

Reading Mike's piece, you'll also laugh out, affectionately, at the stories of how Bob would sleep in his office. Or how, when he would go home, it wasn't to some place in or around Manhattan -- he commuted to Philly.

Or how, when he moved west to Colorado, he still never drove, his wife dropping him off at the office before 7 in the morning in a huge Pontiac Bonneville they had picked up somewhere, then coming back most evenings to pick him up.

Bob was, as I would learn, an amazing story-teller.

Did you know, for instance, that the 1920 Antwerp Olympic gold medal featherweight freestyle match was not only between two Americans but, indeed, an all-Ivy League final? Bob Paul knew. It was among the first stories he told me:

Charles Ackerly, former captain of the Cornell University team, defeated Sam Gerson, the former captain of the Penn team, for the gold medal.

The amazing thing, when you think about it, is not that Bob knew such stories. Of course he did. He was steeped in Olympic and Ivy League lore. To call him "old-school" would be gentle.

The truly amazing thing is that such a man not only could but would leave the East for Colorado Springs to help build up the USOC.

Of course he and the others -- Col. F. Don Miller, Baaron Pittenger, Jerry Lace, to name three of the 10 who set out in what might as well have been a covered wagon --  had a mandate. Nonetheless, to do what they did takes vision and a special courage. It took belief in something a lot bigger than the Ivy League.

Here's how desperate it was for some in that original group of 10. The office manager, James McHugh, one of those who made the trip out from New York, wore a watch on his left arm that was still set to New York time. On his right wrist he wore another watch set to Colorado Springs time. McHugh lasted a year on Mountain time before retreating to the sanctuary and comfort of Nathan's Famous and Broadway.

Bob Paul, though, persevered. He learned to love the West. After he formally retired from the USOC in 1990, he became its informal archivist, historian and a special assistant to the executive director.

So thanks, Bob, wherever you may be now, however it is this gets to you. The Olympic scene is a lot better because you and the others took an enormous leap of faith.

XC skier Kikkan Randall on a roll

Three years ago, Kikkan Randall won her first World Cup race. This was when many around the world could hardly imagine an American winning a World Cup event in cross-country skiing, and for good reason. An American hadn't done much of note since Bill Koch, and that went way back to the early 1980s. So Randall winning -- that was a really, really big deal. Randall won again this past weekend.

The reality is that Randall, 28, of Anchorage, Alaska, is now good enough that she's capable of winning anytime she lines it up. She's consistent enough that her weekend victory shot her to the top of the World Cup sprints points standings.

Perhaps the most profound sign of such progress is the way she talks about it all. She said Monday on the telephone, matter-of-factly, "For me, it has been a steady progression."

Cross-country skiing is, like biathlon and Nordic combined, one of those endeavors that takes time, funding and faith to get results.

At the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games, it all came together for the Nordic combined program. Fourteen years after the decision to go all-in, the U.S. won four Olympic medals.

The biathlon program didn't win any medals in Vancouver -- but all signs are pointing in the right direction. For a time last season, Tim Burke wore the yellow jersey emblematic of the tour's points leader. This year, Susan Dunklee has steadily been moving along in the standings.

Similarly, the U.S. cross-country ski team didn't win any Vancouver medals.

But -- Vancouver was hardly a failure for the program or for Kikkan Randall.

The 2010 Games were her third.

In Salt Lake City, her first Games, she finished 44th in the sprint. In Torino, ninth. In Vancouver, eighth.

Then again, by way of explanation, the 2010 Olympic sprint used the classical style of cross-country skiing; Randall's best results have come using the freestyle, or skate, form.

So to finish eighth -- that was, as Kikkan put it, "an incredible breakthrough."

During the 2009 season, she took silver in the freestyle sprint race at the world championships.

Before this past weekend she already had been on the podium twice this season. Then, back in Liberec, the Czech Republic, on the same course where she won the 2009 world championships silver, she held off Hanna Falk of Sweden and Celine Brun-Lie of Norway for the win.

During that 2009 race, it snowed. This past weekend, it rained and they had to salt the course.

In 2009, Randall's strategy was to lead from the front. This time around, she said she sat back just a little bit.

This is how an experienced pro does it -- in different conditions and with different strategies.

The difference, of course, is that now we are talking about an American.

It takes a long time to get there. But Americans can get there, too.

"This is something I had in the back of my mind 10 years ago when I seriously committed to being a full-time ski racer," she said. "I just had this feeling I could do it. It was just an inkling. To now be 10 years forward and be in this position, it's incredible. It literally is the realization of a dream."

2020 -- fairness in IOC rules?

LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- The International Olympic Committee here this week announced a series of seemingly benign rules designed to guide the process by which it will, in 2013, select the city that will stage the 2020 Summer Games. If 2013 seems a long time away, 2020 seems almost silly. A first-grader would be just about to start his or her junior year in high school by the time the opening ceremony of those 2020 Games rolls around.

That's how far ahead the IOC works. It has to. The Games, particularly the Summer Games, are a multi-faceted event that involves government, business, volunteers, fans and, of course, athletes. It is further noting the obvious to observe that a Games also requires billions of dollars, among considerable other resources.

The IOC is thus only being practical, indeed judicious, to promulgate rules. The issue at hand is whether these rules,  announced on the occasion of the IOC's first policy-making executive board meeting of 2011, will indeed prove benign.

Without question, the 2020 rules illustrate just how incredibly differently the IOC can move in the bid and campaign spheres than does FIFA, international soccer's governing body.

At first glance, the IOC rules would seem innocuous enough.

By the end of this month, the IOC is due to send a letter with the 2020 timelines to the more than 200 national Olympic committees.

A letter is supposed to then go out on May 16 asking for the names of interested cities. Already, the Italian National Olympic Committee has said it will nominate Rome. Other cities that may yet be in the mix: Durban, South Africa; Tokyo; Madrid; Istanbul; Doha, Qatar; Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

A bid from the United States seems unlikely. Not impossible but, at this moment, improbable.

For the first time, a prospective bid city must comply with World Anti-Doping Agency rules and accept the jurisdiction of the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Then comes the kicker.

Let's say a prospective bidder wants to stage the 2020 Games outside what the IOC now calls the "normal Olympic Games period," meaning between July 15 through August 31.

That would-be bid has until July 29, 2011, to tell the IOC it wants to go outside the normal dates.

In turn, the IOC will come back a month later -- by Aug. 29 -- "regarding WADA compliance, CAS and the proposed dates."

This is where things might very well get very interesting, a long, long way before the Sept. 7, 2013, vote itself -- in Buenos Aires -- for the 2020 winner.

In the 2016 bid contest, the IOC allowed Doha to stay in the race for months and gave it solid technical scores but then declined to pass it through to the final round -- the so-called "candidature" phase, where cities ultimately go before the voters. The alleged reason: it's too hot in Qatar.

That didn't seem to bother FIFA, particularly once the Qataris proved they could cool the stadiums down to temperatures in the high 70s with new technology. And of course Qatar won the 2022 World Cup.

For 2020, these new rules give the IOC the flexibility -- that is, if it were so inclined -- to cut Doha (or any place, for that matter) much earlier in the process than was the case in the 2016 campaign.

Asked by a Brazilian journalist Thursday about how FIFA and the IOC assess temperatures in Doha, Rogge said at a news conference,

"On the issue of temperature, I think you have to compare apples with apples and pears with pears.

"When Doha, when Qatar was bidding [for 2016], they made the proposal to organize the games at the end of October, beginning of November. The temperature then was much too high. The proposal of FIFA is one of December [and] January, when the temperature is lower, so there is no discrepancy between the two. I don't think that FIFA would consider to organize the games in October, November …"

Well, not really. The Qatar proposal was, like all the other 2022 proposals, for mid-summer. Which the IOC president was gently reminded of a few moments later.

To his credit, he immediately acknowledged he had misspoken:

"It is true … that the original foreseen dates of the FIFA World Cup for 2022 was mid-June, end of July, something like that, which is the traditional date of the FIFA World Cup. That is what is in the documents. FIFA followed it on the basis of this period with air-conditioned venues.

Then I think it was started with Franz Beckenbauer, who spoke first about the winter, and the whole discussion came about the winter. More I can not say. This is definitely not an issue for the IOC. I will not intervene into that. The issue for the IOC was different.

"The [2016] dates were end of October, November, which were still considered as being too hot for the athletes but also being also some type of hindrance for the international sporting calendar, and then ultimately we said no.

"The situation might be reviewed by an exception granted by the executive committee but ultimately the IOC will always want to have the Games to be organized in ideal climactic conditions. There's no way we are going to jeopardize the health of the athletes."

It's far from clear that the IOC is truly after "ideal" climactic conditions. I don't remember that being the case in hot and steamy Athens or Beijing. For that matter, I don't remember the weather in Vancouver being "ideal."

The issue is whether Doha, Dubai and other non-traditional bid candidates that are technically capable of staging the Games are going to get the chance to make their case -- to get the opportunity to go before the voters. That's what's at stake.

Time will tell.

--

As the Associated Press reported, the U.S. Olympic Committee and IOC opened talks here Tuesday in Lausanne in a bid to resolve a long-running dispute over the USOC's share of certain revenue shares.

The USOC delegation went home almost immediately afterward. At Thursday's news conference, Rogge called Tuesday's meetings "very constructive," and said, emphasizing that he was not giving a deadline, "I expect this to be solved much faster than was originally anticipated."

All that is to the good. The sooner the better, frankly.

On Thursday, as far as the AP's Steve Wilson and I could tell, he and I were the only Americans in or around the Chateau de Vidy, the IOC headquarters. Steve, who has been a good friend for a dozen years, is based overseas. So, apparently, the only American who actually lives in the United States and who was here at Vidy on Thursday was me.

Which is surely some sort of sad comment on the scope and nature of the relationship the United States of America has at this moment in time with the International Olympic Committee.

Rulon Gardner's (increasingly slimmer) profile of courage

Rulon Gardner has always displayed courage larger than life. Being larger than life -- that, it seems, is now the problem.

The man weighs -- or, to be more accurate, when he weighed in recently for his initial appearance on "The Biggest Loser" on NBC -- 474 pounds.

Even for a big man, and Rulon is a big man, that is way too big.

Nobody should weigh nearly a quarter of a ton.

That is obscene. For an Olympic champion -- indeed, one of the most amazing American Olympic champions of our times, that is all the more so.

Which is why Rulon, who is now 39, who said Friday he wants to live 'til he is 100, deserves extraordinary credit for acknowledging his problem and resolving to do something about it while he can. That's called courage.

In the six years since he won bronze in Athens in 2004, his second medal in Greco-Roman wrestling, Rulon said Friday in a conference call with reporters, "I had allowed myself to enjoy the fruits of life and not be accountable for it."

He also said, "It came down to lower self-esteem and, I hate to say it, but … depression."

It takes real courage to acknowledge that kind of stuff.

No one could be more down on reality TV than I am. Reality TV is stupid. Historians will look back on our fascination with the likes of "Survivor" and the Kardashian women and wonder why so many of us in these first years of the 21st century were apparently eager not only to be couch potatoes but vacuous morons.

That said, Rulon had a point when he was asked why he couldn't have just gone to the gym to lose weight.

Because, he said, being on reality TV was going to help keep him accountable.  And it finally dawned on him last summer that he had to take stock. This, he said, was when he was being inducted into the wrestling hall of fame, his tux didn't fit, he finally squeezed into something he could wear, they had the ceremony and a nice dinner and, afterward, he and his wife, Kamie, went out for fast food.

"More like I had fast food and she went with me," he said, and as he and she sat in bed and watched on TV the ceremony they had attended that night, he literally did not recognize himself on the screen. He had gotten that big.

He got up from the bed. "I looked in the mirror and said, 'Holy cow, you are so physically unhealthy, you are so obese.' "

This, he said, is how bad it had become, Rulon never one for pulling punches:  "Through my weight gain, I was almost embarrassed to be intimate with my wife … to have the confidence to be intimate with my wife."

Again, Rulon has lived a life that is large in the telling.

To recap just some of the highlights:

A gold medal in Sydney in 2000 over Russia's Alexander Karelin, who hadn't lost in more than a dozen years. The bronze in Athens in 2004.

In 2002 Rulon had to have a toe amputated after suffering frostbite. He had gotten stranded during a wilderness snowmobile trip.

In 2004 he got hit by a car while riding his motorcycle.

In 2007 he and two others were aboard a small plane that crashed into Lake Powell. They survived the impact, then had to swim in water that was said to be about 44 degrees Fahrenheit for more than an hour. After reaching shore, they then had to make it through the night -- no shelter or fire -- as the temperature dropped to 28 degrees. In the morning, a fisherman found them.

All that has taken courage to get through.

This, though -- this is by far the toughest. Because this isn't Rulon against Alexander Karelin, or Rulon against Mother Nature. This is Rulon against himself.

When he wrestled in 2000 in Sydney, Rulon weighed 286. In Athens, 264 1/2.

Reality TV is so, so stupid. That said, Rulon lost 32 pounds during the first week of "The Biggest Loser." So if that's what it takes to get Rulon to lose 200 pounds, and if he can do it, and keep it off for good -- good for him, and what a great example for everyone.

You know how much he really wants to weigh? He wants to drop more than 300 pounds. Down to 150.

He wants to be more like -- well, me. He wants to be a scrawny -- er, toned -- sportswriter. "Everyone thinks being big and strong is the best way to be," he said. "In my mind I always pictured being 150 pounds as being the best way to be."

Let's see. Buff sports scribe or "big and strong"? Which is the "best way to be"?

Call me when you get to 150, Rulon. We'll compare abs. My money is on you. In the meantime: let us all admire your (slimmer by the day) profile of courage.

Volleyball legend Mike O'Hara -- he leaves you breathless

They like to call the Manhattan Beach Open the Wimbledon of beach volleyball. That makes Mike O'Hara some kind of stud, because he won the thing five times in a row, including the inaugural open in 1960.

And there's so, so much more to Mike O'Hara's story.  Everyone should lead a life so interesting -- then and now, especially now, at age 78, because he just keeps going. He just published his latest book -- "Volleyball: Fastest Growing Sport in the World!"

In case you might miss the point, here's the subtitle to the book: "The Basic Guide to the Sport Challenging Soccer."

Another of Mike's books, so you should know, was updated in 2004. It's all about prostate cancer, which Mike was diagnosed with in his late 60s. He's doing just great, and if you'd like to know just how great, it's all there in the book -- how, in typical Mike fashion, he studied up, educated himself, made some decisions and moved on, no regrets, onto the next challenge.

That's Mike. No regrets and what's next?

Born in Texas, Mike moved to California when he was just a kid. He grew up near the beach and went to Santa Monica High School. In tenth grade he was all of 4 feet, 10 inches tall. Over the next 18 months he grew 17 inches. By the time he got to college, he was 6-feet-4.

He started at Santa Monica City College, then transferred to UCLA where, naturally enough, he was interested in basketball. The relatively new coach at UCLA happened to be a gentleman named John Wooden. Mr. Wooden was intrigued in a specimen who stood 6-4. But not interested enough because the young man had only two years of eligibility remaining.

So Mike took up volleyball. "It was like being in the desert all my life and suddenly I found a magic waterfall," he says now of not only how good he got but how much he loved the game.

In 1953, Mike and the rest of his Delta Tau Delta fraternity intramural championship volleyball team talked the UCLA athletic director, Wilbur Johns, into letting them represent the university at the national collegiate volleyball championships -- which the boys had to get to in Omaha, Neb., all by themselves. They roped the championship trophy to the roof of their car to get it back to Westwood.

Johns thereupon made men's volleyball a varsity sport. The next year the Bruins road-tripped it to Tucson. Again, they came back with the national championship trophy.

In 1959, Mike played on the gold medal-winning U.S. national team at the Pan American Game. He played at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, on the American team at volleyball's first appearance at the Summer Games.

Outdoors, at the beach, he teamed with Mike Bright to dominate at Manhattan Beach -- showing the kind of versatility that Karch Kiraly would show a generation later.

Mike helped organize the 1984 Olympics in L.A.

He helped develop the American Basketball Assn, -- he can regale you with hugely entertaining tales about the Kentucky Colonels of the ABA -- as well as the World Hockey Assn. and professional track.

The rally scoring system that's now an essential feature of volleyball worldwide? That was Mike's idea.

Oh, there's more. Of course there is.

Mike has deservedly been made a member of various volleyball halls of fame.

Mike has done extensive on-camera broadcast work.

And he worked closely for years with Art Linkletter, helping the TV personality with various business ventures. The two became not just professional colleagues -- they were close friends before Art's death, at age 97, last May.

At a lunch celebrating Art's 96th birthday, Mike was telling Art how something Art had once said to him had changed his life.

What, Art said, was that?

Well, Mike said, you told me, find something you like to do -- because then you really never work another day in your life.

Art paused. He said, I've thought about that. There's more to it.

Mike said, what do you mean?

My new philosophy, Art said, is this: What's important in life is not how many breaths you take. It's how many times life makes you breathless.

Bud Greenspan, 84

It is standard practice in the world of journalism to write obituaries long in advance of the day someone dies. That way, when the day comes, you don't have to wrestle with the emotion of the moment. I never did get around to writing Bud Greenspan's obituary. I simply couldn't do it. He had been ill with Parkinson's disease but I just could not confront the inevitable.

Over the years, Bud and I -- and Nancy Beffa, his longtime companion -- had become way more than professional colleagues. We had become good friends.

And Bud was always -- always -- one of the most vital people I ever had the pleasure and privilege of knowing. You just had to enjoy being around him, his glasses perched always -- always -- on his forehead. The man could tell a story, he loved to tell stories and he had stories to tell.

So apologies in advance. This column is really, really hard.

Bud passed away Saturday. He was 84.

The history books will say that Bud was one of the foremost filmmakers in Olympic history. In the mid-1980s, he received what's called the Olympic order, the highest award in Olympic circles, the then-International Olympic Committee president, Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain saying that Bud had even then "been called the foremost producer, writer and director of Olympic films -- more than that, he is an ever-lasting friend of the Olympic family."

Bud was so much more than that.

The explosive growth that saw the Olympic rings become one of the most recognizable symbols around the world over the last half of the 20th century is arguably due to two factors -- television and Bud Greenspan.

Television brought what happened on the track and in the pool in all those far-away places into your living room.

Through his films, Bud told you the stories of the athletes, wherever they were from. He made them real people. They had families, just like you and me. That their names didn't sound quite like ours or maybe their clothes didn't look like what we would wear or whatever -- all that faded away.

Bud's gift to us was simple but nonetheless profound. He reminded us all of our humanity.

That's why his work is so powerful. And no matter how many times you see his films, the power endures.

In Bud's world we are all the same. No matter what we look like or are shaped like or sound like, each of us is a human being imbued with potential and dignity.

"Bud Greenspan always understood that the athletes are at the center of the Olympic experience," Peter Ueberroth, who ran the 1984 Los Angeles Games and then served from 2004 to 2008 as chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee, said late Saturday night.

"Their stories are the ones he told, and those stories reminded us of our shared humanity and the commitment to excellence that are at the core of the Olympic ideals around the world."

In his Olympic films, Bud told dozens and dozens of stories. Perhaps none was as memorable as one of the first -- the Tanzanian marathoner John Stephen Akhwari, who finished last, 57th, in the marathon at the 1968 Mexico City Summer Games.

As the story goes, John Stephen came in about an hour after the winner, Mamo Wolde of Ethiopia. John Stephen had injured his leg in a fall; his leg was bandaged and bloodied.

Why, Bud asked, didn't you just give up?

Give up? Never, John Stephen replied.

My country, he said, didn't send me seven-thousand miles to start a race. He said, they sent me seven-thousand miles to finish it.

"In his lifetime, through his work, he did more than any individual to bring the personal stories of Olympians into households around the world," Mike Moran, who served as the U.S. Olympic Committee's spokesman from 1978-2003, said  Saturday night.

"His style never was out of date. What he produced will be watched decades from now by people who are or will be members of the Olympic family. No one else can ever do what he did. His contributions to what we refer to as Olympism are simply without precedent and Olympic athletes around the world owe him a huge debt of gratitude."

When I think of Bud and Nancy, I think of course of all the great stories he told on film but also the great tales he shared in the times we hung out together -- the back stories of how the films came together, the projects that didn't work, the ones that worked better than they ever imagined, all of that.

We had some great times together. We laughed and laughed with Aussie broadcasting friend Tracey Holmes in Sydney in 2000. We were super-sober while taking in the scene of all the police dogs and the soldiers while we waited our turn to get into freezing-cold Olympic Stadium in Salt Lake City on opening night in 2002; for all his celebrity, Bud was just one more guy getting into the stadium that night, believe me. After we got through and into somewhere where it was warm -- more laughs. As if Bud Greenspan was a threat to anyone.

In November 2007, the USOC endowed a scholarship at the USC School of Cinematic Arts to honor Bud and to encourage future filmmakers.

Donations should be sent to that scholarship fund.

As for flowers, Bud always was fond of relating a quote from another pioneer, Red Barber, one of the great baseball play-by-play men: "If you're going to send someone flowers, make sure they're around to smell them."

The world is diminished tonight because Bud is no longer with us. Godspeed, my friend.

U.S. team handball: a ray of hope

There's no point sugar-coating the U.S. team handball program's record. Neither the men's nor women's teams has come remotely close to winning an Olympic medal at the Summer Games, and "remotely" doesn't do adequate justice, really, to describing how unsuccessful the program has been over the years.

Neither team qualified for the 2008 Beijing, 2004 Athens or 2000 Sydney Summer Games. In Atlanta in 1996 the men finished ninth, the women eighth. The men didn't qualify for Barcelona in 1992; the women finished sixth. The men finished 12th in Seoul in 1988, the women seventh. And so on.

But -- wait. What happened Thursday night in a gym in La Prairie, Quebec, offers reason for hope. Real hope.

Click here to read the rest at TeamUSA.org.

U.S. biathlon on the right track

Did the U.S. biathlon team bring back the medals it was expecting at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games? No. Has the U.S. biathlon team enjoyed anything like the we-are-good, really-we-are results it was expecting in the opening weeks of the current World Cup season? No.

So as that season heads into the traditional holiday break, is all doom-and-gloom in and around the U.S. biathlon program? Hardly.

There's no doom, no gloom. And there shouldn't be.

Click here to read the rest at TeamUSA.org.

U.S. ski team on the rise

If only skiing were like the NFL in these United States, Lindsey Vonn and Ted Ligety would be famous like Tom Brady and Peyton Manning. A ski fan can dream.

A weekend like the one the U.S. ski and snowboard team enjoyed this third weekend of December underscores the enormous American talent now on display on mountains all over the world -- a thing that over the years could not always be said about the Americans.

Individual talent, yes. Consistent talent, no. Now, though, there's consistency, and consistency is the hallmark of any great program.

In this post-Olympic season, the weekend showing also highlights the enormous backstage commitment, continuity, purpose and leadership it takes to get the athletes in position to deliver their best -- the systems that include trainers, technicians, coaches and, at the top, longtime U.S. Ski and Snowboard Assn. boss Bill Marolt.

Click here to read the rest of the story at TeamUSA.org.

Martina: 'The only failure in life is the failure not to try'

The only time I could talk to Martina Navratilova, I was told, was 2:45 in the morning. Okay.

She was in France, having flown there from Kenya. I was in California. 2:45 in the morning was 11:45 in Paris, where Martina was. Take it or leave it, I was told.

I took it, because what she did over the last couple days is the essence of what life is about. She set out to climb Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa. She had undertaken the climb for charity, for the Laureus Sport for Good foundation.

She didn't make it to the top. In fact, she had to be carried off the mountain, fluid in her lungs making it tough to breathe.

Kudos to Martina.

The point is she tried.

Bruce Springsteen likes to say at his shows that it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive. The point of life is the trying.

The greatest athletes among us, and by any measure Martina Navratilova ranks in that group, understand that innately. That's what makes them champions. That's what makes them different from you and from me. They readily embrace the sort of risk and the sorts of challenges that the rest of us don't, or can't.

The thing that makes Kilimanjaro different, though, is that it's the kind of challenge the rest of us ordinary mortals can undertake.

I'm never, for instance, going to win Wimbledon.

I'm never, regrettably, going to win an Olympic medal.

I'm never going to climb Everest.

But I can make it to the top of Kilimanjaro.

In fact, in 1998, I did, along with one of my very best friends, Logan Faust, a doctor.

Kilimanjaro is a trek, not a technical climb.

That said, it's hugely demanding. The summit is about 19,340 feet high. There are a variety of ways to go; our way meant climbing up for four and a half days and racing down for one and a half. The reach for the summit itself, at least in August, meant climbing overnight on the last of the going-up days; we started at midnight at 15,000 feet and reached the peak just past dawn.

Dawn is critical because at that hour the sun hasn't had a chance to melt the snow, meaning it's still packed hard enough so you don't fall through it.

On the trek up, you move through an amazing variety of climates. Jungle gives way to big boulder zones. The boulders turn to loose rock. Then the air gets thin and very, very cold.

How cold? I went to college at Northwestern, just north of Chicago along Lake Michigan. My junior year, we had a snowstorm that dumped 27 inches of snow on us; the windchill during that event, as I recall, reached to minus-83 Fahrenheit. Yet the coldest I have ever been is at the crater rim with an hour yet to go to reach the Kilimanjaro summit.

I had six upper layers on to hike through the night and was still bone cold. As the sun started to illuminate the seemingly unending African plains far below, our guide suggested we duck into a cave he knew at the crater rim. Let's have a cup of tea, he said. Tea! Logan and I almost screamed out the same response. Tea! What? Screw the tea! Dude, let's keep going!

At 19,000 feet, you are almost crazy.

Of course, our patient, knowledgeable and experienced guide knew full well what he was doing. We needed the liquid, and the heat, and a dose of good sense. We made the summit about an hour later.

Only about half of all those who set out for the Kilimanjaro summit make it. In our group of eight, four made it. In Martina's group, 18 of 27.

Martina said by phone from Paris that she's going to be fine. The doctors have told her there won't be any lasting effects from the experience. "I've been better but I'm on my way," she said, adding, "We all gave it 100 percent."

There has been enough time now since leaving Kilimanjaro for Martina to ruminate now on the experience. It wasn't particularly fun, she said, and in particular the weather for the Laureus climbers proved consistently miserable. "From the second day, I felt like I couldn't take a full breath of air. I felt like there was somebody sitting on my chest," she said, adding, "I got to the point when I was going to the bathroom and the rock to go to was 20 meters away and I was like -- I can't do that.

"I should have known something was seriously wrong when I didn't want to eat. That," she said, laughing, "is not me!"

Four Swahili-speaking porters got Martina off the mountain. They brought her down in a wheelbarrow-like litter, one guy in the front, one in the back, one on each side. It took four and a half hours, she said.

The important thing is they got her down. Literally, they saved her life.

Nothing about any of it says failure. Martina doesn't think so, and neither does anyone else.

As she said, and after all this is the entire point, "The only failure in life is the failure not to try."

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For those who may be interested, here is the link to donate to Martina's Laureus fund.