Joey Hagerty, and the Olympic journey

In baseball, when a really good guy retires, they have a ceremony on the field for him, and sometimes they go the extra mile and give him a brand new car. Maybe even a convertible. In Greco-Roman wrestling, they have a neat tradition when a guy retires. He takes his wrestling boots and puts them at the center of the mat.

In gymnastics, there's no such ceremonial farewell.

It's too bad. A class act like Joey Hagerty deserves better.

We in the press are all too ready to pay attention to our Olympic athletes while they are in the white-hot glare of the Games themselves. But when the spotlight fades, what then?

The truth is that in many ways large and small Joey Hagerty embodies what the Olympic dream -- more, the Olympic journey -- is all about.

He didn't get into gymnastics to make a ton of money, and didn't. He didn't get into it to become the star of stage and screen; he's not.

He got into gymnastics because he loved it.

He chased the Olympics because he had a dream.

He got to live that dream -- against, frankly, crazy odds.

Joey Hagerty, who turns 29 next month, leaves competitive gymnastics an Olympic medalist -- even though he never once made a team that represented the United States at a world championships.

If you know gymnastics, you know that's just implausible.

But it's so.

Joey said, "I was never on a worlds team. Never on a big, huge team. I always had surgeries. My name was never out there -- well, it was out there in a small way. I never had huge accomplishments. I never won the [national all-around] championship. I was the Trojan horse -- that's what Ed Burch called me," a reference to his coach at Gold Cup Gymnastics in Albuquerque, where he grew up.

New Mexico is obviously not densely populated. But Gold Cup has sent a remarkable number of talented gymnasts to the U.S. team, including 1992 gold medalist Trent Dimas.

So that's one reason for his success. He had role models.

Joey has three older sisters. He got into gymnastics in the first instance by tagging along after them.

Then, it turned out he was pretty good.

It turned out, too, that he had the one thing you have to have to be an Olympic athlete -- the killer passion for whatever sport it is.

That's what kept Joey going through the surgeries and all the ups and the downs.

Joey's time came in the spring and summer of 2008.

First, at the national championships in Houston, he won the high bar and took third in the all-around.

Then, at the all-important U.S. Olympic Trials in Philadelphia, he won both the floor exercise and the high bar, and took second in the all-around.

Nine guys make up a U.S. Olympic gymnastics team. Six are in the starting line-up; three more, at the outset, are designated as alternates. There are all kinds of permutations involved in who makes the list of nine. Who, for instance, could help get points on the still rings? Who on the pommel horse? And so on.

Suffice it to say that a guy who wins two disciplines at Trials, who comes in second in the all-around -- that guy, even if he had never before been on a worlds team, that guy was going to be on the Olympic team and, moreover, in the starting-six line-up.

"It didn't even sink in until we got off the airplane in Beijing -- holy cow," Joey said. "We're here. We did this -- there were 'Beijing' signs everywhere. It was really surreal.

"Then we got to the Olympic village and the place was huge. The cafeteria was the size of football fields. It kept getting more and more overwhelming, and exciting, and fun. It didn't stop. Stuff happened every day. Like, look, there was Kobe Bryant. Oh, my god. There was Roger Federer. Every moment was -- precious."

Practice -- even that was a big deal at the Games. "We only got to see the arena once before we competed and seeing 14,000 people -- I don't know if you've ever been to a normal gymnastics meet, with a couple thousand people, maybe, but this was a sell-out.

"I wouldn't say it was intimidating," Joey recalled. No way. "It was that much more exciting."

The U.S. team's journey to and through its week of competition in Beijing was marked by ongoing dramas involving injuries to both Paul and Morgan Hamm. Raj Bhavsar replaced Paul. Sasha Artemev replaced Morgan, in an announcement made Aug. 7, 2008, literally the day before the Games would begin.

Artemev in particular was a gamble. For the U.S. men to have a shot at a medal, he had to produce on the pommel horse.

The U.S. gymnastics team -- unfazed.

"Never count us out," Joey recalled. "We were pretty determined to do our jobs.

"It didn't even matter who stepped in. It was going to get done. If they had chosen [David] Durante," at that point the sole remaining alternate, "instead of Sasha, we had the confidence it was going to get done.

"We were a group of nine. We were a clan. A family. All nine of us. They are my brothers for life."

The competition, predictably, came down to Sasha, and the pommel horse. The gamble paid off. He got it done. The American men took third -- a result they calculated on the sidelines as the German team was finishing their final turns.

"We had to calm ourselves down," Joey said. "We didn't want to be jerks. We had to contain our excitement. That was really hard. But once the meet was done and we knew we had won the medal, you could see the smiles on our faces."

And as for stepping onto the podium?

"How do you describe the best moment in your life, other than having a child and getting married? There's nothing else like it. There's no way to describe what you trained for your whole life and what you've dreamed of. You can't put words to that."

Life goes on after an Olympics, of course, and doctors said Joey had to clean out his right shoulder, which he did in December of 2009.

He came back from that, enough at least to do what needs to be done in the gym -- you're always sore if you're a gymnast. And now the London Games are only about a year away.

But, you know, that passion -- it's just not there anymore.

To be clear: There is no shame in that. None.

They say it takes courage to acknowledge that, and maybe that's the case, but it takes something much more.

It takes fulfillment, and peace of mind, and serenity.

That's what Joey Hagerty has.

He earned all of that.

"You have to enjoy what you do," he said. "I was getting to the point where I didn't want to go to the gym every day. My body was hurting and still hasn't fully recovered from the shoulder surgery. I was just ready to move on with my life."

Joey and his girlfriend, Ashley Van Orren, who is 23, have been together for two years. They're going to move back to New Mexico and consider their options. Maybe do a little traveling, figure stuff out.

"I was happy being an Olympian," he said. "The medal on top of that -- it's the frosting on top of the cake. I couldn't be happier with my career."

You lived the dream, Joey. Maybe you and Ashley can send us all a photo of the two of you together in Paris, or wherever, okay? Have fun out there.

Thud of a World Cup ski season ending

In an anticlimactic thud of an ending to one of the most exciting alpine ski seasons ever, Germany's Maria Riesch on Saturday beat her very good friend, American Lindsey Vonn, for the women's World Cup overall title when crummy weather forced the cancellation of the year's final race, a giant slalom. How thoroughly, profoundly unsatisfying.

"Win or lose," Vonn said afterward, "I just wanted the chance. I feel devastated.

"The cancellation of this race doesn't just hurt me. It hurts the fans and the sport of ski racing as a whole."

Indeed, that is the bottom line.

Not to take anything away from Riesch.

She finished with 1,728 points.

Vonn ended up with 1,725.

Riesch's victory marks the first time a German has won the women's World Cup overall since Katja Seizinger in 1998. That's a big deal.

To be very, very clear: This is not about Riesch. Kudos to her. Over the course of the season, she amassed enough points to prevail, and that's how the system works.

But like all systems, with rules and regulations,  you have to ask whether it produced an outcome that served its stakeholders well. Who feels good about this?

Vonn had launched one of the great late-season charges in World Cup history, her charge launched in a bizarre way by an early February concussion. The concussion forced her to take time off. After she felt better, she said many times, she decided she had nothing to lose -- and so she decided to just let it rip.

In late February, at the World Cup stop in Sweden, Vonn was 216 points down.

Then, though, after a great weekend in Tarvisio, Italy, just 96. Then, after a stop in the Czech Republic, 23.

The tour moved this week to the World Cup finals in Lenzerheide, Switzerland, and after the first of four scheduled races, a downhill won by American Julia Mancuso, Vonn fourth, Riesch 17th, Vonn found herself back in the overall lead, with 1,725 points, Riesch with 1,678.

Weather forced the cancellation of the next event, the super-G, arguably Vonn's best event. She had clinched the season's super-G title two weeks before, along with the downhill and super-combined crowns. That super-G cancellation probably deprived Vonn of critical points.

They managed to run, albeit on a shortened course, the third race of the four on the schedule, a slalom. Vonn finished 13th, Riesch fourth, enough to put Riesch back on top in the overall standings by -- three points.

Pending the fourth, and final, race, the giant slalom.

At the Czech World Cup stop, last week in Spindleruv Mlyn,  Vonn's third-place in the GS was the very first of her career. So she might well have been looking at points in the GS as well.

"I'm really disappointed (Thursday's) race was canceled," Vonn had said, looking around at the yucky weather in Lenzerheide, adding about Saturday, "I really hope they try, because I know I have a chance."

Thirty years from now, when Maria and Lindsey are sitting around the Christmas tree, reminiscing about their years dominating the ski circuit, and the 2011 season comes up, and the kids with their shiny faces say, tell us the story again about how it was that Grandma Lindsey won three straight World Cup overalls in 2008 and 2009 and 2010 and then in 2011 Grandma Maria beat Grandma Lindsey by three points for the championship but is it true, Grandma Lindsey, that you didn't even get the chance to race Grandma Maria on the very last day to find out who was best?

How's that going to go over around the Christmas table?

Right. Which is why this situation should never, ever be allowed to happen again.

There has to be a better way. Not saying the answer is immediately apparent.  Just saying there has to be a better way because, as Vonn points out, alpine racing is an extraordinary sport and yet it struggles for attention outside the Olympic spotlight. This is the sort of thing that does not lend it credibility.

Indeed, this -- to relate it in terms an American audience might understand -- is like the baseball version of a five-inning no-hitter. It counts but -- yech.

"I think they could have been working on [the course] like they did yesterday," to get it ready for the slalom, the U.S. women's head coach Alex Hoedlmoser, said Saturday. "I have the feeling they didn't try everything."

Query: Why, in Switzerland, of all places, was there not sufficient snow-making equipment on hand -- or, for that matter, stored-up snow -- to ensure a suitable course?

Or are these finals a clear sign of the ominous global warming issues that have been an undercurrent of the World Cup circuit for the past several years? If that's the case, perhaps some good might come out of this thud of an ending. Maybe it could serve as the spark for a meaningful, high-level FIS-led analysis of climate change and whether the federation's rules ought to be reviewed to allow for winners to be decided where they ought to be decided.

On the mountain.

To ask a simple question: Shouldn't that be obvious?

Lindsey Van is a hero, too

It is perhaps Lindsey Van's lot in life that her name sounds a lot like Lindsey Vonn's, and while Lindsey Van is a world-champion ski jumper and her sport isn't even in the Olympics -- not yet, anyway -- Lindsey Vonn is an alpine racer and an Olympic gold-medalist who gets loads of attention and commercials and even a spot on "Law and Order" and generally gets treated like the American hero she is. But Lindsey Van is a hero, too.

Lindsey Van, the 2009 ski-jumping world champion, spent Monday in San Francisco with a needle in her right arm and another in her left.  One needle sucked blood out of her. The other put it back into her. Her blood will help save the life of a man she has never met.

All she knows about him is that he is 49 years old and has leukemia.

Any number of athletes talk a good game about doing the right thing. Then there is someone like Lindsey Van, who submitted herself to nasty drugs and endured the discomfort if not outright pain of a procedure that no one forced her to do -- that she did because it was simply the honorable and decent thing to do.

"I just think," she said beforehand, in an interview from Park City, Utah, where she lives, "it's the human thing to do."

She also said, "If my family was sick, if I was sick -- I would want someone to donate for me or my family. If you want to expect a transplant, you have to elect to give one. You have to donate yourself."

Such simple logic, such elemental humanity, and yet there is all the more dignity in the story because, after all, the rules are that Lindsey doesn't know who she's donating to.

This, though, didn't exactly start that way.

Lindsey's former roommate, Seun Adebiyi, had been diagnosed with a rare leukemia.

He needed a bone-marrow transplant.

He tried, and he searched. But he could not find a match. Naturally enough, he turned to his friends, and asked them to sign up for a donation registry.

So Lindsey did -- at a website called bethematch.com, which coordinates potential bone-marrow donors.

It turned out she was not a match for Seun.

As it turned out, she said, about a year ago, Sean did get a transplant, and he seems to be getting better.

Meanwhile, she said, after signing up at the website, she got a call. Did she want to follow through?

This is where the story turns. Instead of saying, no, I was in this only for Seun -- Lindsey said, sure, of course, I am glad to help.

Be the Match sent her a cheek swab; she sent it back.

At this point -- really, at any point -- she could have withdrawn her name from the registry.

That, though, was never really an option for Lindsey. Once she was in, she was in.

And then came another call: you're a perfect match, they said, for this 49-year-old man.

The rules don't permit Lindsey to meet him on the grounds that he -- like all recipients -- should focus strictly on recovery.

The timing, as it were, couldn't have turned out better. The 2011 ski-jump championships were held in February, in Norway, so the season was essentially over.

The International Olympic Committee is widely expected in the coming weeks to announce it will add women's ski jumping to the program for the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. But because women's ski jumping is not yet formally part of the Olympic program, the blood-boosting drugs that Lindsey had to take last week at home in Utah to get her system ready for donation Monday in San Francisco -- well, none of that formally had to be of any concern to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

Last week, in Park City, the doctors' orders were to sit around and do not much, to let the drugs do their thing. There was time to be philosophical.

"There's life outside sport," Lindsey was saying on the phone. "You have to be thankful for what you have. You have to give back. If it's something big like this -- ok, awesome. If it's something little, that's awesome, too.

"Life is bigger than sport. His life will change because of this. So for me -- why not jump on it?"

On Monday in San Francisco, the needles were in Lindsey's arms by 6:30 in the morning. She spent the next three hours watching her blood go out, and in, and spin -- that is, to a machine that spun her blood around and around, multiple times separating out plasma and stem cells, the stuff that will go into a 49-year-old man she has never met.

"I was feeling pretty good," she said afterward, though "a little strange after having been on the machine for hours."

There were supposed to be multiple sessions on the needles. But the technicians got all they needed from Lindsey that first time -- perhaps the benefit of being a world-class athlete.

"I plan to start training again, doing active activities, yoga and skiing again this week," she said. "It wasn't even a week of down time for me.

"If you consider that somebody who's going to receive what they took out of me has been sick for a very long time -- I really don't think this has been too much to ask.

"Really, I don't."

Lindsey Vonn back in the lead

There are three races to go, and the way this World Cup season has gone, it's stating the obvious to observe that anything can happen. But suddenly Lindsey Vonn is leading the World Cup overall points race. Two weeks ago, that seemed -- if not impossible -- surely improbable.

As of last week it seemed only marginally possible but hardly probable.

Now, after the last downhill of the season, it is fact. Attention, Hollywood screenwriters  -- is this a gift, or what? In early February, Vonn was knocked out with a concussion, and now -- now she has roared back to lead the standings, with just three races to go. Could you dream it up any better?

American Julia Mancuso, who has herself had a great season, won Wednesday's race in Lenzerheide, Switzerland, her first victory on the World Cup tour in four years. Vonn took fourth. Vonn's very good friend, Germany's Maria Riesch, who has for most of the season held the overall points lead, finished Wednesday's race in 17th place, a strangely cautious run that earned her zero World Cup points.

Vonn earned 50 race points.

She now has 1,705 points.

Riesch has 1,678.

"It's tough," Riesch said later, according to Associated Press, "when you have led the whole season and suddenly you get knocked off the top."

The wire service also reported that Riesch slumped to the snow in the finish area and was later shown on television sitting with her head in her hands in the equipment inspection hut.

All of which is a reminder that for all the physicality of elite alpine racing the sport is so much a mental game.

Particularly these past couple weeks for Vonn and Riesch.

Again, to be obvious -- there are three races to go, and anything can happen.

Anything. That is the nature of ski racing.

But if you are in the American camp you have to like the trend.

Over the first weekend of March, skiing in Tarvisio, Italy, Vonn clinched the downhill, super-G and super-combined season titles and cut Riesch's overall points lead to just 96 points.

Last week, at the Czech resort Splinderuv Mlyn, Vonn took a career-best third in giant slalom, with Riesch 29th. That cut Riesch's lead to 38.

Then, in the slalom, Vonn finished 16th -- which, remarkably, was her first completed slalom run since late November. Riesch, meanwhile, skied out. Riesch's lead: 23.

If you are in the American camp, meanwhile, what you really have to like is where Lindsey Vonn's head is at -- and while high school English teachers everywhere might not approve of the construction of that sentence, that's the way it is.

Rarely in world-class sport do you hear an exposition of the sort that Lindsey Vonn delivered Wednesday, at a news conference, when she was asked why it's all going so right. Like her skiing, she just let it rip.

Here, according to an audiotape of the news conference posted by the U.S. Ski Team, is what she said:

"I mean, honestly, it would be much better, much easier, if I were in the lead by 200 points. But it has been really exciting to be the one chasing the overall, to be the underdog.

"Maria has been in the lead of the overall since like right after christmas and I have been chasing her, chasing her, chasing her ever since.  You know, I feel like after Are," the World Cup stop in Sweden the last weekend in February, "I just said, 'OK, you just have to risk everything every day. You have to ski as best you can. You can't be nervous. You can't hold back. You have to give it everything you have.'

"I think I have been skiing more relaxed than I ever have because of that. It is definitely a different tactic. It is definitely a position I have never been in before. It's exciting. I don't know -- I kind of enjoy the new challenge. The last three weeks have gone really well. Like I said earlier, I'm proud of myself for being able to come from behind, to say I'm in the hunt at the finals. So -- yeah."

To know Lindsey is to know how much that little, "So -- yeah," at the end really says. It says she is on her game, and totally.

If she holds on, she will win her fourth straight World Cup overall title. She said a couple weeks ago that if she were to win this fourth in a row it would be the "most rewarding" of her career because, obviously, she was down by so many points.

She said Wednesday, "I still feel like I'm an underdog," adding a moment later, "Maria is dangerous in all events. I have to be ready and on my game in every race."

Three to go.

Fun at the ol' USOC

The U.S. Olympic Committee's two-day board of directors meeting in Atlanta wrapped up Tuesday, and what was notable was not that it produced any big news -- none was expected -- but that it was, as new board member Dave Ogrean put it, well, "fun." "Fun" is not a word that has not often in recent years been associated with USOC precincts.

Then again, as has been observed repeatedly in this space over the past 15 months, since board chairman Larry Probst hired Scott Blackmun to be the chief executive officer, this is indeed a new USOC.

Ogrean, who has pretty much seen and done it all in an extensive career that has traversed the American Olympic stage and who is currently the executive director of USA Hockey, said in a conference call with reporters, referring to the USOC's management and, as well, its outlook, "I think things are in better shape today than they [have been] in a decade."

It is perhaps the nature of what's now to suffer some amnesia when recalling what has come before. So let us not so easily dismiss the domestic stability that Peter Ueberroth and Jim Scherr brought through the Athens and Beijing Olympics; that stability was much needed after the wholesale convulsions and governance reforms that immediately preceded their tenures.

Then, though, came Stephanie Streeter, who as USOC chief executive showed that she knew of the intricacies of the international Olympic movement about what you'd expect from someone who had run a printing company. Like -- what?

And then came the debacle of the aborted USOC television network.

And then, worse, Chicago's beat-down in the first round of the 2009 International Olympic Committee vote at which Rio de Janeiro won the 2016 Summer Games -- the president of the United States summoned to the scene in Copenhagen just before the vote, and for what? For Chicago, his hometown, to win just 18 votes?

None of that could in the least be described as "fun."

Of all the things they have done, Blackmun and Probst have spent considerable time and effort working at the one thing that counts more than anything else in the Olympic scene -- relationship-building.

Last September,  Dick Ebersol, his title now chairman of NBC Sports Group, appeared in Colorado Springs, Colo., at the annual USOC assembly, with words of praise for both Probst and Blackmun.

News item, Feb. 17: Online broker TD Ameritrade Holding Co. agrees to sponsor the U.S. Olympic team through the 2012 Games, the deal marking the first-ever USOC sponsorship in the online broker category as well as the first collaboration with NBC, which will receive a commitment for a certain level of media buys from TD Ameritrade, according to the USOC. Terms were not disclosed.

News item,  March 10: NBC and the USOC sign Citi as an official bank partner of the network and the 2012 U.S. team. The USOC had been without an "official bank" since Bank of America had bowed out in 2009. The USOC's chief marketing officer, Lisa Baird, tells the Sports Business Daily of the novel deal, "Partners are responding to the integrated marketing and media package. We're proud of both of these coming on and doing so in quick time is evidence this is working.”

Disclosure: I am a former NBC employee.

More: I had no idea any of these deals were coming and I have zero idea if any other USOC contracts are coming.

But I can put two and two together, and I know this: whether or not Ebersol was in the least bit involved in any of this deal-making or not, the fact is that the climate between NBC and the USOC is totally, totally different than it was not all that long ago.

Here, from October, 2009, was Ebersol, to the Washington Post: "IOC members 'don't hate America, they hate the USOC, and with good reason. Congress doesn't need to do any new reform. The USOC just needs new leadership.' "

And here, just a couple days ago, after the announcement that Probst and Blackmun had been appointed to IOC committees, was Ebersol, in the New York Times: "This is exciting news for all of us involved with the Olympic movement in the United States. It is clear evidence that the re-energized and clearly focused USOC under Larry and Scott is being recognized not only by the IOC but by the entire international Olympic community."

To be sure, the USOC in March 2011 still faces significant challenges.

It must yet strike a deal with the IOC to resolve a longstanding revenue dispute. Talks are ongoing, and Probst said Tuesday, without providing any details, that he and other senior USOC officials are "encouraged by the tone of the discussions."

A U.S. television rights deal for 2014 and 2016, and perhaps beyond, is now at issue. That deal is the key to the IOC's financial well-being. Meanwhile, how it plays out -- and for a variety of reasons it is almost sure to play out in the near term,before July -- is central to perceptions of the USOC in IOC circles, and certain to be a key factor in whether and when the USOC gets back into the bid game.

A whole host of other concerns are also up for discussion. Just to pick a couple:

For funding purposes, how best to determine which national governing bodies are more or less likely to reach or sustain "sustained competitive excellence," to use USOC lingo?

Are there security-related concerns beyond the usual at the 2011 Pan American Games in Guadalajara, Mexico?

Such matters were on the table Tuesday in Atlanta for the board, which now totals 15, and the new members: Ogrean; former Visa executive Susanne Lyons; Nina Kemppel, a cross-country skier who raced in four Winter Games; former John Hancock chief executive James Benson; and former Microsoft executive Robbie Bach.

"These are talented people and they are not wallflowers," Blackmun said.

Probst echoed, "They were happy to speak up -- to share their opinions."

Ogrean said the dialogue was "always civil," a point that, again, could not always be said to be the case with the USOC. He said, "It was, quite frankly, fun."

USOC leaders get IOC appointments

Each March, the International Olympic Committee announces the make-up of its various committees. The 2011 list contains two notable newcomers, and for those who are looking to see tangible signs in relations between the IOC and the U.S. Olympic Committee the IOC 2011 commissions list offers evidence that the USOC's go-slow approach to building bridges may be proving fruitful.

There on page 27 of the 30-page document: Larry Probst, a new member of the IOC's international relations committee. Probst is of course chairman of the USOC's board of directors.

And there on page 11: Scott Blackmun, the USOC's chief executive officer, has joined the IOC's marketing commission -- which, given the financial tensions that have strained the relationship over the years between the two entities, is relevant, indeed.

The USOC's strategy since Chicago's unceremonious first-round Oct. 2, 2009, exit in the 2016 Summer Games vote, won by Rio de Janeiro, has been classic Dale Carnegie -- win friends and influence people, the emphasis now on the "winning friends" part. The "influence people" part can come later, whenever that might be. The thing now for the USOC is to again assert itself as a partner in good standing in the movement, to do the right thing without having to be in the bid game.

The announcement Friday doesn't mark the end of the road. Hardly. But it does show the USOC is heading in the right direction. To put it simply and plainly, the commission list makes for IOC recognition of the USOC's efforts all these past months.

Michael Phelps: 'Everything is clicking'

Michael Phelps just put in a three-week block of altitude training up in Colorado Springs, Colo. Coming down from altitude, he raced last weekend in Indianapolis. He decided beforehand that he would write down in a journal the times he wanted to hit at the races in Indy.

For those who have followed Phelps' incredible career, the 16 Olympic medals, 14 of them gold, you know that he can have an almost super-natural quality to predict his times. It's like he is a metronome.

More, it's a signal that he's motivated and on his game -- he's tuned in, he's dangerous and he's getting ready to really rock.

In an interview this week, this is what Phelps said he had written before the Indianapolis races in his journal:

"I wanted to go 1:46 in the 200 free."  He went 1:46.27.

"I said 1:57 in the 200 IM but I was a little faster," 1:56.88.

"I said 1:55, 1:54 in the 200 fly." He touched in 1:55.34.

"48 in the 100 free." He came home in 48.89.

"And I wanted to hit 50-point in the 100 fly but I was a little off" -- 51.75.

Each of those five times is fastest in the world this year.

One race in particular, the 100 free, is worth dissecting in further detail.

Phelps has always been what's called a "back half" swimmer. That is, he goes out slower in the first 50 meters of a 100-meter race and comes on strong in the second 50.

So it was no surprise Phelps was behind at the turn, this time behind Jason Lezak, the very same Jason Lezak who saved the 400-meter freestyle relay gold for Phelps and the U.S. team in 2008 in Beijing.

Off the turn, though, Phelps turned it on. He swam the back half in 25.10. Nobody else in the field got under 26 seconds for the final 50 meters. Indeed, no one else in the field broke 50 seconds for the race. Again, Phelps finished in 48.89.

That kind of back half tells you that Phelps is once again feeling far more comfortable with his freestyle technique. He had since Beijing famously dithered with it, trying this, trying that, admitting to frustrations -- but now all again seems, well, Phelps-like.

Which means it's excellent but there's still plenty of tinkering to be done to go faster still -- just the way he and longtime coach Bob Bowman like it with four months to go until the 2011 world swimming championships in Shanghai and the countdown to the 2012 London Olympics nearing 500 days.

"Being able to go to Colorado and really work on some specifics really helped a lot," Phelps said of his freestyle technique.

"I am getting a feel for the water again. I am able to ride off my kick. Everything feels connected. I think it showed in the 200 and in the 100. But, I mean, there's still a lot of work to be done. Those times, at the end of the year, aren't going to stand up."

Phelps also said, "As a whole, I think for right now -- I'm on the right track." adding of the weekend in Indy, "I think after the weekend there I have started realizing I was enjoying myself, I was having fun, I was laughing, I was swimming how I wanted to.

"It's kind of --  I'm enjoying it more than I was before. I'm happy again and everything is clicking. It feels kind of good to be back and it feels good to be moving in the right direction."

Jordyn Wieber: gymnastics' new It Girl?

On Fridays during football season at Dewitt High School in Dewitt, Mich., just north of Lansing, the boys on the football season wear their blue-and-gold Panther football jerseys to school on game days. That's cool. One of the standout players on last season's Panther team was a junior defensive back, Ryan Wieber. As a senior, his younger sister, Jordyn says, he's going to switch sides and play quarterback. The local newspaper, the Lansing State Journal, calls him "one of the best from from a junior class that must step in for some significant seniors." Cool.

You know, though, what's really cool? "He thinks it's so cool," Ryan's kid sister said, "to see me on TV."

Jordyn Wieber, who is just 15 years old, a high school sophomore, may well be the next It Girl in U.S. gymnastics. Assuming she stays healthy and she keeps performing the way she did last weekend, she's going to be on television a lot, on camera in particular at the 2012 London Games.

It's not just that Jordyn won the AT&T American Cup, an International Gymnatics Federation World Cup event held last Saturday in Jacksonville, Fla.

It's not just that the American Cup marked Jordyn's senior-level event debut.

To win the American Cup Jordyn had to beat the 2010 world all-around champion, Aliya Mustafina of Russia.

Which she did.

Jordyn locked up the top score of the day on three of the four events -- vault, balance beam and floor exercise.

She scored a 15.833 on the vault, a 15.266 on the beam and a 14.9 on floor.

She missed a Tkatchev on bars and scored a 13.9. "My hands slipped off the bar a little bit. But it's something i'm able to go back in the gym and work on the consistency of," she said.

Her total score: 59.899.

Mustafina ended up with 59.831.

Alexandra Raisman of Needham, Mass., took third, with 58.565. Alexandra, by the way, is 16 going on 17 -- another young American talent.

That Jordyn won does not come as a total surprise. Hardly. She won the American Cup in 2009, when she was merely 13.

Of course, in 2011 the reigning world champ was at the meet. Jordyn said, "I knew the competition was going to be more stiff. So I didn't expect to win. But it definitely was a goal of mine."

Jordyn tends to be matter-of-fact about these kinds of things. It's her approach. It's why, at 15, she is so demonstrably mentally tough.

Okay, it's why she was that way at 13.

"For me," she said, "gymnastics -- we go into the gym and practice every day. We do the same routines. When we go to competitions, I think of them as another practice. You don't freak out and get too excited. Even though there's a crowd, I try to think of it as just another practice routine in the gym."

And that is why Jordyn might well be the next Big Deal.

She's calm and collected way beyond 15. The pressure on the next anointed gymnastics princess can be intense. Jordyn -- she seems unfazed.

"Today was my first day back at school," she was saying on the phone after getting back from Florida. "So many people were congratulating me. They think it's awesome."

You know what's really awesome -- her older brother, the quarterback, and how his sister might be the It Girl way, way, way beyond DeWitt High School.

She said, "He's really cool with it."'

The Lindsey Vonn concussion conundrum

Lindsey Vonn nailed down three World Cup season titles in what was, by any measure, a great weekend of skiing -- another chapter in her formidable career. Vonn, racing in Tarvisio, Italy, locked up the downhill, super-G and super-combined titles. She cut the lead her good friend Maria Riesch of Germany holds in the overall points race to 96 -- making it at least possible, if not probable, that Vonn could yet win that, too. Six races remain; the tour resumes Friday in the Czech Republic.

The Tarvisio weekend was capped by a 1-2-4 U.S. finish in the super-G -- Vonn, Julia Mancuso, Laurenne Ross -- and what makes it all the more compelling is that Vonn is back skiing, and obviously skiing well, after a Feb. 2 training crash in Austria that produced a nasty concussion.

Which raises this fascinating conundrum:

Is Lindsey Vonn one more hard fall on the head away from disaster?

Or is what Lindsey Vonn is doing now, with her brilliant skiing, the essence of championship performance?

Her will to compete, well documented after other crashes and spills, is ferocious. Isn't that what separates a champion -- a true champion -- from the rest of us? And isn't that, in large measure, why we watch sports -- to be inspired by the likes of Lindsey Vonn?

In simple terms: by seeing greatness? The rest of us, to reduce this to its basics, can only dream of flying down a mountain at 70 miles an hour.

But should she?

Where does the line get drawn -- and who gets to draw it?

Doctors? The U.S. Ski Team? The New York Times? Lindsey Vonn herself?

The concussion prompted Vonn to withdraw Feb. 14 from the back half of the two week-long world championships in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.

She finished seventh in super-G, pulled out after the downhill portion of the super-combined and then, on Feb. 13, took silver in the downhill. At one point, she said she felt like she was "skiing in a fog."  After the downhill silver, the said she thought it best to rest.

That downhill came with considerable controversy. Some thought she shouldn't have skied at all.

The New York Times' Alan Schwarz may very well win a Pulitzer Prize -- if so, deservedly -- for all he has done to change the national conversation about the effects of concussions on football players and other athletes.

In an "analysis" headlined "Concussion Protocols Fail Vonn," a story that ran the day after the Garmisch downhill, Schwarz made it abundantly plain that one slip and Vonn could have become "her sport's Dale Earnhardt."

He said she and the U.S. Ski Team "appeared to hit the trifecta of concussion no-no's: they called the injury mild, blindly followed so-called concussion tests, then discounted clear signs that her injury remained."

At her first races back on the World Cup circuit, in late February in Sweden, Vonn told the Associated Press that what she called the "tabloid gossip" had gotten to her in Garmisch.

"No one was really listening to what I was saying, either. It was definitely a really hard time for me," she said. "Some people were saying that I shouldn't race because it's too dangerous, and some people were saying that I'm just making it up, that it's not even true. You know, it's like tabloid gossip."

The Times, meanwhile, hardly seems about to let the matter go. The U.S. Ski Team organized a conference call Monday with Vonn. Another first-rate Times reporter, Bill Pennington, who knows both skiing and Vonn, asked three questions -- two of which related to her mental health.

"Hindsight is 20/20," she said. "But I still think we made good decisions. I think we made decisions that were right at the time and I trust the decisions that we made. I got a lot of support from obviously my husband," Thomas, a former ski racer, "and the doctors and I think that is what has gotten me through it.

"But I really think the decisions we made were right. I am happy right now that's over and I can finally put that behind me and I'm looking forward to trying to compete in the next races."

"Not to harp on this," Pennington said, "but there were a lot of people, especially here in the States, that were concerned for you, that were worried you were taking unnecessary risk. What would your answer be to that?"

"I mean, well, I think we made the right decisions, like I said. I think it's really easy for someone to be an armchair quarterback. But I was there. My doctors were there. And we made decisions based on the facts that we had. And, like I said, I think they were the right decisions. So obviously people were concerned but, you know, I had great doctors, great people looking out for me -- we were always, always very careful."

Is "careful" enough?

To be obvious about it, there's nothing "careful" about alpine racing in the first instance. It involves managed risk.

All of life, for that matter, involves managed risk.

As a practical matter, perhaps the U.S. Ski Team ought to re-visit its protocols to ensure they are state-of-the-art.  Too, it ought to seek to join in what the NFL is learning about concussion research and helmet safety.

As for Lindsey Vonn: If the protocols are medically appropriate, and she passes them, and she wants to ski, she should ski. Flat-out. Life is for living.

And if, by the way, Lindsey Vonn somehow manages over the final six races of the 2011 World Cup circuit to overtake Riesch, it would make for an astonishing comeback.

"If I were to win the overall title, it would be the most rewarding, I think, of my career," she said Monday on that same conference call.

It would, indeed, be incredible. Then again, she is an incredible athlete -- the best alpine racer  the United States has ever produced.

Billy Demong: back at it

Seventh in the normal hill, sixth in the large hill at the just-concluded Nordic combined world championships -- is there something wrong with world and Olympic gold medalist Billy Demong? Just the opposite.

To know Demong is to understand what an incredible accomplishment he just turned in at the 2011 worlds in Oslo, Norway.

It is also to understand why he and the U.S. Nordic combined team, the breakthrough stars of the 2010 Vancouver Games, would seem poised for yet more success in Sochi and the 2014 Winter Games.

That's what sixth place in Oslo will do for you. Or fifth, which is where teammate Todd Lodwick finished in the large hill event. Or fourth, where the Americans finished in the team event.

"When we have people disappointed with fourth, sixth, fifth," Demong said Monday with a laugh, "we have come a long way."

Indeed.

Until Vancouver, the U.S. Nordic combined program had registered a historic oh-fer. In 86 years of Winter Games history, the U.S. team had won no medals.

Fourteen years of consistent funding, improved coaching and training, and planning -- it all paid off in Vancouver, with the U.S. team winning four medals in three events.

Demong and Johnny Spillane went one-two in the large hill event; Spillane won silver in the normal hill; the U.S. team won a relay silver.

Then came the obvious question: what next?

For Demong, it was time to take time off -- take most of 2010 to, as he put it, "live life, so that the motivation comes strong in the next three years."

The life living started with a bang.

Within 24 hours all this happened: He became a gold medalist. He learned he had been chosen to carry the U.S. flag in the closing ceremony. He proposed to his girlfriend, Katie Koczynski.

As soon as the Games ended, he did the whole media blitz thing. He went ski flying. He attended celebratory parades.

Originally from Vermontville, N.Y., he threw out the first pitch at a New York Mets' game: "I have watched too many people come up short," he said. "I freaking launched it over the catcher's head. He had to jump for it."

He spoke on the National Mall on Earth Day.

He visited U.S. Army bases in the Middle East.

He went back home to Park City, Utah, and re-did his house, among other things adding 400 square feet and moving the kitchen to the other side of the structure.

He and Katie got married. A son, Liam, was born in January.

It wasn't until September that Demong became a Nordic combined skier again. As he put it, "That's a little late."

So sixth place at the 2011 worlds -- that gets the job done, and in two ways:

"I would be going through that media corral and the reporters would be saying, 'You must be disappointed after sixth place,' " Demong was saying.

Hardly: "I'm in a different place right now. That's my best result of the season. It not only gives me confidence I can be really good it also lets me know I can be training well and can be better than ever."

All it takes, he said, is getting back to the gym.

No one has ever accused Billy Demong of lacking the hard-work gene.

"When you are at the top of your game," he said, thinking back to the 2009 and 2010 seasons in particular, "you're like, 'I can ski backward,' or, 'I can skip days training,' or, 'I feel so in control.' That is an important part of getting good.

"What's also important is realizing you have to stay good all the time. Taking time off and struggling through the season is a really good way -- a really good way of getting back in touch with desire and hunger."

He also said,  "As neat a goal as it is to win a gold, it might be even harder to defend it. It kind of freaks me out but it gets me excited.

"And that's the fun part."'