Jake Herbert: confidence guy

Northwestern plays Nebraska Saturday in college football, the Wildcats' first foray to Lincoln since the Cornhuskers were admitted to the Big Ten. The oddsmakers in Vegas have made Northwestern a decided underdog. "Northwestern by 50. Feeling confident," said Jake Herbert, who graduated from Northwestern two years ago after winning two NCAA wrestling championships and the 2009 Hodge Trophy, given to the nation's outstanding collegiate wrestler. In the NFL, the Baltimore Ravens travel Sunday to Pittsburgh to play the Steelers. Herbert grew up in North Allegheny, Pa. "You ask me how bad the Steelers are going to beat the Ravens? By 110."

"I ooze confidence," Herbert said, and this a couple days after winning gold in the 84 kilogram, or 185-pound, freestyle weight class at the Pan American Games.

All athletes have to be confident. Jake has to be super-confident. He is, without being ugly about it.

"Anything less than Olympic gold in my mind is failure," he said. "I'm not training for bronze. I'm not training just to be in the Olympics. I'm not training for anything less.

"If there's a little bit of doubt in your mind, that can be exploited. I'm there 100 percent to be getting the gold medal. I'm there to take it."

Here's why Jake has to have unshakeable belief in himself and what he's doing:

Among others, Cael Sanderson is in his weight class.

Sanderson is the 2004 Olympic gold medalist. He is now coach at Penn State. He is the only undefeated four-time NCAA champion, compiling a record of 159-0 at Iowa State, so good he made the cover of a Wheaties box. He won the Hodge Trophy not just once but three times.

There are all kinds of hints that Sanderson is making a 2012 comeback.

It can't be certain that Sanderson is, in fact, coming back.

But Herbert, like everyone, has to gear up as it if that's the case. "I'm preparing like he's going to be there," Jake said.

American Olympic wrestling history is marked by a succession of dramatic episodes in which challengers have had to beat the best to be the best.

Going all the way back to the 1984 U.S. Trials, Dave Schultz had to beat three-time world champion Lee Kemp just to make the American team. He did, and went on to win Olympic gold.

In 1988, the tables were turned: Kenny Monday had to beat Schultz to make the U.S. team. Monday won, and then won Olympic gold in Seoul.

Also in 1988, John Smith had to beat 1984 Olympic champ Randy Lewis to make the team. Smith did, and won Olympic gold.

More recently, at the 2008 Trials, Henry Cejudo had to defeat Stephen Abas, the 2004 silver medalist, to make the team. Cejudo did, and won Olympic gold.

Jake knows all these stories, rattling them off in a phone call. "Why should it be any different for me?" he asked rhetorically, adding, "If I can beat Sanderson, I can beat anybody in the world, and I can win the Olympics."

Since graduating from Northwestern, Jake has bulked up to about 200 pounds. He makes weight pretty easily -- wrestlers drop a lot of water weight in a remarkably quick amount of time without losing strength -- and said, "I'm a 200-pound man wrestling 185. That strength showed off in the Pan Ams. It's great to feel stronger, tougher, better than your opponents."

Perhaps just as important, "Mentally, I'm right there."

Jake has recent wins over, among others, Sharif Sharifov of Azerbaijan and Mihail Ganev of Bulgaria.

Sharifov won the 2011 world gold medal. At those 2011 worlds, Sharifov defeated Sanderson.

Ganev is the 2010 world champ.

With his coach, Sean Bormet, Jake is now training in Ann Arbor. "This is the real stuff," he said. "It's physical chess. Position is always going to beat strength."

There's only one downside, for a Northwestern guy, to being in Ann Arbor: "It's not just the college kids. It's 60-year-old men and 3-year-old kids. They're all wearing maize-and-blue."

There's only one antidote, he said: "I wear my Wildcat gear."

Jake added, "My job now is -- I have to put together the two best tournaments of my life. The Trials -- go out there and make the team. Then -- go out there and make the Olympics."

Kikkan Randall's conditioning thing

Every July 4th in Seward, Alaska, there's a race called Mount Marathon. It's not a marathon. It's a different kind of ordeal.

One of the oldest-known races in the United States, dating to 1915, it's a 3 1/2-mile torture that goes up and then back down a 3,022-foot mountain. You come down in about a third the time it takes to go up; in all, the winner -- at least on the women's side -- takes just over 50 minutes. Outside of the Iditarod, the sled race, it might be one of Alaska's premier sporting events. Big local bragging rights are involved -- for instance, Nina Kemppel, who raced in four Olympic Winter Games over her cross-country career with the U.S. Ski Team, is a nine-time winner.

In the Randall household, there was this: Mom Debbie won the race in 1975. Aunt Betsy, who competed as a cross-country skier in the 1980 Lake Placid Olympic Games, won it three times, from 1979 to 1981. Daughter Kikkan -- well, as a cross-country skier, Kikkan might well have won a world championship silver medal in 2009, might have recorded two World Cup wins, might last season have become the first American woman ever to make the podium (third) in the final World Cup sprint standings …

But she had yet to win Mount Marathon.

Four times she was a runner-up.

Until this past July 4.

When Kikkan, racing side by side with Alaska Pacific University club teammate Holly Brooks for most of the race, finally broke through -- winning in 52:03, Holly 19 seconds behind.

The U.S. Ski Team leaves for Europe in just a few days; the World Cup cross-country season starts in Norway on Nov. 19. Kikkan Randall just wrapped up a summer of training that makes you understand fully the dedication and drive of championship athletes.

They are indeed different from the rest of us.

Mind you -- this isn't even an Olympic year.

There are two long years to go, in fact, before we even get to the Olympic year. This is the kind of year where even the most seasoned pros can find it difficult to sustain their energy.

Not Kikkan.

Even on vacation -- in Maui, at the end of April, with her husband, Jeff Ellis -- a really, really fun day was not to idle on the beach with fruity drinks. Oh, no. A really, really fun day was to go for a three- or four-hour bike ride.

"Every once in a while he looks at me and rolls his eyes and tells me I'm crazy," she said, laughing.

Then again, she said, when training for the winter season began in earnest on May 1, those bike rides meant "my body wasn't starting from total standstill."

Look, let's face it, Kikkan said: "I definitely like to be doing stuff."

Like:

Training in the back-country in Alaska with her Alaska Pacific club team.

Doing a triathlon and setting a new PR in the running leg. In Alaska, when they hold a triathlon in May, they have to make allowances for the swim portion -- they do it in a pool.

Heading to Sweden for more than two weeks of training with the national team there. And here was a revelation. It used to be that the Europeans thought little, if at all, about the American cross-country performers. Now that Americans are winners in the sprints, though, the Europeans have noticed. "Two years ago, I was there to learn and watch. Now they are there to observe me," Kikkan said.

Back to Alaska for Mount Marathon and then several weeks of "pretty hard weeks of training."

Cut in with all of that were visits to schools for a program called "Healthy Futures" and work with another initiative that Kikkan supports called "Fast and Female."  She said, "I benefitted from having great opportunities to play sports and then be active. It empowered me. I want kids to have those same opportunities that I did. A little hard work pays off -- you can do anything if you have belief in yourself."

Which is where she finds herself this World Cup season. She has proven herself in the sprints. Now -- the distances.

She said, "Every year I am getting closer. It just takes time to develop fitness and the confidence to race with those girls. In a couple years, I can be challenging for the top in the distance races as well.

"Kris Freeman," one of the top American men, "has been so close several times, Kikkan said. "He has shown it is possible."

Kikkan is 28. In Sochi in 2014, she will be 31. If she were a gymnast, at 31 she would be an old lady. For a cross-country skier, it's entirely different. She said, "I feel like I am just now entering my stride. Most people would be winding down. Mine is just now speeding up."

U.S. women's water polo: the crucible of 2011

If, next summer in London, the U.S. women's water polo team wins Olympic gold, it will be because of the crucible of 2011. At the quarterfinals of the world championships in Shanghai, the U.S. women endured a brutal loss to Russia. Then, a couple days ago, at the championships of the Pan Am Games in Guadalajara, with an Olympic berth on the line, they pulled out an epic victory.

Rallying from four goals down midway through the third period, the Americans managed to tie the game at 8-8 the end of regulation. That was followed by the two standard overtime periods; no scores. Time for a shootout.

Five shots.

Ten.

Fifteen.

Still no winner.

Mind you, that was because the Americans -- with one block -- kept making shots. But so -- with one block, by American goalie Betsey Armstrong -- did the Canadians.

Brenda Villa, 31, an attacker who not only has been to three Olympic Games on the U.S. team but is the FINA Magazine female water polo player of the last decade, nailed four -- count 'em, four -- shots herself.

"Just going up there to shoot -- it's for your team so you have to lose all your thoughts so you don't get too nervous," she said. "It's just business."

Finally, it came to this: 18-year-old attacker Maggie Steffens nailed yet another shot for the Americans. The Canadians missed.

The final score, and this was water polo, not football: 27-26.

The Americans converted 19 of 20 opportunities in the shootout. That's just plain gutsy.

"It was crazy," said Courtney Mathewson, another American attacker. "We prevailed because we believe in ourselves. There is no panic when we are down by three or four. I think we believed in each other and that was the difference."

Adam Krikorian, the U.S. coach, said, "I told the girls this is the greatest game I've ever been a part of -- maybe the most courageous, most mentally tough group of girls during one game that I've ever seen.

In the celebrations on the pool deck and afterward there was this:

Two months ago -- it's not clear the Americans would have won this game.

In Shanghai, up 6-2 in the third period against Russia in the quarterfinals, the Americans gave up five straight goals, lost 9-7 and then ended up finishing sixth at the worlds.

It was dispiriting and disheartening -- and yet exactly, in a weird way, perhaps what this team needed.

After the 2008 Games, the women's team switched gears, Krikorian taking over as coach from Guy Baker. The team, though, kept on winning, and winning, and winning -- over the years everything except Olympic gold.

The U.S. women took silver in Sydney in 2000, bronze in Athens in 2004, silver again in Beijing in 2008.

Krikorian, at the beginning of 2011, put his charges through what was essentially a boot camp. He promised it would toughen them up physically and mentally. Physically, there was no doubt -- several of them swimming lap times faster than ever before.

The loss in Shanghai could have swung things two ways.

It could have turned the team against Krikorian. After all, that loss was the first meaningful defeat for the U.S. team in a long time.

Instead -- everyone came home and doubled down. Together.

All in. Players, staff, coaches.

With buy-in, anything and everything becomes possible.

In Shanghai, "I don't think we were united there as a team yet," Villa said. "Not buying in but having complete faith in each other. It showed [against Canada]. It's great to come together and do that, and as we move forward it's only going to get -- our bond, it's only going to get stronger."

Armstrong, the team's No. 1 goalie, added, "It's easy to say now that we won this game that it's the case but leading up to this tournament it motivated this time to connect. It's almost a cliché that it was the best thing to happen to us but it is It was the motivating factor for us to come together as a group to work hard in the pool."

Krikorian echoed, "When you continue to win, it's easy to put things that are important on the back burner. When you finally face defeat and stare it down and chew on it for two, two and a half months, it makes you re-evaluate things, staff included.

"It was the first time during a game, a close game, in the last two years for me that I felt like the group had taken it over. It was actually out of my hands. That's what I'm looking for. That's what I want to see. That's what great leaders do; that's what great teams do. They take it upon themselves. They did it in four quarters. They held strong."

There's a break now for this team for November, and then they're back at it again, looking now toward London. There are three weddings on tap this month -- Mathewson, utility Lauren Wenger and team leader Jennifer Adams.

"All three of their weddings," Krikorian said, and he laughed, "might be that much more enjoyable."

Katherine Reutter: skating because she loves it

One of short-track speedskater Katherine Reutter's favorite movies is "Cool Runnings," the 1993 Jamaican bobsled flick. "This is corny," she said, giggling, which is understandable, because turning to John Candy as a source of wisdom can prove a risky play.

Except in this case. In the movie, Candy, playing Irv Blitzer, the fictional bobsled Olympic medalist turned bookie Jamaican-team coach, actually delivers a message that's dead-on serious and that's crystal clear.

"… A gold medal is a wonderful thing," Irv Blitzer says. "But if you're not enough without one, you'll never be enough with one."

"I just realized," Katherine Reutter was saying, and it's more than 18 months now since she won two medals at Vancouver Olympics, a silver in the 1000 and a bronze in the 3000 relay, "I had let my entire life revolve around getting medals. I was doing it out of medal hunger. Since the Olympics, I have transitioned to seeing my sport out of love, and a desire to get better.

"And you know what? By focusing on what I need to do to get better, the medals will follow."

Last weekend, at the first short-track World Cup event of the season, at the oval in Kearns, Utah, Reutter raced the 1500 twice. She won twice.

On Saturday, she won in 2:24.433. Canada's Valerie Maltais came in second, South Korea's Lee Eun-Byul third.

On Sunday, she won in 2:24.005, with Lee second and China's Li Jianrou third.

On the men's side, American J.R. Celski -- in his first World Cup races since Vancouver -- took a bronze in Sunday's 1500. He was disqualified in Saturday's 1000, called for impeding South Korean Noh Jinkyu; Noh won that 1500.

Reutter, 23, is last year's world champion in the 1500. She has been back been training only since mid-September.

She said: "The immaturity -- the only thing in my head used to be, 'Go! Go! Go!' Stretch farther! Do everything better!' Now I'm at a point where I haven't had a lot of injuries but the injuries I have had -- I've made them count.

"If I want longevity," Reutter said, looking toward Sochi and 2014, and that's a long two and a half years away, "I can not go all the time. I have to be smart about where and how I go."

The corollary, she said, is that at 23 she naturally has interests beyond the rink. The trick is to find the appropriate balance -- to sustain the intensity that being best in the world demands while at the same time moving beyond a one-dimensional portrait of herself.

Another of her favorite sayings, she said, hangs on the walls of the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. In essence, it says to train like you have everything to prove but compete like you're the best.

She said, "It's so true. When I am racing, I do everything in my power to win that race. When I'm training, the only thing in my mind is what do I have to do to take it away from other people -- how hard do I have to work to be able to take it away from other people."

No longer, though, does that mean that it's a 24/7 deal.

And, critically -- that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Not at all.

Irv Blitzer would understand.

Seriously.

"My relationship with the sport has changed," she said. "I was willing to sacrifice everything because all I wanted was that medal."

Now, "I can be both Katherine myself and Katherine the world-class speedskater. I don't have to sacrifice one thing or everything to be this."

She also said, "I am trying to train smarter and continuing to keep my eyes in the right place and make my dreams come true. That's what the Olympics are all about. For you and for your country. I don't feel any pressure. How can you not rise to that occasion when you have the opportunity to do it for you, for your country, for every person who has ever believed in you?"

Americans get 1-2-3 magic in dressage

Steffen Peters is a world-class horseman, and that is an understatement. The man is a two-time Olympian. He won team bronze in dressage at the Atlanta Games in 1996. He was fourth in both the individual event in Beijing in 2008. He is  the 2009 World Cup champion and won two individual bronze medals at the 2010 world championships.

On a horse named Weltino's Magic, Peters has gone undefeated in 2011. Yet it took all his considerable skill, talent, experience, savvy, horsemanship -- all of it -- for him to prevail in one of the most interesting and engaging dressage competitions in recent memory at the Pan American Games in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Peters led an American sweep of the medals. His final score: 82.690. In second place: Heather Blitz, riding a horse named Paragon, with 81.917. Third: Marisa Festerling, on Big Tyme, with 77.545.

The American 1-2-3 in the individual event came after the U.S. team captured gold in the team event, its fourth consecutive team dressage medal at the Pan Ams. Canada took silver, Colombia bronze.

In the team event, Peters put up a mark of 80.132, a Pan Am Games record.

For those who are mystified by the nuances of dressage, indeed by equestrian in general, by the outfits and the hats -- let's put all that aside. There's plenty about the sport that makes perfect sense to anyone and everyone.

At its essence, the sport is about the ancient connection between a human being and a horse.

At its best, that connection is profound, indeed spiritual and perhaps even almost mystical.

Magic, the horse Peters rode, is now 9 years old.

Peters -- who was born in Germany but has been in the U.S. since 1985, an American citizen since 1992 and has lived and trained for years in the San Diego area -- has ridden another horse, Ravel, in most Grand Prix-level events over the past five years. Assuming Peters is on the U.S. team for London -- Ravel will still be the 2012 horse for him.

Which only tells you how huge Magic's upside can be.

Peters' wife, Shannon, trained Magic from the time they got him at 4 until the horse was 7, and then, as he said, she "very generously turned the reins over to me."

As anyone who has ever been around horses knows, every horse has a distinct personality. Magic is "one of those guys who wouldn't mind laying on the couch all day on Sunday and watching football," Peters said, laughing. "Even though he is laid-back, he is still a sensitive horse," and also pretty darn smart.

Peters played a lot of soccer growing up. His ankles crack. When he walks down to the barn, Magic can hear him coming. That means two things. One, the horse is "extremely food motivated," Peters said, so he knows something good is coming his way. Two, "he is not a horse you have to push to get motivated -- he offers it."

To go undefeated for an entire year -- that proves it.

Especially to beat a horse like Paragon and rider the caliber of Heather Blitz.

Paragon's story is phenomenal, really.

To begin, the horse stands 18 hands high. That's huge.

Paragon survived 2005's Hurricane Katrina, as a very young horse at a 2,000-acre ranch about 45 minutes north of New Orleans where the pine trees grew up to 100 feet tall and the tree damage proved catastrophic.

The horse is now 8. "He is definitely a people horse," Blitz, who is based now in Wellington, Fla., said. "And has been from the day he was born. He is really centered on people, more than other horses. He is very friendly and loves attention. But he is not spoiled and he's not annoying about it. He loves his life. He's happy. He's content. He tries really hard to do what I ask him to do."

In the individual event, she said, "I knew he'd be strong. He's always strong. I knew I'd be strong, too," Blitz said. "I knew I would not have to make a single mistake. Not one foot in the wrong place, not one second of tension. I would have to be perfect to move into the first spot.

"I had a couple things that didn't go perfectly," she said. But, she added, it's okay.

Equestrian is typically such an individualized pursuit that at the Pan Ams it was rewarding to compete together -- the Americans had labeled themselves a "dream team" -- and to then compete against each other in the individual event but root for each other, too.

"I am very satisfied with my placing," Blitz said. "Actually -- thrilled with it."

"I knew it was close," Peters said of the final individual scoring. "When I heard my score, the first thing I did was ask Heather, 'Are you okay?' Heather had a big smile and said, 'I'm okay.' I'm happy. That meant the world to me. It's nice to win. But it's not nice to beat your friend and teammate."

Lindsey Vonn makes a statement

Lindsey Vonn, the best ski racer in American history, has won races, titles, Olympic medals, championships. But in her career, she had never won a World Cup giant slalom. Now she has, and in typical fashion.

She made history, and lots of it. She won despite being hurt -- coming back from a training crash, which throughout her career she has made something of a habit of. This time, it was a fall last Saturday.

After not being on her skis for a week, Vonn got back on them on Saturday in Solden, Austria, and ripped down the bottom part of the second of two runs to win the giant slalom in the World Cup season opener by four-hundredths of a second.

Her combined time: 2:24.43.

"It was a lot of relief, joy, excitement," she said. "You know, I kind of felt like the Olympics. I had been working so hard to finally get on the top step and I finally did it."

Viktoria Rebensburg of Germany, the 2010 Vancouver Games champion in the event, finished second. Elisabeth Gorgl of Austria, was four-tenths of a second back in third.

Maria Hofl-Riesch of Germany, who defeated Vonn by a mere three points last season for the overall World Cup crown, finished 24th, 3.13 seconds behind.

Julia Mancuso of the United States finished 10th.

Vonn's win was one for many lines in the history books:

She became just the fifth woman to win a race in all five World Cup disciplines.

The others: Sweden's Pernilla Wiberg, Croatia's Janica Kostelic, Sweden's Anja Paerson and Austria's Petra Kronberger.

Vonn is only the second American to win all five disciplines, after Bode Miller.

The victory was Vonn's 42nd on the World Cup circuit, most-ever by an American.

It was the first American World Cup giant slalom win since 1991 (Julie Parisien, in Waterville Valley) and the first American World Cup giant slalom win in Europe since 1984 (Tamara McKinney, in Zwiesel).

It was the first American win in Soelden since Miller went back-to-back in 2003 and 2004. (The U.S. men race in Soelden on Sunday.)

The victory also moves Vonn into a tie with Paerson as the fourth-winningest woman in World Cup history.

Last season, Vonn used men's skis in only the downhill and the super-G. This year, she intends to use men's skis in all her events; she made the switch while training this summer.

"For me, it's faster," she said. "It's holding better on ice."

After Saturday's first run, Vonn was fourth. She was nearly nine-tenths out after the first split on the second run, then made the time up on the bottom.

Vonn is of course the World Cup overall champ in 2008, 2009 and 2010. It's a long, long season. But winning the first race, in a race that hadn't been your specialty but may now be -- that's a statement.

"What's important about today's result is that it gets me off to a quick and strong start," Vonn said. "Last year I really got off to a slow start, and while I came on strong at the end, I fell a little short.

"This summer when I was training I was really conscious of making sure I was prepared for the first events."

Haley Johnson: content and thankful

To everything there is a season. The winter sports season is about begin again. Haley Johnson, a member of the 2010 U.S. Olympic biathlon team who had both her most challenging and ultimately best season last season, who at 29 is in her prime competition years in a sport that rewards endurance, has contentedly called it quits. There's a terrific lesson in Haley's transition.

It takes great courage to go out on your own terms.

Oh -- and by, the way, you don't have to win Olympic gold to absolutely be a winner.

It's not that US Biathlon wouldn't want Haley back. She collected nine of her top 12 World Cup results in 2011; last spring, as the tour reached its end in Oslo, Norway, she finished 22nd in the sprint, 21st in the pursuit and 27th in the mass start, her best-ever weekend of racing.

All this after having started the year way back in NorAms in December.

In essence -- having worked her way back up one more time from double-A ball to the big stage.

In a lengthy letter she wrote that explained her decision to step away from competitive biathlon, Haley said, "My season could not have ended in a more exciting way as I crossed the finish line in the mass start competition in Oslo in March. Not only a personal best for myself, it was also a personal best for US Biathlon. I crossed the line with the truest sense of reaching my potential …"

That letter was addressed to US Biathlon's executive director, Max Cobb; to the federation's board of directors; and to the US Biathon foundation.

It goes on to say: "I am very glad to have grown up through the biathlon family and I appreciate all of my teammates and staff along the way. Upon returning home after the Mass Start race in Oslo I felt a great sense of completeness. Collectively, all of the people, places and experiences contributed to one of the greatest parts of my life. And for this I could not thank you all enough."

Some at the annual biathlon awards dinner -- which was held last Saturday in Park City, Utah -- admitted without shame that they cried when they read Haley's letter. She was among those honored at the ceremony.

In the letter, Haley also says, "I believe that my athletic potential has yet to peak and that it would be realistic to set my sights on the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. However, my priorities have changed and I truly believe in the next pursuits of personal excellence in other areas of life."

For one, Haley and her fiancé, Dave Stewart, who is the head Nordic coach at the University of Denver, naturally have some details to attend to. They're getting married next August near her home town of Lake Placid, N.Y.

"A small wedding but we have big families," she said.

They met in 2003. It was love at first sight. "It was," she said, laughing. "It was pretty cool."

Haley is halfway through getting her college degree, finishing up at Denver after two years at Bates College, majoring now in public policy and social services.

"I felt all these stirrings not only the last year but the last couple of years," she said. "I couldn't just be an athlete."

At the beginning of last season, when she was back in the NorAm circuit after having been in the Olympics just months before -- that was because she simply wasn't shooting well. "It was just this one small piece I needed to fix, not this whole thing … that's why I never even thought about throwing in the towel.

"I had such a strong conviction I was going to set such a new track, I just let that go. I quietly reveled in my accomplishments. I knew I had a tall ladder in front of me. I never thought about which rung I was on and which rung I stepped away from. I tried to stay in the moment. I just stayed very much in the present."

The truth is, Haley wasn't even supposed to even be in Oslo.

She felt she had "missed that perfect little sweet spot that comes with peak performance" at the world championships, which had been held immediately beforehand in Russia.

The decision about who would go to Oslo was up to the U.S. coaches.

And then they said -- Haley, you're in.

"Then the magic began," she said.

"I basically seized the opportunity of being granted the gift of one extra week," with those best-ever results.

"I have been given that advice before," of treating every competition like a gift, "but it wasn't like that until [Oslo]," she said. "It can take an entire career to learn valuable things.

"Maybe," Haley Johnson said, contentedly, "I'll get to use it again in some other situation."

USATF boldly does something right

Wait. What's this? USA Track & Field, arguably the most dysfunctional of all major American Olympic sports federations, maybe getting something not just right but possibly taking an ambitious step to profoundly reshape the future direction of the sport in the United States and even worldwide? For real.

In announcing Monday that it had retained Indianapolis-based Max Siegel Inc. as part of a wide-ranging plan to restructure its marketing and communications efforts, USATF boldly steps into the 21st century.

Siegel is a guy who gets the vision thing, the commercial thing and the relationship thing. USATF needs precisely that sort of help.

No recitation of Siegel's extraordinary life story and career seems to do it justice. Here's a very short take:

He has represented the likes of pro football star Reggie White and baseball great Tony Gwynn. Siegel was president of global operations at Dale Earnhardt Inc. and a senior executive at Sony/BMG, serving on the executive team overseeing pop stars such as Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Usher and then gospel greats such as Kirk Franklin, Fred Hammond and Donnie McClurkin.

Now he is has his own race team, Revolution Racing, and it wins. His company, MSI, represents sports figures and organizations. It creates literary, television and film properties, including the 2010 BET Network series, "Changing Lanes," and the ESPN documentary, "Wendell Scott: A Race Story."

In short, Siegel is a winner across sports, sponsorship and entertainment lines.

The freaky thing is that Siegel actually wants to help USATF.

When he assesses track and field, he said in an interview, "I see all these heroes and I see the opportunity to expand the brand."

USATF has tried substantive change in the not-too-distant past. It hired Doug Logan, a change agent, to be its chief executive officer; soon enough, it didn't like the changes Logan proposed; it then fired the agent.

Other Olympic bodies, of course, have also gone outside the so-called "Olympic family" with similarly dim results.

The U.S. Olympic Committee, for instance, turned twice over the past 10 years to outsiders for its chief executive position -- Stephanie Streeter and Lloyd Ward. Each lasted a short time.

Critically, Siegel is not being hired to run USATF itself.

Again, he is not being hired as CEO.

For emphasis, USATF has an interim chief executive, Mike McNees, who has kept things moving steadily, quietly forward, seeking little screen credit.

Nothing gets done in the Olympic world without relationships. Siegel is a former director on the USATF board and the USA Swimming Foundation; he has ties to other Olympic sports as well. If you were paying attention at the USOC assembly last month in Colorado Springs, you saw him there and might have wondered why. Now you know.

The CEO thing is an entirely separate discussion at USATF. What's at issue now is that, like a patient in therapy, USATF realized that it might, you know, actually help itself -- in this case, its business model -- if it just acknowledged it first had a problem and was then willing to do something constructively about it.

Here is the problem:

The sport is stagnant in the United States.

The release USATF issued Monday says that engaging Siegel's company is part of a "broad, fully integrated service agreement that will unite USATF's commercial ventures" and that "streamlines its internal staff structure in marketing and communications."

Translation: major culture change.

They're actually going to throw some resource at the problem -- pulling together staff from five separate departments, for instance, to work together with Siegel's firm -- with the intent of making some real money by expanding the reach of USATF's commercial efforts in marketing, sponsorship, publicity, membership and broadcasting.

All of that.

To reiterate: USATF is thinking big. Finally.

Jill Geer, the longtime communications chief at USATF, who through thick and thin has always been outstanding in not just her dedication but performance, will oversee all of this. As a sign of just how serious this is, she and her family are moving from New England to Indianapolis.

To reference "culture" again -- track and field shines during the second week of the Summer Games and then all but disappears for pretty much the next three years and 50 weeks. That has to change. Siegel gets it -- that track and field has to again become part of our national discussion.

That's not going to happen overnight. It may not even happen by the start of the London Games. These things take time.

Siegel understands we live now in a culture where reality-TV rocks the ratings. Why not, for instance, a "making the U.S. team" series?

How about the notion of staging a specialty event -- say women's high-jumping, in Vegas, to the back beat of rock or hip-hop music?

Street racing might be cool. How about down Bourbon Street in New Orleans? Or Navy Pier in Chicago?

Anything and everything that might work has to be and should be up for discussion.

Look, two things.

One, the world championships in track and field have never been held in the United States.

Two, childhood obesity has more than tripled in the past 30 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The percentage of children aged 6 to 11 in the United States who were obese went from 7 percent in 1980 to nearly 20 percent in 2008. Over the same period, the percentage of adolescents -- ages 12 to 19 -- who were obese increased from 5 percent to 18 percent, according to the CDC.

That is obscene.

Track and field is the easiest way to start getting a fix on that, because the great majority of those young people can put on a pair of shoes and start walking and then running. And if Max Siegel, who is big on getting tastemakers on board to help impact our popular culture, can do it -- bravo.

"I think this is a two- to five-year fix," he said, referring specifically to USATF -- not, this must be stressed, the nation's obesity issues.

"Year one is restoring the credibility and solidifying the relationship with the core fans and core stakeholders. For me, no matter what you do, there are critics. I think it's going to take points on the board to achieve credibility and get the trust built back up.

"The second phase is to build brand equity," USATF revamping its television strategy in particular.

Phase Three, he said, while always emphasizing service to the "core constituency," can also include a turn toward "new and innovative things."

He said, "I have been a firm believe that sports and entertainment when used properly is a very powerful way to impact culture.

"You've got have something meaningful," and the best news of all for track and field in the United States would be if, finally, it were again -- year-round, day-after-day -- meaningful.

The Karolyi way -- U.S. women are winners

The biggest name in American gymnastics, the outsized personality, is Bela.

Everyone, it seems, knows Bela Karolyi. In their minds' eye, they can see Bela with Nadia Comaneci, and that was in 1976, well before Bela and his wife, Martha, made their way to the west. They can see Bela with Mary Lou Retton in Los Angeles in 1984. Perhaps most memorably, there is Bela holding Kerri Strug after Kerri's vault in Atlanta in 1996.

Bela is and forever will be Bela.

You know what, though? Martha is formidable, as everyone who is close to the sport has well understood for a very long time, and the American women proved it yet again Tuesday, winning the 2011 team world championship in Tokyo with a roster missing the stars most casual American gymnastics fans have come to know over the past few years.

This was a young team, a new team, and still the Americans didn't miss a beat.

Indeed, by the final rotation, the floor exercise, the U.S. team was so far ahead of the defending world champion Russians that the final American up, 17-year-old Aly Raisman, only had to score better than an 11 -- a really low score in elite gymnastics -- for the U.S. to win. She did, easily, with a 14.666, and the celebration was on.

The Americans finished with 179.411, more than four full points ahead of the Russians, with 175.329. China took third, with 172.820.

The U.S. men, meanwhile, won their first world team medal in eight years on Wednesday -- a bronze, missing silver by a mere 0.010. China won gold, Japan silver.

The 2011 world title matches the gold medals the U.S. women won in 2007 and 2003. It also makes the U.S. women favorites for team gold next summer in London.

"This team victory exemplifies the amazing program that has emerged over the past 11 years under the leadership of Martha Karolyi," Steve Penny, the president and chief executive officer of USA Gymnastics, said.

"The athletes, coaches and everyone connected to the program contributed to this success.  This," he said, "is another very proud moment."

This also underscores, yet again, that the Martha Karolyi way, which means the American way in women's gymnastics, works -- a direct challenge to, for instance, the Chinese, or others, compelled from their youngest years to live away from home, away from their families, and do gymnastics in a state-sponsored system.

Martha is the U.S. team's national coordinator. She and Bela have a ranch down in New Waverly, Texas, out in the woods about an hour's drive north of Houston's international airport.

Here's the essence of the Karolyi way:

Promising gymnasts live at home and train at their local gyms with their own coaches. On a regular basis, they come to the Karolyi Ranch, where the girls train under Martha's watchful eye -- and the coaches, not incidentally, learn and share together.

Make no mistake. Martha is demanding, physically and mentally. And the U.S. selection process, under Martha's direction, is rigorous, intentionally so.

But here is the thing. If Martha is exacting, Martha is not outrageous. There is a fine line, and she walks it. It's why gymnasts who have lived the Karolyi way come back for more, sometimes years later. They know that she not only can but does bring out their best.

At the same time, this, too: gymnastics can be really hard on the body. As this summer proved, that means pressure all around -- on the girls and on Martha, too.

The U.S. selection process included the national championships and then two more competition-style training camps at the Karolyi Ranch.

At the championships, Chellsie Memmel -- who was on the silver medal-winning 2008 U.S. Olympic team -- suffered a shoulder injury on the uneven bars. At the same meet, Rebecca Bross, the 2010 U.S. all-around champion, hurt her knee.

At one of the selection camps, Mackenzie Caquatto hurt her ankle. Then, in Japan, uneven bars specialist Anna Li strained an abdominal muscle; and, finally, almost unbelievably, Alicia Sacramone, the U.S. team captain, tore an Achilles tendon during a practice tumbling pass.

Shawn Johnson, the Olympic gold medalist on the balance beam in 2008? She wasn't available in Tokyo. In the midst of a comeback from a knee injury, she's due to be competing at the Pan Am Games later this month in Mexico.

Nastia Liukin, the all-around gold medalist from Beijing? She wasn't in Tokyo, either. She just announced an intent to mount a comeback for London.

Bridget Sloan, who like Shawn and Nastia was on the 2008 Beijing team? Like Shawn, Bridget will be at the Pan Ams.

Several of the other teams in Tokyo had six healthy athletes. The U.S. women had only five: Raisman; Jordyn Wieber; McKayla Maroney; Sabrina Vega; Gabrielle Douglas.

This kind of intensity is also the Karolyi way.

Raisman gathered the others around and said, in essence, let's do this. "I told all the girls, 'We're going to remember this for the rest of our lives and just to go out there and own it and have fun."

Wieber, the 2011 U.S. all-around champ, said, "We were confident and aggressive and we just did our job. It turned out awesome."

Here's an exclamation point to the awesomeness:

The Americans ended up with 46.816 points on the vault -- more than two points better than any of the other teams, and that without Sacramone, the 2010 world champion in the vault.

Because Sacramone was officially a member of the team, she earned a 10th world championship medal. That's an American record. She had been tied with Liukin and Shannon Miller, with nine.

Martha observed that this was a "very young team" and that they had "prepared physically very well," but "we were not so sure if they would hold up very well under the pressure."

She said, "These girls proved they did the right preparation, physically and mentally," and if you know Martha you know that "mentally" was absolutely the key. "I'm very proud of them."

She also said, "I'm very satisfied. This is my passion. Every time the results come out as you plan, you are certainly extremely happy. That's how I feel today -- happy and proud of the program and of these young ladies."

Brady Ellison: world's No. 1 archer

Brady Ellison can still vividly remember the first time his father, Alfred, took him hunting. Brady was still in diapers. Son, if some ducks fly by, tell me, Alfred had said. All of a sudden, Brady yelled out, "Bang! Bang! Bang!" Alfred fell off his chair as three mallards flew overhead.

"I said, 'I want to shoot some, too!' " Brady said, laughing.

Brady Ellison turns 23 later this month. He has grown into the world's No. 1-ranked archer. It all started from just wanting to be an outdoorsman in Arizona, where he grew up, hanging out with his dad, each with a gun or a bow in hand.

"Just to do stuff together," Brady said. "It really just grew from there."

Alfred Ellison is a man's man. The father has, as his son said, "done a lot of different stuff" for work, ranging from "fusing pipes together for mines" to being a foreman.

Brady is an only child.

If you think Arizona is only desert and boring -- best to go back to the geography books. The state has northern mountains, and lakes that are good for trout and bass fishing.

"It's not like New Mexico or Texas, where you have monster bass, but we do okay," Brady allowed.

When you grow up this way, just like in the Old West of lore, you naturally become a good shot, with guns and with arrows.

Indeed, the family scrapbook is filled with photos of Brady and dad with their hunts.

The jump from being a most excellent shot to No. 1 in the world with a bow in his hands is what has transpired over the past couple of years.

As Brady readily acknowledges, it's all in his head, and in this regard, this is where the script diverges from what could have been a black-and-white 1950s cowboy movie to include elements of 21st-century sports-psychologist New Age Zen dude.

Which Brady is, as he absolutely should be, proud of.

Coached by Lanny and Troy Basham of Mental Management Systems, he has done prodigious work on the mental side of his game. It's not just his game face. It's part of his routine -- his day, every day. And let's face it. Archery, especially at the elite level, is supremely mental.

Here is the realization that changed everything for Brady, and it's in two parts:

He is not afraid to lose.

And:

He's there to win.

There's a subtle but crucial difference to each.

Until a couple years ago, he said, "I had a problem with fear. My fear was going somewhere no one had ever gone before. Once I got over that, I started winning tournaments.

"It was just something I realized I was doing I just got over it. Don't be afraid. If you're good enough, just go show the world you're good enough.

"Letting the fear go away -- knowing I can only control what I can control -- if I control myself, other people are going to work hard to beat me."

At, for instance, the Olympic test event this week at Lord's Cricket Ground in London, where the South Korean team set a new team world record in the quarterfinal round against Australia, 233 points, led by Im Dong-Hyun. That was two points better than the mark a South Korean team had set at the 2007 world championships.

In the semifinals at the London event, the Americans, led by Ellison, defeated the No. 1-seeded South Koreans, 222-216, and went on to defeat Chinese Taipei, 225-222, to take gold.

On Monday, he won the individual gold at the test event, defeating Im, 6-2.

For the season, as the world archery federation noted in a release, Ellison has won 34 of 36 events, or 94.4 percent. His average scores per tournament included 28.52 in Torino, Italy, which -- in assessing just how good that was -- the federation marked with not just one but three exclamation points.

Brady Ellison is one of the humblest, soft-spoken, decent athletes out there. He is also supremely confident. He has to be. That's how you win.

In recent years, the South Koreans have dominated archery at the Olympic Games. But a South Korean archer has never won the individual gold medal.

You want to know who, next summer on the same field at Lord's, is going to not just welcome but embrace that pressure?

"So many people out there are afraid to win a tournament," Brady Ellison said. "I'm afraid to lose. It makes me mad. You don't get a paycheck. You don't get rankings. There are so many more downsides to losing. I'm not afraid to win any more."

He also said, "It's just a gift from God the way I grew up. I honestly think there's not a person in the world with a bow in his hand who is mentally as strong as I am."