Maggie Steffens: time to shine

Under the lights last week in Irvine, Calif., in the second period of a FINA World League Prelims game against Canada, the score tied at 3, the Americans on offense, Team USA attacker Maggie Steffens was lurking about seven meters from the goal. In basketball terms, she was on the left side, at the top of the key. The ball swung her way. Again, think basketball. When Kobe Bryant gets the ball like that, what happens? It's catch-and-shoot.

It's a no-fear, no-mercy style of play that's rooted in confidence and mental toughness. It's what special players do because -- they can.

Maggie Steffens caught the ball and did not hesitate. She swung and fired and, that quick, just like Kobe would, she scored, putting the United States up, 4-3, en route to an eventual 11-7 victory.

Maggie Steffens is 18 years old.

Water polo can be a capricious game. But Maggie Steffens is fast earning a reputation for reliability under the most extreme pressure. Last summer, at the Pan American Games, the Americans and Canadians staged an epic contest that went through two standard overtimes and then to 20 penalty shots before, finally, there was resolution. On the line: not only the gold medal but an Olympic qualifying spot.

The Americans prevailed, 27-26. Who nailed the winning shot? Maggie Steffens.

Assuming she makes the U.S. team that goes to the Olympics, and all signs are she will, Maggie could well be a star in the making for a team and a sport that has everything going for it to be a potential hit.

Expect the U.S. women's water polo team to be featured prominently in NBC's coverage of the London Games.

Why?

Over the past several Olympics, the U.S. women's team has done everything but win gold -- silver in Sydney in 2000, bronze in Athens in 2004, silver again in Beijing in 2008.

The U.S. women's team is made up of a collection of personalities that is fit, tan, well-educated, well-spoken and not averse to publicity -- in October, 2010, for instance, most of this bunch posed in the all-together for ESPN The Magazine.

And while Maggie Steffens may herself be on the verge of breaking out, she also figures to be part of one of the great personal stories of the Games -- layered with family, with Olympic history and with powerful notes of redemption.

Maggie's oldest sister, Jessica, 24, a standout on the 2008 U.S. team, apparently recovered from a 2010 shoulder injury, is in strong contention to make the 2012 U.S. team, too.

The Steffens house has roots in water polo that run deep and strong.

The girls' father, Carlos, played for the Puerto Rican and U.S. teams in the early 1980s.

Their mom, Peggy, comes from a family of 13; she is the 11th. The family name is Schnugg. Peter Schnugg is a member of the 1980 U.S. Olympic team that would have gone to Moscow.

Carlos and Peggy met in college at Berkeley. They have four children: Jessica, Charlie, Teresa and Maggie.

Growing up in the Steffens house, sports was an essential part of the rhythm of life. As was school. As was family -- their own home and their extended family. There are something like 45 cousins.

For Carlos, sports was the way up and out of a house in Puerto Rico where he had almost nothing.

Peggy said, recalling her own childhood, "My mom out of sheer duress would drop us off at the pool and we would stay there all day long." And, in a family of 13, "There was always competition. It was great."

Even so, Peggy said, referring to their four children, "Most of their mental toughness comes from him," meaning Carlos, adding, "Every day he has a story or an analogy. It has been ingrained in them since they were little."

In turn, Carlos was quick to praise Peggy, saying she's the one who did the carpooling, the sandwich-making, all of that, when he was traveling on business. "I spent quality time with them," he said, "teaching the passion and the love for the sport."

Both Jessica and Maggie said their parents emphasized not only sports but school and doing the best you could at each. Charlie played water polo at Cal and graduated last December; Teresa went there to play but then opted to focus on school and is now a junior majoring in media studies; Jessica is a 2009 Stanford grad; Maggie is headed to Stanford this fall.

"If any of us were feeling sorry for ourselves, our parents were quick to nip it in the bud," Jessica said, adding a moment later, "It's like putting change in your pocket -- that's what we grew up valuing. That has continued through with us.

"At this level you need that mentality. We put in so much work, so much time, so much effort just to survive in the game. It's a tough sport but at the end of the day I think we love the grind, we love the competition, we love the toughness of it all."

Jessica, as a player, is indeed more of a grinder. Maggie, by contrast, is more of a, hey, everybody, look-at-me -- the sort of natural talent people have been noticing since she was kicking soccer balls as a 5-year-old.

Her father said of his youngest daughter, referring now to water polo, "She has feeling for the game. She understands the game. And she loves it. When you see her play, she anticipates. That is the key to everything -- in life, right?"

"I have seen Maggie play since she was 12," said Adam Krikorian, the U.S. women's head coach, who used to be the coach at UCLA. "I knew she was special at 12. It was no surprise.

"… I knew from before, from watching her, before ever coaching her, that she was incredibly talented, she was coachable and she was tough as nails. That was why I wanted her from the get-go."

"Maggie is good," Carlos said, and always has been, dominating 13-year-olds in the pool when she was 8.

"But," he said, "she has yet to do what Jessica did at the 2008 Olympics. I don't know if you noticed but they made an all-world team," the Olympic media all-star team, "and the only one that made that team from the U.S. is Jessica. This is a girl who [barely] made the [U.S.] team. Maggie still needs to show that."

He also said Jessica has been a "great sister," adding, "She has really helped Maggie a ton going through the journey. Maggie has always looked up to Jessica."

Jessica said, "I'm trying to take it day by day. Ultimately, it's one thing playing with your teammates who become your sisters. It's another to have your sister be your teammate. I know she and I can go through hell together and we'll come out okay.

"I feel that way with the other girls but it's completely natural with us. There are things we see and do in the pool together that are so cool. It's a really fun thing to be a part of."

For her part, Maggie said, "It's a very surreal thought, to be able to not only have one person but two people on one team sharing that same experience. It's pretty amazing -- a crazy experience."

"We are working so hard," Jessica said. "We are taking it step by step."

As is Carlos. And here is a little secret.

Carlos was good enough, probably, to have made the 1984 U.S. team. But, with his degree from Berkeley in hand, he had to make a living. He had to support his mother back in Puerto Rico and then his wife and then a growing family.

When the Olympic Games would come on television, it hurt to watch. For a long time it hurt.

"In water polo, there's nothing bigger than becoming an Olympian," he said. "I made sure, and I still do, that I offer my kids the best possible opportunity that what happened to me will not happen to them. I will support them as much as they can to make sure they don't have that empty feeling."

That feeling lasted until 2008, when Jessica played in Beijing. The whole family went to watch. "Man," Carlos Steffens said he remember thinking in the stands, "how lucky I am to live this through my kids."

Something else happened in those stands. After the U.S. team lost in the gold-medal game, defeated 9-8 by the Netherlands, Carlos gave his attention to Maggie, who was sitting next to him. She had just turned 15.

"I looked at her and she at me and I said, 'Now it's your turn to get the gold.' She was all business. She nodded her head.

"And now here we are, four years later."

Mario Pescante and the matter of dignity

According to the earliest records, the first Olympic Games were held in 776 BC in what we now call ancient Olympia, in Greece. Tradition holds that the city of Rome was founded 23 years later, in 753 BC.

In the abstract, it was quite okay for Rome to drop out of the race for the 2020 Summer Games, Mario Pescante was explaining Wednesday on the phone from Italy. But it was not okay to do so on such short notice, with just hours to go before the deadline for the applicant cities to tell the International Olympic Committee whether they were in -- or not.

This, he said, is why he had no choice but to resign as vice president of the IOC.

This is also why Mario Pescante should be applauded.

His resignation was an act of honor -- the work of a man of principled action who would not be persuaded to reconsider.

It's a significant loss for the IOC's policy-making executive board. Pescante has a law degree. He is a professor, a parliamentarian and something of a philosopher.

At the same time, it also may prove a key stroke in restoring the dignity of Italian sport.

How many senior officials would similarly have the fortitude to do what Pescante did?

It's a big deal to be an IOC vice president. Who gives that up, and why?

Who measures both the political and economic circumstances of the times in which we live now and the pull of the traditions, cultural and social, of a movement that reaches to ancient times?

"This movement," Pescante said, "has 2,700 years of antiquity."

He added a moment later, "It's not particular to decide 12 hours before the deadline. It's not correct."

Once more, for emphasis, "It has nothing to [do] with the negative decision. Just the timing."

Last Tuesday, the day before the IOC deadline, Monti scrapped Rome's 2020 bid, saying the Italian government could not provide the required financial backing the campaign required at a time of economic crisis. Projections for playing host to the 2020 Games in Rome: $12.5 billion.

Rome's withdrawal leaves five cities in the 2020 mix. In no particular order: Tokyo; Istanbul; Madrid; Baku, Azerbaijan; and Doha, Qatar. The IOC will pick the 2020 city in September, 2013.

Reflecting on the debt crisis in Europe and its intersection with Rome's 2020 bid, Pescante said, "Personally, I thought the moment to change the policy and to start with the investment was right. But the prime minster, at this moment, I think, with the situation in Greece, in Spain, where everybody -- they were sacrificing, the discipline is extraordinary, this was the time to think of the future. I respect this decision.

"My trouble is this decision could be taken two months ago, not 12 hours before the deadline. This is not correct for the Italian sports movement."

For emphasis, Pescante said, Monti is "doing a fantastic job." But in this case, "There was a lack of style," and for the sake of the Italian sports movement it was important that he -- Pescante -- resign his IOC vice presidency.

"Frankly," Pescante said, summing up, "sport is a very important social expression. But it's not decisive in this moment to solve the problem of Europe, or the crisis."

He also said, "I repeat -- 2,700 years of history. This is another aspect of life in the world. No other religion or philosophy has this. Frankly, if I can show my prime minister, and also the Italian public -- this must be respected. I am happy to finish my career at the top of the Olympic movement."

To be clear: Pescante, now 73, is not resigning his IOC membership. He is still a member; at the conclusion of the London Games, he will no longer be a vice president.

It is no easy thing to become an IOC vice president. There are only four. All four are elected by their IOC peers.

"I know well," Pescante elected as a regular IOC member in 1994, said. "I was elected vice president after 15 years of activity in the world of sport."

Once elected, you are the fourth vp for roughly a year, then the third for another year, and so on.

The way it would have worked, Pescante would have been in the enviable position of being the first vice president from the closing ceremony at the London Games until the session in Buenos Aires in September, 2013 -- roughly 13 months.

At that session in Buenos Aires, the IOC will elect a new president -- Jacques Rogge's 12 years in office come to a mandatory end -- and the 2020 Summer Games site.

Talk about influential.

This is what Pescante is giving up, willingly and knowingly.

Pescante said he spoke twice Tuesday to Rogge about the matter.

"Jacques said, 'Mario, will you change?'

" 'I said, 'No, thank you.'

"This is theater. Theater was also born in Italy. I don't want to be an actor in the theater."

It was not immediately clear how the IOC would address the matter of Pescante's position for those 13 months. Zaiqing Yu of China is due to rotate off the board after London; Ser Miang Ng of Singapore and Thomas Bach of Germany hold the other two vice presidencies. The early indication was that Ng would slide up to the first vice presidential slot and Bach to the second. Bach is widely believed within IOC circles to be interested in the presidency; Ng is similarly discussed as a contender.

Pescante said, "I would like to say -- how do you say it in English? -- that my decision is irrevocable."

Steve Holcomb: driving to history

Three years ago, Steve Holcomb won gold at the bobsled world championships, driving a four-man sled. Two years ago, he won four-man gold at the Olympic Games in Vancouver.

On Sunday, pushed by Steve Langton, Holcomb won gold in the two-man at the world championships in Lake Placid, N.Y.

It's the first American gold in the two-man in the 80-year history of bobsled world championships.

That four-man worlds gold had been the first in 50 years; the Olympic four-man gold the first since 1948.

"I don't know -- I'm kind of running out of records to break," Holcomb said late Sunday, laughing in disbelief.

"We had an unbelievable drive by Steve," Langton said. "He is an unbelievable pilot. He can drive anything down the hill."

Name another American in his sport who has achieved as much.

Michael Phelps has of course won more world championship and Olympic medals.

Shaun White has perhaps pushed more boundaries.

But in his sport, Steve Holcomb has lifted the United States team back to heights the Americans haven't known since John Glenn was orbiting the earth all of three times. And before, way before -- since the Great Depression.

In Olympic terms -- before the first Los Angeles Summer Games in 1932.

Top that.

Later Sunday, Holcomb switched sleds and his brakeman, Justin Olsen, and anchored the U.S. to its first-ever worlds team gold by a margin of 56.20 seconds, the fastest of the eight teams competing -- the times a combination of men's and women's skeleton, women's bobsled and men's two-man bobsled.

Germany had won all four prior team golds, in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2011; the U.S. had taken silver in 2007, bronze in 2008 and 2009. Germany took second Sunday, 73-hundredths of a second back; Canada, third, 1.30 second behind.

Holcomb, in a telephone interview, repeatedly gave credit Sunday to his teammates, coaches and the U.S. support staff. He also said, "If you put a sled in front of me, I'm going to do my best to drive it."

Holcomb turned not only his career but everything around in March, 2008, with the help of an eye doctor in Beverly Hills, Calif., Dr. Brian Boxer Wachler.

Holcomb was suffering from a condition called keratoconus, which causes the eye's cornea to bulge outward. Glasses and contact lenses weren't working. Lasik hadn't worked, either. Holcomb was so nearsighted -- and so frustrated -- he was ready to quit bobsled.

How nearsighted? He couldn't read the big E at the top of the charts. Not even close.

"It was kind of a standing joke," Holcomb said Sunday, recalling what it had been like then. "I had to stand eight inches from the big E to see it."

In 2003, it turned out, Boxer Wacher had developed a procedure to restore Holcomb's vision. He called it C3-R; it involves administering drops to strengthen the cornea and then embedding a lens behind the iris of each eye. The procedure took remarkably little time.

Bingo.

The results on the track since speak for themselves. Simply put, when you have Holcomb's innate talent, it makes an enormous difference to be able to see, actually see, where you're going.

Boxer Wachler has since renamed the procedure the Holcomb C3-R.

Last September, at the U.S. Olympic Committee's annual assembly in Colorado Springs, Colo., Holcomb -- on stage to receive the 2010 team of the year award -- became emotional when discussing the difference Boxer Wachler had made. He didn't just save my career, Holcomb said. He saved my life.

Before Sunday, the best the United States had done in the two-man at the worlds was four silvers; the most recent had been in 1961. The Americans had won but six bronze medals; four had come between 1949 and 1967 and then Brian Shimer, now the U.S. men's coach, had won one in 1997.

The way a competition like the two-man works at the worlds is, in all, four runs -- the first two Saturday, the final two on Sunday.

Holcomb's first run was off. He knew it. He posted to his Twitter feed, "Huge mistake in the first run. Sitting in 4th. Got it figured out. Time to make my move."

In the second run, Langton powered to a 5.02-second start and Holcomb got them to the finish line fastest of the 27 sleds that finished the run -- ending the day just 12-hundredths of a second behind Canada's Lyndon Rush and Jesse Lumsden.

In Sunday's first run -- that is, the third overall --  Langton again came out hot, at 5.07 and Holcomb got them down in 55.54 seconds, the fastest of any team in all four heats. That put the U.S. team up top by 20-hundredths of a second over the Canadians, 26-hundredths ahead of Germany's Maximilian Arndt and Kevin Kuske.

"Very happy with my 1st run, but the race isn't over," Holcomb posted to Twitter. "Need to stay focused & relaxed, then do it again."

Which is what he did, finishing the day with a final run of 55.63.

The U.S. team's winning time over four runs: 3.42.88.

The Canadians finished 46-hundredths back, the Germans 55-hundredths.

All three U.S. sleds finished in the top 10:  John Napier and Christopher Fogt took sixth, Nick Cunningham and Dallas Robinson ninth. Both Napier and Fogt are in the military and served overseas after the Vancouver Olympics, Napier six months in Afghanistan, Fogt a year in Iraq.

"Everything is clicking," Holcomb said. "Everything is going well … Right now we are on top of the world. Everything is fantastic. I am living life. When you get a second chance at being able to see, it gives you a new perspective on life -- it really does."

Women and sport conference: impatient optimists

Women have come a long way in the struggle for gender equity on the field of play at the Olympic Games. But more, much more, needs to be done to achieve equity in Olympic sport's management and executive positions, it was made clear at the International Olympic Committee's fifth "Women and Sport" conference.

The session, which wrapped up a three-day run Saturday at the JW Marriott hotel in downtown Los Angeles, attracted 855 delegates from 135 nations as well as IOC president Jacques Rogge and a number of senior IOC members -- a significant outreach for the U.S. Olympic Committee and for Los Angeles Olympic backers.

"I am an impatient optimist," Academy Award-winning actress Geena Davis, who has gone on to become a noted archery competitor and leading advocate for women's equity in sport, told the conference Saturday morning.

She added, "The time for change is now."

The two LA Summer Games provide an easy benchmark to show how far things have come.

In 1932, only 9 percent of the competitors were women. In 1984, 24 percent. In 2008 in Beijing, more than 42 percent, and in London this summer, Rogge said, "We expect to improve on that."

Moreover, with the addition of women's boxing, women will compete in every one of the 26 sports on the Olympic program at the 2012 Games.

C.K. Wu, the president of the international boxing federation, which goes by the acronym AIBA, said at a session Saturday that female boxers will most likely be given the option of wearing either shorts or skirts, resolving a long-running controversy.

The addition of female boxers means there are only these two entries that are not gender-neutral on the Olympic program, Summer (synchronized swimming) and Winter (Nordic combined).

Rogge, asked about that, said that men could do synchro and women Nordic combined if there was more "worldwide activity."

Only three nations, meanwhile, have yet to send a woman to the Games -- Saudi Arabia, Brunei and Qatar. In an interview before the conference with a group of journalism students from the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communication & Journalism, Rogge said he was "optimistic" the number would be down to zero by the London Games.

The next frontier, he and a number of other speakers over the conference underscored, is two-fold:

One is getting women involved at the highest levels of leadership across the movement -- in national governing bodies, national Olympic committees, international federations and, of course, the IOC itself.

"In the Olympic movement," Anita DeFrantz of Los Angeles, the senior IOC delegate to the United States said at the closing ceremony, "we desperately need more women to take their role at the decision-making tables."

The long-established target for women in senior positions in the movement is 20 percent.

There are currently 19 current active female IOC members, Rogge said. "Without jumping the gun" and mentioning no names, he said he expected the ratification of two more female members at the IOC's forthcoming annual meeting this summer in London, bringing the number to 21, and the percentage to 19.5 percent.

He said, "Is that enough? No. It's not the end of the story. But it's an important milestone."

In the international federations, the proportion of women on executive boards or commissions is still well below that 20 percent figure -- 16.6 percent for Summer Games sports, 12.4 percent for Winter Games sports, Wu said in a report to the conference.

The percentage of female national Olympic committee presidents: 4 percent.

Wu, the father of two daughters, said, "Everything in this world is more exciting, interesting and inspiring when women participate," adding a moment later, "We need to work harder on making progress."

The second "long battle for us," as Rogge phased it, is "to have better access [around the world] for women to sport."

He added, "It's not going to be easy."

In many countries in the world, Rogge said, the idea of sport for women may not necessarily be met with resistance. In most countries, sport is a government enterprise. But many governments are dealing with -- you name it -- armed conflict, economic woes, disease and other profound challenges.

In such circumstance, "They tell us frankly sport is not our No. 1 priority and you have to understand that."

It's why, when asked what sort of outcome he hoped to see from this conference, he responded, he said, "A strong message that resonates outside of this conference."

Here, he said, this conference had "what you would call a captive public," what in idiomatic American English we might call preaching to the choir.

"… Everyone is saying this is a sacred noble goal," promoting women's equity in sport.

Now, though, the conference is over and everyone is headed home from Los Angeles. The sixth "Women and Sport" conference won't be for another four years. What will the numbers say then?

Salt Lake 2022: not a chance

As Salt Lake City celebrates the tenth anniversary of the 2002 Winter Olympics, local authorities have announced they intend to explore the idea of bidding again for the 2022 or 2026 Winter Games. Addressing supporters at the Olympic cauldron at Rice-Eccles Stadium was re-lit last week for a few minutes, Utah Gov. Gary Herbert said, according to a report in the Salt Lake Tribune, "We need to pursue this [exploration] to see if there is real opportunity there."

I can help, Mr. Governor.

There is no chance Salt Lake City can win. Zero. Zip. Nada. You can stop right now.

Save everyone the money, the time and the worry.

This is not -- repeat, not -- a slam on Salt Lake, or Utah. Salt Lake is cool. Park City and Deer Valley are beautiful. So is Soldier Hollow.

This is, instead, a blunt assessment of the reality of the International Olympic Committee bid game. I have covered every IOC bid contest since 1999. I spent a great deal of 2011 reporting on the 2018 Winter Games contest, won by Pyeongchang, South Korea, going to each of the three stops on the Evaluation Commission tour and then the vote itself last July in Durban, South Africa.

Mr. Governor, not once since the 2002 Games closed has even one IOC member said to me -- you know what, I really want to go back to Salt Lake City.

That is why you have no chance.

Do you know where the members of the IOC consistently say they would want to go?

San Francisco. And Los Angeles. For the Summer Games.

In polling done for the 2012 New York and 2016 Chicago bids, IOC members consistently told their American friends that where they really wanted to go was California. The IOC is Eurocentric; San Francisco is a magic name in Europe and yet it has never staged the Games. LA has played host twice, in 1932 and 1984, but Southern California, with Hollywood, Disneyland and the surf and volleyball culture of the beach, nonetheless remains a potent draw.

Mr. Governor, another point to consider:

Salt Lake was an Olympic city in 2002 but since then, what? The IOC is back in the United States this week for a conference it stages every four years called "Women and Sport." President Jacques Rogge is in attendance. Some 800 people are with him. Where's this conference? Los Angeles.

Is anyone from Utah in attendance here in Los Angeles? Um, still looking.

Three years ago, an Olympic-related conference, SportAccord, was held amid the IOC's policy-making executive board meeting. Where? Denver.

What has Salt Lake done for the IOC since 2002?

This, again, Mr. Governor, is why Salt Lake has no chance.

Though you undoubtedly have been briefed, Mr. Governor, that Denver and Reno-Tahoe are your domestic competitors for 2022, and that Bozeman, Mont., may be interested as well, the real play for the United States may well be California in 2024.

Obviously, a 2024 candidacy would likely take 2026 out of the mix.

If, that is, there's any bid in play at all in the next few years.

There's just no urgency to bid, and here's hoping someone on your exploratory committee by now has told you this.

For starters, it's not at all critical for the Games to be back in the United States. Sure, it would be nice if the Games were back. But it's not an imperative -- not politically, economically or culturally. NBC just agreed to pay $4.38 billion for the rights to televise the Games through 2020; none of those Games is in the United States yet the sales price was hardly depressed.

Moreover, the U.S. Olympic Committee and IOC are locked in a long-running dispute over the 12.75 percent share of television rights and 20 percent cut of marketing rights the USOC gets from the IOC. The two sides are talking but progress has been halting.

There's no bid until there's a new deal, and it's not clear a deal will get done while Rogge is in office. He's president until September, 2013. That doesn't leave a lot of time to get a bid together in time for a 2015 vote for 2022; a bid these days typically runs north of $50 million.

As for Denver: they have to contend in Colorado with the 1970s Olympic give-back (still); the haul up to the mountains from Denver proper; and the environmental and financial issues inherent in building a bobsled track. Like, do we need another one in the American West when there's one next door in Utah?

Reno increasingly seems to be trying to package itself with California -- the Nevada-California border is right there -- and with San Francisco, four hours away.

Which only begs the question, right? Why go to Reno when you're inevitably drawn to San Francisco? That's one of the challenges the Reno bid is going to have to answer. Even in 1960, when the Winter Games were held in Squaw Valley, in the Sierras by the California-Nevada line, building on the same idea the Reno team is floating for 2022, the IOC held its session down in San Francisco.

It is true that the United States has become a Winter Games power and the finances of the movement have made staging the Winter Olympics a much more attractive option than ever before. But the primary play is, and always will be, the Summer Games.

There are lots of reasons San Francisco has never staged the Games. The politics are complicated; same for the traffic. But perhaps the main issue has always been, what about a stadium?

Earlier this month, the NFL announced it would give the 49ers $200 million toward a $1 billion, 68,500-seat stadium in suburban Santa Clara. Site work began in January. The stadium could open as soon as the 2014 season, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Unclear is whether the stadium could be configured for track and field or whether it's football-only.

Let's get back to Salt Lake. All the it-can't-happen evidence in this column -- people in Utah surely stand ready to dismiss it, eager to point to "sustainability" and to Mitt.

It is indisputably true that the facilities that helped Salt Lake stage the 2002 Games are still there. The airport; the venues; the mass-transit system; Interstate 80; all of that.

Doesn't matter.

For one, come 2022, that bobsled track -- just to pick one venue - is going to be 20 years old. It's not going to take some upgrading? That's not going to cost some money?

Beyond which -- those kinds of venues, facilities and things on the ground are what the IOC calls the "technical" stuff.

The technical stuff doesn't win votes. New York had a great technical bid and got 19 votes, eliminated in the second round. Chicago had a great technical bid and got bounced in the first round, with 18 votes.

The IOC likes to talk about "sustainable" Olympics. Then it goes and awards Games to London (2012 - huge construction project), Sochi, Russia (2014 - huge construction project), Rio (2016 - huge construction project) and Pyeongchang (2018 - huge construction project).

Someday, perhaps, that string will be snapped. But why would it be Salt Lake?

Olympic bids are won on emotion, on story-telling, on connection.

The memories that we Americans have of those Games as a patriotic expression of can-do just five months after 9/11?

Within the IOC, "Salt Lake" is still remembered for the bid scandal, for the sense of having to move within a post-9/11 armed camp, even for President Bush's addition to the opening-the-Games formula. He added, "On behalf of a proud, determined and grateful nation" to the traditional formula, "I declare open the Games of Salt Lake City," and within the protocol-sensitive IOC you bet they still remember.

If the bet within Salt Lake City is that Mitt Romney, now running for the Republican nomination for U.S. president, would once again be cast as savior -- the position here is clear.

Romney, along with Fraser Bullock and the rest of the SLOC team, and the volunteers, deserve enormous credit for turning around the 2002 Olympics. The situation when he was brought in was, if not grim, pretty close to it. He and his team -- and everyone in Utah who contributed -- deserve full recognition for the success of the 2002 Olympics, and the $100 million surplus.

"I'm delighted that Utah is thinking about bidding for the 2022 Winter Olympics," Romney said, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. "Our great nation is wonderfully suited to host the world's greatest sporting competition."

It's quite a proposition, though, that Romney as president would sway the IOC. First, he would have to get the Republican nomination; then be elected president of the United States; then convince the IOC. That's a lot of dominoes.

Remember that President Obama went to Copenhagen in 2009 to lobby the IOC on behalf of Chicago, his hometown, and to little effect.

Presumably, Romney would be greeted by the IOC as an Olympic insider. Then again, it's the IOC. One never assumes.

Rome's 2020 withdrawal: an alarm bell

The files for Rome's 2020 bid had been printed in Milan. They had been loaded onto a delivery van. The van was now idling by the Colle del Gran San Bernardo, the St. Bernard pass, the historic conduit between Italy and Switzerland, ready to be delivered to International Olympic Committee headquarters in Lausanne. All that was waiting was the go-ahead from the central government, the final OK from premier Mario Monti.

On Tuesday, the word came to the driver: Turn back. You're not heading to Switzerland.

Monti, in a move that immediately underscores the European debt crisis but truthfully points to so much more about the financial underpinnings of the Olympic movement, put a stop to Rome's bid the day before the deadline for the submission of those bid files, saying the Italian government could not provide the required financial backing the campaign required at a time of economic crisis.

The costs for playing host to the 2020 Games in Rome: a projected $12.5 billion.

Monti said the government didn't feel "it was responsible to assume such a guarantee in Italy's current condition," adding it "could put at risk taxpayers' money."

What this is -- and let's be clear -- is an alarm bell.

It can, and will, be spun a lot of different ways. But it's an alarm bell. The IOC is a European institution. When a bid from the heart of Europe for the Summer Games, the IOC's main franchise, decides in the most public way that it's too expensive to play, particularly because the signals from the Rome campaign were that they were going to focus on venues already built and the notion of a "sustainable" Games -- that has to be a major cause within Olympic circles for concern and evaluation.

Not, though, panic. Let's be straightforward about that, too.

Indeed, this should be emphasized: The IOC's financial health is, in many respects, sound. Evidence of that is NBC's $4.38 billion investment in televising the Games in the United States through 2020. Moreover, IOC president Jacques Rogge, prudently, has spent years compiling a reserve that would enable the IOC to withstand a financial hit so severe that it could go for an entire four-year cycle if it had to do so.

That said, there needs to be considerably more clarity and reality in the bid process, and if Rome's demise can precipitate that -- so much the better.

It's the case that such clarity can be problematic; you're asking for financial forecasts seven in the future, and events in the real world can indeed have a way of overtaking such estimates. Even so, the numbers that get published in some bid books can sometimes amount to polite fictions. The public contribution for the 2012 London Games is now $14.6 billion, nearly three times what was estimated during the 2005 bid.

London, indisputably, was a quality bid. The IOC's financial health depends not just on television billions and sponsors but, as is constantly discussed within its headquarters, the Chateau de Vidy, attracting a succession of quality bid-city candidates.

It has had challenges, though, attracting Winter Games fields. The 2018 derby drew only three candidates -- Pyeongchang, South Korea, which won, along with Munich, and Annecy, France, and Annecy, which ultimately drew only seven votes in last July's election, obviously was one of the most lacking bids that ever drew IOC scrutiny.

There are now five "applicants" left in the 2020 mix, and in no particular order: Madrid; Istanbul; Tokyo; Doha, Qatar; and Baku, Azerbaijan. Come May, it remains unclear whether the IOC will let all five go through to what's called the "candidate" phase, the 16-month run to the September, 2013, vote for 2020.

When the likes of Rome, site of the 1960 Summer Games, have to drop out and you're left with Baku in the mix -- not to say that Baku isn't or might not be qualified, but who really thinks that Baku is going to win the 2020 Summer Games?

It also highlights a point -- and the irony here is inescapable, given that it comes from one of the leading European technocrats of our time -- that American bids have been saying for years:

The IOC guarantee structure, which calls on full government backing for the Olympic enterprise, may well be problematic. Perhaps the notion deserves renewed study -- and, more important, a better appreciation within the IOC of the benefits of a private-public guarantee partnership of the sort that the unsuccessful Chicago 2016 bid offered.

From the IOC's perspective, you can well understand why it wants full government backing. Look at those London numbers one more time -- a three-time ballooning of the costs. The IOC itself isn't about to be on the hook for that kind of money. So who is?

Well -- the government in Baku would be. No problem!

That only begs the obvious question: Do the IOC members want to go to Baku?

From an American perspective, it's simply not prudent to ask taxpayers to foot that kind of bill. There's no way Joe Six-Pack would ante up. Absolutely no way.

That's why the private-public deal that Chicago had structured was so innovative. A unanimous Chicago city council vote gave then-Mayor Richard M. Daley the authority to sign city and state guarantees interwoven with the added support of privately purchased insurance. This plan ought to be better understood and embraced by future bids, and by the IOC members, as a sensible risk-sharing model.

Of course, Chicago went out in the first round of IOC voting in Copenhagen in October, 2009, with just 18 votes; Rio de Janeiro won the 2016 Summer Games.

This is not sour grapes or to say that Rio was not deserving.

The point here is the guarantee, and what it means for 2020 and future bid contests.

There's another possibility here worth considering:

Mr. Monti made his decision to scrap Rome's bid after meeting last Thursday at the White House with President Obama. One recalls that Mr. Obama traveled to Copenhagen to lobby the IOC on behalf of Chicago, the first time the American president had ever put his prestige on the line before the IOC in such a way -- only to get slapped down, and vigorously, by the IOC members.

If Mr. Obama and Mr. Monti discussed Olympic bids, it doesn't take much to imagine what the president might have said to the premier about the wisdom of moving ahead -- or, probably, not. It also doesn't take much to imagine how much consternation the premier's visit to Washington must have occasioned within the Rome 2020 bid committee, knowing how the president had been treated by the IOC in Copenhagen.

Mario Pescante, one of Italy's senior IOC members, said in a statement issued by the Rome 2020 committee that it was "with a heavy heart" that the bid was ending. "But life, as in sport, is often determined by events beyond one's control so we must responsibly accept the decision of our government and re-focus our energies on the broader goals of Italy itself."

Which don't include the Olympic Games. At least for a long time.

Where track and field is sexy and knows it

DONETSK, Ukraine -- In his time, it was enough that Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile. People cared, and a lot. Back then, track and field mattered. In their day, the likes of Edwin Moses, Carl Lewis, Florence Griffth-Joyner and Jackie Joyner-Kersee could just run fast and jump far. A great many people found track and field itself relevant and interesting.

Now, track and field lives on the margins of professional sport, especially in the United States, except for one week every four years at the Summer Olympics, when it commands Super Bowl-like attention. As ratings and attendance figures at other times have demonstrated conclusively, it's not enough anymore to just to run and jump -- or even throw.

So when Kylie Hutson, a rising American pole vaulter, took her runs Saturday night here at the 23rd annual running of the "Pole Vault Stars" to the strains of LMFAO's  "Sexy and I Know It," playing to the crowd because she's sexy and she knows it -- hey, it was showtime.

Brad Walker, the 2007 world champion, ran the runway to perhaps the one G-rated sentence in the song "Move Bitch" from Ludacris. The noise shook the roof. The crowd roared.

Traditionalists may cringe. But this is the direction track and field inevitably has to move, a combination of sport and entertainment, if it wants to engage the paying public.

The Druzhba sports hall in Donetsk holds roughly 4,000. To get there, fans had to brave temperatures of minus-20 centigrade, or minus-4 Fahrenheit. The place was packed; at the start, the lines at the concession stands were three deep. The show went on for three hours, the vaulters going off on brown runways set off against a blue background, one of the guys, then one of the women, at the height of the action a vaulter going off every 90 seconds, all the time the music kicking. For three solid hours the Druzhba was an all-in track-and-field house party.

Generally, a standard-issue track meet comes off like an out-of-control circus. For the average fan, there's too much going on, all of it seemingly at one time. The genius of an event like Pole Vault Stars is that it's a break-out deal, pole-vaulting only; there aren't any competing distractions on a surrounding track; moreover, you don't have to be a track and field geek to understand what's going on.

That's what makes the concept so easily transferrable:

Why not lithe female high jumpers in Las Vegas? Studly male shot putters in downtown Manhattan?  (On Wall Street?) Why not street races down Michigan Avenue in Chicago or Bourbon Street in New Orleans?

In England, they already hold a street race in Manchester. At the Diamond League meet in Zurich last September, the shot put events -- men's and women's -- were held in the entrance hall of the main train station.

Track and field has to think like this, out of the box, to get to the ultimate goal: to make the sport once again not only relevant and interesting to the average fan. That is, must-see. For American supporters, the aim has to be to pack a place like Cowboys Stadium -- with that big-screen TV -- by the 2020 or 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials, and one day to bring the world championships to the United States.

It can be done. Usain Bolt has shown that there is space in a crowded sports landscape for a single track and field personality.

At the same time, there is much to overcome.

Moving beyond the sport's well-documented doping issues -- for decades, track and field has ceded the show to other sports.

The NBA, for instance, is Jack Nicholson and Spike Lee and, to invoke the legendary voice of Lawrence Tanter announcing the obvious between breaks at Staples Center, Laker Girls.

Name even one celebrity associated with recent editions of the U.S. Olympic track trials -- or, for that matter, the U.S. track and field season.

Still waiting …

During the Major League Baseball season, they put on sausage races at Miller Park in Milwaukee, and people care. No, really! They care so much that "Famous Racing Sausages" is trademarked.

The NFL, of course, offers up military flyovers and cheerleaders and, at the Super Bowl itself, the halftime rock-and-roll spectacle. Why wouldn't track and field want to be more like the NFL?

Or, for that matter, the UFC?

Who, a few years ago, had even heard of the UFC?

"Look at the UFC and what Dana White has done. He has marketed the hell out of his athletes," Walker said here late Saturday night. "We have tremendous athletes. Nobody knows who any of us are."

Added Jeff Hartwig, the 1996 and 2008 Olympian who was in Donetsk representing Hutson, "You can make the general public fall in love with you if you put money and time into it, and we," meaning track and field, "don't do either."

Track and field's credibility as a would-be major sport is not just limited to the United States -- though it is there that it may be most on the line. As just one example: The Millrose Games moved out of Madison Square Garden. Meanwhile, a number of European indoor meets this winter disappeared, including the seeming fixture in Stuttgart.

Mind you -- this is an Olympic year.

"A lot of competitions are dead," said Germany's Björn Otto, who finished a strong second here.

He added at a news conference, referring to Pole Vault Stars, "We need these competitions. It's promoting track and field as attractive for the world. And spectators can see that."

This meet began in 1990, started by Sergey Bubka, the 1988 Seoul Games pole-vault gold medalist who went to high school in Donetsk. "For me," Bubka said, "we must offer sport as a combination -- with excitement, sport as a show. It gives a different impact. When you do this, the people love it."

Bubka is now a vice-president of track and field's international governing body, the International Assn. of Athletics Federations, and is on a short list of those believed to be positioning themselves for the succession -- whenever it might occur -- of the elderly IAAF president, Lamine Diack. Bubka is also an International Olympic Committee member and president of the national Olympic committee of Ukraine.

Asked if the pole-vault meet might be a play to advance his political interests, Bubka demurred. "What kind of promotion for myself? I didn't need that. I dreamed to do well, to promote my city. It was Soviet times. It was my dream to give the people two to three hours of entertainment."

Which has shown staying power. Samsung has become the title sponsor. Coca-Cola and others are also in, their executives saying they were happy to be on board because the Donetsk event delivers a family friendly audience.

Bubka, meanwhile, is forever tinkering with the format: "It's my baby and every year we try to do something different."

The show Saturday night featured mock-ups of both the Parthenon and Big Ben, tributes to the Olympic Games' Greek heritage and this summer's London Games, and a dance-number opening ceremony.

In all, 24 athletes took part, including the two Americans.

There were vaulters from Cuba, Brazil and all over Europe. Each of the vaulters got to choose his or her own music. Four picked the French artist David Guetta; in a sign of the opportunity just waiting there, virtually everyone else chose an American artist or a U.S.-based musical act, the choices ranging from Eminem to Rihanna to Jennifer Lopez.

This was a no-slouch field.

Renaud Lavillenie of France, the 2009 and 2011 world championships bronze medalist, won the men's competition at 5.82 meters, or 19 feet, 1 inch. Otto, recovering from Achilles' injuries, made the same height but took second on count backs.

Germany's Malte Mohr, the 2010 world indoor silver medalist, came in third.

In recent years, Russia's Yelena Isinbayeva, the Beijing 2008 gold medalist, had ruled the women's competition in Donetsk -- indeed, setting eight world records here from 2004 to 2009. She was a no-show this year, having jumped at a meet just three days before in Bydgoszcz, Poland -- going 4.68, or 15-4 1/4.

That opened it up for Jiřina Ptáčníková of the Czech Republic, fifth at the 2010 world indoors, who jumped 4.70, or 15-5, a personal-best and a national indoor record.

"I like music," she said afterward. "It's special -- to have a track and field meeting set to music is special."

Cuba's Yarisley Silva, her silver navel piercing shaking with every step, took second, at 4.60, or 15-1, also a national record. Hanna Shelekh, a local, just 18, the third-place finisher at the Singapore 2010 Youth Games, took third Saturday, also at 4.60, a Ukrainian record.

Hutson finished fifth in the women's competition at 4.50, or 14-9; Walker, sixth in the men's field at 5.62, or 18-5 1/4.

"When you see its in person, you see how successful it can be," Walker said afterward, "it clicks."

Ross Powers' moment of perfection

Ten years ago today, Ross Powers launched himself into the brilliant blue Utah sky. Ross first slid down into the frozen wall of the halfpipe and then rocketed right out of it, way above its icy lip and hung there, 40 feet up, maybe more. For perhaps a second, he was flying, literally flying, testing the pull of gravity, a black silhouette against the blue, emblematic of humankind's eternal push to be greater than anything that had come before.

It was, for a moment in time, perfect.

The Olympic Games are rich with moments and memories, and over the past few editions, Summer and Winter, there have been so, so many:

Jason Lezak's out-of-body final lap in the pool to save the 400-meter relay for the American team in Beijing. On the track, Usain Bolt's 100- and 200-meter runs at those same Olympics. Cathy Freeman's overwhelming 400 in Sydney.

To compare snowboarding to swimming or track and field is of course apples and oranges. Yet the essence of the Olympics is that instant where everything comes together to produce a transcendent moment, one of lasting memory.

"It's one of my favorite memories, too," Ross was saying the other day on the telephone, laughing, and as it turns out he was taking the call in Park City, Utah, where the 2002 snowboarding events were held. He's now director of snowboarding at the Stratton Mountain (Vt.) School, and was in Park City with a bunch of the school's kids.

Ross came to those 2002 Games as the 1998 Nagano Games halfpipe bronze medalist, among other accomplishments. He was one of a number of 2002 medal favorites.

The day before the 2002 halfpipe was his 23rd birthday. The morning of the event, as the crowd was starting to form at the bottom of the hill, he ran into his mom, Nancy, and his younger brother, Trevor. Ross said to them, just making conversation, "Hey, what are you guys doing tonight?"

Nancy replied, full of confidence, "I'm going to the medals ceremony!"

Ross recalls now, "I just kind of laughed."

The tension broken, Ross just went out there and ripped it. The pipe itself was huge and fast and everyone knew it. The U.S. Ski Team crew, along with the guys at Burton, had Ross' board waxed just so to maximize performance.

The trick that Ross performed to perfection is a basic maneuver in a snowboard pro's repertoire. It's called a method air or, alternatively,a method grab. It's the same trick in skateboarding -- after sailing off the pipe (or skateboard ramp), the rider reaches down his or her hand and grabs the edge of the board, between the feet. When it's done to form, it looks like you're kneeling in mid-air.

Even though it's relatively basic, the advantage of the method grab is that -- when you hit it -- it can produce amazing amplitude, which is snowboard talk for big air. What no one yet knew, until Ross threw it so spectacularly, is that starting with the 2002 Olympics big air was the way to go.

At the Nagano Games, because of the way the rules worked then, it really wasn't that way. In his moment in the sky, Ross forever changed the rules of the game. Shaun White and everyone else -- they would follow Ross.

He felt that morning like he was in on a big secret: "It feels good," he recalls thinking, "to have a big trick."

Especially one he was going to throw first. That would get the crowd into it, big-time.

"I dropped in," Ross recalled, "and let it flow along the right wall … and then went smooth through the flats and definitely did the biggest transition I ever did in the halfpipe," and up, up, up he went.

Most calculations are he went 18 to maybe even 22 feet off the lip of the pipe, at least 40 feet up. "It felt smooth and easy," he said, adding, "When I was in the air it just felt good. I was just confident and had the feeling, no question, I was going to land it."

He landed it, and followed with more complex tricks, ones involving the sorts of gymnastically oriented spins and rotations that are part of the snowboarding landscape.

About three-quarters of the way through the run, he remembers thinking, this could well be a gold-medal run -- don't blow it: "You gotta land, you're almost to the bottom, you have a good run, just keep going and finish."

He did.

The judges gave him a score of 46.1, way ahead of the rest of the field.

Two other Americans rounded out the medals: Danny Kass took second, 3.6 points back of Ross, and J.J. Thomas third.

The 1-2-3 sweep was the first time Americans had swept the medals in an event since 1956. That had been in men's figure skating.

The day before, American Kelly Clark had won gold in the women's halfpipe.

The U.S. team's performance in the halfpipe in 2002 is largely credited with pushing snowboarding from the fringe to the mainstream.

Ross remembers being with Kelly at the Daytona 500, just days later. "These elderly women were meeting us and saying, 'You guys are great! Snowboarding is so great! I want to get my grandkids on those boards!' It was huge for snowboarding."

Beyond his work for the Stratton school, Ross remains actively involved in promoting his own foundation, which he launched in 2001, the year before the Salt Lake Games, to help athletes with the talent but not the support they might need.

Meanwhile, an extension of the Ross Powers Foundation, the Level Field Fund -- launched about 18 months ago -- provides grants covering everything from instruction to entry fees to travel. Michael Phelps, Daron Rahlves and Seth Wescott have helped out; the fund has already awarded more than $220,000 to more than 50 athletes in sports such as snowboarding, swimming, skiing, judo and skeleton racing.

Ross and his wife, Marisa, are by now the parents of two little girls. Meredith is 4. On her snowboard, she is good on heel edges already and, Ross said, "That's really cool to see." Victoria is 8 and, as it turns out, spent the 10th anniversary of her dad's victory out on Bromley Mountain in Vermont -- where Ross himself learned to ride -- racing in her very first boardercross event. Guess who won?

Perfect.

Apolo Ohno: "Everything is great"

Apolo Ohno, the eight-time Olympic medalist, has always lived life by a simple and yet powerful credo: Dream big. And then work hard and go make it happen.

That was Apolo appearing in a third-quarter Super Bowl commercial Sunday for Century 21, the real-estate concern, along with Donald Trump and NFL Hall of Famer Deion Sanders.

Apolo is a big football fan but, to tell the truth, he didn't watch the New York Giants' 21-17 victory over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI. Instead, he had to fly Sunday out to the islands, to resume filming his scenes for the television show "Hawaii Five-O." After a couple days on set, he's due to fly to China and Japan -- as a global ambassador to  the Special Olympics. While he's in Japan there are meetings as well with the royal family. In Japan, Apolo also plans to spend some time with his grandmother.

"I'm great, man," Apolo said in a recent phone call from Las Vegas, where he was in a series of business meetings. "Everything is great."

For Apolo, two years after the Vancouver Olympics, everything really is great.

Last fall, he ran the New York Marathon in 3 hours, 25 minutes and 14 seconds -- beating his goal by nearly five minutes.

He stars in Subway commercials and now that Century 21 ad.

"You know what's awesome?" he asked, then answered: "An Olympic sport having a Super Bowl commercial. I don't know the last time I saw one. That, to me, is awesome. I am really proud of that. You know, we have come such a long way. It's great."

Apolo's next-projects list can sometimes seem breathtakingly endless.

"You have to manifest success," he said. "The more and more you concentrate on it," whatever "it" may be, in this case "it" being in front of the camera, "the more and more it's likely to happen. Every single thing in my life I have wanted I have been able to somewhat get in some fashion."

What's next? More of this hectic, amazing, great life.

If you can believe it, it's 10 years already since the Salt Lake Olympics, and the crazy race that catapulted Apolo onto the national -- indeed, the international -- stage, the 1000 meters that ended with a tangle just shy of the finish line, Apolo sprawled on the ice along with everybody else in the race but Australia's Steve Bradbury, who had been trailing by roughly 30 meters, just coasting along. With everyone else down, Bradbury coasted across the line first, his arms raised in disbelief, Australia's first-ever gold medal winner at the Winter Olympics. Apolo got up first and threw his skate across the line to take second.

It's still one of the great moments in Olympic history.

Bradbury went on to become an icon in Australia. They issued a postage stamp in his honor, and "doing a Bradbury" is now part of the Australian lexicon.

Apolo, being Apolo, was never -- not even for a moment -- anything but gracious. Indeed, he has always celebrated the race, and the moment, and Bradbury's accomplishment.

Ten years on, meanwhile, Apolo is still in killer shape.

Apolo gets asked all the time: are you coming back for Sochi and the 2014 Winter Olympics?

Keep this in mind:

Eight is Apolo's number. He has eight Olympic medals, the most of any U.S. winter athlete in history.

Not to say he wouldn't come back.

With Apolo, never say never.

"I am working on this short, 35-minute circuit I do. It's really ridiculously intense. It's called 'the asylum,' " he said, a no-rest and high-intensity morning workout designed by John Schaeffer, the Pennsylvania-based trainer whose Winning Factor sports science training program got Apolo into the shape of his life for the Vancouver Games.

Beyond that, Apolo said, he's weight-lifting, and has increased his upper-body strength.

Even so, Apolo said he and Michael Phelps had a recent conversation that revolved around "legacy and career," as Apolo put it.

Apolo said, "I have so many friends and fans who say, 'You have to come back.' And of course I love the sport," meaning short-track speed skating.

At the same time, having achieved over three successive Olympic Games, having seen that sports provided the springboard of the Apolo message, to dream and then achieve through hard work and dedication,  "I want to do something bigger."

He said, "Ultimately, I have never said, 'No, I'm not coming back.' As of now, it's not a priority.

"I'm trying to focus on things like the Special Olympics, charitable organizations and business organizations. There are other avenues and other things in my life I want to pay attention to.

"And now I have time for those things."

Sanya's Super déjà vu times two?

Four years ago, after David Tyree had somehow super-glued the football to his helmet and the New York Giants escaped with a crazy 17-14 victory over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII, it all seemed possible under the stadium tunnel that Arizona evening for Sanya Richards-Ross. Her husband, Aaron Ross, a Giants defensive back, was now and forever a Super Bowl champion.

And she was on her way to the 2008 Beijing Games, the IAAF's 2006 female world athlete of the year with an American-record 48.7 in her specialty, the 400-meters. Nine times in 2006 she ran under 50 seconds. That year she literally went undefeated.

Ross' Super Bowl ring had to be an omen, right? Surely she would now be an individual Olympic gold medalist herself?

Fate works in funny ways.

Sanya Richards-Ross is indeed an Olympic gold medalist. She would go on to win gold in the 4x400 relay in Beijing with a stirring anchor leg.

The thing is, she had already won Olympic gold in that same relay, in Athens in 2004.

In the open 400 in Athens, she was not favored to win, and didn't, coming in sixth.

In the open 400 in Beijing, she absolutely was favored to win but did not. She came in third. She went out of the blocks hard, too hard. She was overtaken down the stretch by both Christine Ohuruogu of Great Britain and Shericka Williams of Jamaica.

In 2009, however, at the world championships in Berlin, Sanya won the open 400 decisively, in 49 flat.

Again, though, fate works in funny ways.

This past summer, at the 2011 world championships in Daegu, South Korea, Sanya struggled to even make the 400 final. She was hurt. And there was a lot on her mind -- a lawsuit with a former agent, contract issues, distractions.

In that Daegu 400 final, Sanya finished seventh. Amantle Montsho of Botswana won the race, in 49.56; American Allyson Felix came in second, just three-hundredths of a second back in one of the most thrilling finishes of the 2011 championships.

Sanya came home in 51.32.

Underneath the tunnel that night in Korea, Sanya vowed 2012 would be different.

A couple days ago, running indoors at a little meet in Fayetteville, Ark., Sanya opened her season with a 23.18 in the 200 and a 51.45 in the 400. Both were world-leading times, though Vania Stambolova of Bulgaria would run a 51.26 three days later in Vienna in the 400.

It's not that important that Sanya's times are world-bests in January. Nobody's giving out Olympic medals in the dead of winter.

What's telling is that she's turning out fast times while bearing a heavy training load -- the same way swimmers like Michael Phelps or Ryan Lochte can win races in mid-winter even while churning out thousands of yards.

What's impressive, too, is that she decided to run in Fayetteville pretty much at the last minute. She hadn't done any real speed work and had, to tell the truth, been planning -- is still planning -- to run next Saturday in the Millrose Games in New York.

"To be ready to run that well, with the load I have right now in my training … is very exciting and it's how I hope to be able to model my entire season," Sanya said in a very quiet voice.

The reason Sanya was speaking so quietly was that she was in a hotel room in Indianapolis, and Ross -- that's what she calls her husband -- was taking a nap, resting a couple days before Super Bowl XLVI, and she didn't want to disturb him.

Ross has been a rock for Sanya, showing her -- yet again -- how to handle the ups and downs of being a professional athlete. This season, for instance, he was benched in Week Two after giving up two big pass plays to Danario Alexander of the St. Louis Rams. But with injuries to Terrell Thomas and Prince Amukamara, Ross got another chance to start. And he has been in the lineup since, opposite Corey Webster.

"It's funny," she said, speaking softly when asked to compare the experience four years ago with this year's Super Bowl week. "My hubby -- he is a man of few words. Nothing really gets to him. That is what I admire about him. He is always a happy camper.

"… That has helped me a lot this season. I am more emotional. I wear my heart more on my sleeve. He reminds me that is a business and that I shouldn't take things so personally. I shouldn't take these things to heart. That has helped me tremendously -- helped me a whole lot, not just going into this year but, I hope, the rest of my career."

Who knows what fate holds? It's a fact that when Sanya Richards-Ross is healthy she's as good as anyone.

"My training is right on schedule," she said, adding with a laugh, not too loud so as to be sure not to wake up her husband, "I don't want to make any predictions. We didn't make any predictions about Ross going to make it this far," and who would have predicted the Giants beating the Patriots four years ago?

"I'm just going to take it easy and have fun," she said. "I really, really want to claim my first individual gold medal. That is my target for sure."