All you have is love

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- A few days ago, they held the Olympic Trials in wrestling in Iowa City, Iowa. Afterwards, several of those who made it, along with those who did not, went back home -- home being the U.S. Olympic Training center here, in Colorado Springs. Talk about, well, awkward.

This, though, is why Sherry vonRiesen and Dokmai Nowicki are not just two of the most valuable players in the entire U.S. Olympic movement.

They are -- and it is not at all a stretch to say this -- two of the most beloved.

"I have the best job in the world," Sherry said. "For every athlete who makes [the team], 10 don't. The athletes come back and they want to celebrate -- but they're very sensitive to the athletes or teammates, or even their roommates, who don't."

On the wrestling team, "We have two athletes who share a room. One made it and one didn't.

"They want answers. You don't have answers."

All you have, she said, is love.

Sherry's formal title is "athlete liaison, program management division." Oh, brother. She and Dokmai are everybody's surrogate moms at the USOC Training Center dorm, which typically houses about 175 athletes.

No one calls Dokmai "Dokmai." Everyone calls her "Flower." Formally, she is the grill sous chef in the dining room attached to the dorm. If food truly is love, try Flower's pad thai. There's a reason people schedule meetings at the Training Center on days Flower is known to be making her pad thai.

The Thai steak with mango rice is also fantastic. As Flower said, gently, "People just love that."

Sherry, who is now 66, has been the dorm mom on site for almost 15 years. She is originally from Topeka, Kan. "Our goal," she said of her role at the Center, "is just to keep them laughing."

Flower, who is 56, has been in the United States since 1977. She grew up in Victorville, Calif., married an Air Force serviceman and moved with him to Colorado Springs in 1992. The next year, she got the job at the Training Center.

"They are going to have to carry us out," Sherry said.

She added, "Flower and I have been here so long that we have seen everyone come through here."

It's a ritual of Training Center life that gymnasts show up when they are perhaps nine or 10, maybe even younger, not to live full-time but for special camps. They're called "Future Stars" and it's often their first time away from home.

Who looks after them? Sherry and Flower.

"These little Future Stars in gymnastics are so cute," Flower said. "They have their little jackets. They are looking around. I go up to them and say, 'Good morning!' And, 'How are you?' And, 'Help yourself. Here is the grill. Have some vegetables.' I make sure there's no desserts or ice cream early in the morning.

"I also make sure that if it's someone's birthday at the camp that we know. I have little cupcakes for all the little guys' birthdays." (And the big guys, too -- like pentathlon champion Eli Bremer.)

"I love Flower," John Orozco, expected to be a bright star on the 2012 U.S. gymnastics team, said.

John, who has lived at the Training Center for the past two years, moving out from New York City, said, "I have known Flower since the first time I came here. I made the Future Stars team when I was nine. She cooked the best meals when I was nine. Every day when I was that little and I came and I saw Flower, I was like, 'OK, we are going to get the best food.'

"Now when I ask her to make some dishes, she is like, 'No, I can't. You're in training.' We come and she knows exactly what we want -- all the time.

"And Sherry -- she makes sure we are all taken care of and we are not doing anything bad. She is like a real mom to us. I'm 19 and there are guys here who are 30. And she's still like their mom."

The boxer Queen Underwood, also expected to shine at the London Games, said, "I like Sherry. She e-mails me and keeps me updated and stuff. I always tell her, 'Good morning!' And she gives me a big hug."

Queen, who is from Seattle, has been training since December in the Springs. She said, "Flower knows what I want. Four egg whites, scrambled. I don't want all that stuff to make me fat!"

Apolo Ohno, who lived and trained at the Center for years, had a fantastic relationship with Sherry and Flower. Now that he is an eight-time Olympic medalist, and off doing television and other projects, they miss him.

"People ask me the success of people we have worked with or become famous," Sherry said. "Apolo has courage enough to keep people around him who will be very honest," adding a moment later, "To me the success Apolo has had is that he would listen to what people said, and take it to heart."

"I do miss Apolo a lot," Flower said. "I haven't gotten to talk to him much after Vancouver," meaning the 2010 Winter Olympics. "He's busy!"

"Well, he will always send little messages," Sherry said, typically text messages, an Apolo specialty.

So does MIchael Phelps -- another of their favorites. When Michael is in town for what are typically three week-long altitude training sessions at the complex's pool, Flower knows that Michael likes his eggs scrambled with jalapeños and cheddar cheese.

"He is a low-maintenance guy," Flower said with a big smile, adding, "Michael always says, 'Thank you,' and, 'Please,' no matter how tired he is or how busy he is."

The reason everyone loves Flower and Sherry is easy to explain. They treat everyone at the Training Center like Apolo Ohno or Michael Phelps; to them, every single athlete and staffer is a winner.

Even the boss is a winner. Flower's condition for sitting for this article was that it had to include her praise for her boss, Terri Moreman, the USOC's associate director of food and nutrition services. Flower said, "My boss is so supportive."

"We are blessed to work with [Olympic] athletes," Sherry said.

It's really the other way around.

The BOA's slam-dunk loser of a case

Rarely in my sportswriting life do I acknowledge that I not only have been to law school (the University of California's Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco) but passed the California Bar Exam (first try, thank you). Any first-year law student could have told you the outcome before it was issued Monday by the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport in the case of the British Olympic Assn.'s "lifetime" ban against dopers.

They could have told you the outcome because the BOA was dead wrong and its full-throated defense of the ban off-base, and that's what a three-member CAS panel unanimously ruled.

Lawyers and tribunals are not often given to such plain-spoken language. They teach you in law school that it's best to avoid such talk.

Nor, for that matter, does it out-and-out call the case, brought by a defiant BOA after being declared non-compliant with the World Anti-Doping Agency rules, a thorough and complete waste of time, money and energy that proved a point that in the first instance was thoroughly obvious.

The reason they don't teach you that in law school is because that's what journalism school is for.

Another thing they teach you in journalism school is to identify the instant winners in court cases.

Here, that's easy:

Dwain Chambers, for one. The British sprinter was the first athlete to test positive for the designer steroid THG in 2003 amid the BALCO scandal. He received the mandatory two-year ban from running track; the BOA also imposed its lifetime Olympic ban.

Since returning to the track, Chambers has won the 2010 world indoor sprint title; he is the 2012 world indoor sprint bronze medalist.

There are some who think Chambers is still a cheat and doesn't belong at the Olympics.

Like Dai Greene, the British 400-meter world champion. He told the Daily Mail, the British newspaper, "Like Dwain Chambers as a person but he knowingly broke the rules and he should be made to pay. We should not soften the punishments. This will not help to rid our sport of drugs. Think of the messages this is sending to doping cheats and to those thinking of traveling down that risky route."

Dai Greene is of course entitled to his opinion. He's also entitled to be wrong.

This space has been aggressive in calling for track and field to rid itself of doping. It is perhaps the most egregious problem the sport faces. But Chambers has not only been made to pay in serving his time, he has been fully and completely forthcoming not only about what he did, but about how and why.

That is how you earn a shot at redemption. Maybe Dwain Chambers earns a medal or more in London. Maybe not. But he deserves every chance to try.

Moreover, you don't think the doping authorities learn real-world stuff from a guy like Chambers?

Victor Conte, the man at the center of the BALCO scandal, issued a statement a few days ago that said of Chambers, "He trusted me like a father and I will forever be remorseful regarding the pain and suffering that I caused him and his entire family. Dwain has been punished in many ways over the last nine years and yet he has somehow found forgiveness in his heart for me.

"… Dwain has rebounded from the serious mistakes he made to become a man of strong moral character. Those who know him as I do have enormous respect and admiration for his distinct ability to overcome adversity."

As Usain Bolt's coach, Glen Mills, put it in a conference call last week with reporters: "I don't believe that somebody should be sentenced to death or banned for life. They should be given an opportunity to redeem himself."

Meanwhile, the potential big-time loser:

Colin Moynihan, the chairman of the BOA. There's a way to argue, and style points matter if one might want to keep advancing one's career in international sport.

Last November, Moynihan said the World Anti-Doping Agency had "failed to catch the major drug cheats of our time," and in calling for an "informed review" of the global body, said "Regrettably, despite spending hundreds of millions of dollars in the 10 years since its creation, WADA has been unable to achieve its own, well-intentioned objectives."

Typically, that's not the way to get ahead, especially with the International Olympic Committee.

Just to make sure there was no misunderstanding, the CAS panel on Monday ordered the BOA to pay some of WADA's legal costs. Again, it didn't say the case was a complete and total waste of time. But pretty close. it went so far as to say that the matter was "unnecessarily increased by the voluminous and largely irrelevant submissions and evidence submitted by the BOA on this appeal."

WADA, after Monday's ruling, issued its own statement that said it "regrets the many hysterical and inaccurate statements from the BOA in the course of challenging the WADA decision," adding a few paragraphs later, rules "are not based on emotive arguments or the wishes of any one signatory or," for emphasis, "individual."

The underlying question is why this case ever got to this point.

For one, if the BOA was non-compliant, why -- in the build-up to a home Olympics -- divert time and money on litigation? Everyone knows litigation is adversarial. Why be so confrontational? To reiterate, surely that reflects leadership style.

For another, all you had to do was read the ruling issued last Oct. 6 by the very same three-member panel in the case of American 400-meter runner LaShawn Merritt.

In that instance, the panel ruled "invalid and unenforceable" the IOC's Rule 45, which sought to ban any athlete hit with a doping-related suspension of more than six months from competing in the next Summer or Winter Games.

Why did it so rule?

Because the WADA code is the controlling policy.

If the IOC had wanted to enact that kind of extra sanction, the way to do it would have been to seek an amendment to the WADA code. The IOC didn't do so, and thus the "six-month rule" was blatantly a dud.

Same goes here.

The BOA is a signer to the WADA code. The BOA couldn't have one rule and everybody else have another. Its lifetime ban was out of "harmony," to use the legal terminology, with the rest of the world. The BOA rule thus could not stand.

To return to square one: why, then, was the BOA only too happy to see this case end up before CAS?

Assuming people act logically, did the logic tree work like this:

The BOA got to argue the case, not only before CAS but in the newspapers, and preach that it was occupying the moral high ground …

And now, having been shot down, it gets to send the likes of Chambers, and cyclist David Millar (who admitted to using the blood-booster EPO in the wake of a French polce investigation) to the Olympics …

Where if these world-class athletes win medals, those medals add to the home-team count …

In which case this whole thing was -- for the BOA itself and the British team -- a no-lose proposition from the get-go, right?

Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

That's the thing about law school. They teach you there that in the search for clarity you often learn that life is -- and the means and method of motive are -- mysterious, indeed.

Adam Nelson champions hope

No pressure, but if 36-year-old shot-putter Adam Nelson, already a two-time Olympic silver medal winner, makes the 2012 U.S. team -- or, better yet, wins gold at the London Games -- it might be the moment that forever changes the way rare diseases in the United States are treated, maybe even cured. No offense intended, none whatsoever, to Reese Hoffa, Christian Cantwell and Ryan Whiting, among those who -- along with Adam -- have for years helped make the United States a fixture atop the world shot-put scene.

It's just that kids like 4-year-old Reed Zeighami are rooting with everything they've got for Adam. Reed has a genetic condition called MPS-III, also called Sanfilippo disease. Reed is missing an enzyme that processes sugars. Simply put, his brain is going to shrink and he will die.

Reed's dad, Roy, and Adam were once workout buddies at Stanford. Now Roy is a Cisco executive. Both are dads -- Adam the father of two little girls, 3-year-old Caroline and 15-month-old Lauren, both apparently healthy.

"As a father," Adam said, "I couldn't turn him down when my friend says, 'My son is going to die.'

"… We are going to fight like hell for [Reed]. It's a question of what can I do to help?"

Two things:

One, this spring and summer Adam is going to wear a denim ribbon on his uniform. It's genes in their different variations that are at the core of many if not most of these diseases. Pretty much everyone wears jeans, and jeans come in different styles and colors.

Thus, in the manner of the pink "breast cancer ribbon," you'll be seeing the denim ribbon -- Adam and supporters hope, increasingly.

Second, Adam has put himself up at charitybets.com. You can "bet" there whether Adam will make the 2012 U.S. Olympic team. Let's say the wager is $100. You might pay $25 now and, if he makes it at the U.S. Trials -- the finals are June 24 -- in Eugene, Ore., you pay up the additional $75.

All proceeds go to the Global Genes Project, an initiative developed by the Southern California-based RARE Project.

Adam's goal was to raise $25,000. With little to no publicity, he had as of this week raised $4,888.

"We do not have lobbying power," Roy Zeighami said, and for a variety of complex reasons.

"…If I can get a guy like Adam, with his star power, with his microphone, let's him have do it for RARE. RARE does it for the one in 10."

Some numbers, according to RARE:

There are over 7,000 rare diseases with no cure.

Those diseases affect more than 30 million people in the United States. That's one in 10 people.

Approximately 75 percent of those affected are children.

Fewer than 5 percent of rare diseases have any therapies or treatments.

Around the world, more than 350 million people have a rare disease; that's more than all cancers and AIDS combined.

There are two reasons so few people so know little about a phenomenon that affects one in 10 people, mostly kids, in these United States.

One, though the project encompasses an astonishing number of rare diseases, the fact is that many of those conditions can affect hundreds of, or several thousand, families. That doesn't make their hardships any easier. But it typically does not make for a way to set far-reaching public policy.

Two, and in a similar vein, the initiative was launched only two years ago, in January 2010. In its first year, it grew from five "disease groups" to 250 global organizations. The plan is now to raise awareness, taking a page from the playbook of, for instance, AIDS and cancer activists.

The trick, of course, as president and founder Nicole Boice said, is to forge unity when acting on behalf of those representing more than 7,000 rare diseases and over 1,200 patient advocacy groups.

Again, she said, it's to try to create an umbrella campaign that conveys the need for action to legislators, researchers, venture capitalists and more, all the while being mindful that what is at issue are thousands of individual diseases.

That, she said, is what that denim ribbon is supposed to encapsulate.

Earlier this year, the RARE Project and an offshoot, the Global Genes Project, issued a 65-page alphabetical listing of the roughly 7,000 known rare diseases and disorders.

It includes everything from cystic fibrosis, which is more widely known and affects about 30,000 children and adults in the United States; to conditions such as Niemann-Pick disease type C, which perhaps affects 200 children; and a disorder such as Chromosome 21 ring, which affects a few infants, if that many.

An illustration of just some of the real-world challenges:

The Food and Drug Administration on Jan. 31 gave approval to Cambridge, Mass.-based Vertex Pharmaceuticals for a drug called Kalydeco -- to treat cystic fibrosis patients ages 6 and over, who carry a gene mutation called G551D. Only 1,200 people in the United States carry the mutation; about 200 of them are under 6 and wouldn't qualify for the drug.

The company also, according to news reports, said it plans to charge $294,000 a year for the twice-daily pill; it said it would help subsidize costs.

Of course that's expensive. But what price hope?

In Reno, Nev., Chris and Hugh Hempel's 8-year-old twin daughters, Addi and Cassi, have Niemann-Pick disease type C. The disease affects the ability to metabolize cholesterol. Excessive amounts of lipids, or fatty tissue, then accumulate in the brain, causing increasing neurological impairment. The condition is sometimes referred to as "childhood Alzheimer's." The condition is always fatal; most do not live to age 20.

The twins are still in diapers, Chris said. They can walk and eat, but only with help. They can no longer speak, she said.

"We're all in fractured groups," she said. "We're not going to be able to make any progress and yet we're all facing similar hurdles. For Adam to wear the denim ribbon -- we're all trying to get people to understand a simple concept.

"A lot of people are facing no hope. When people are told your kid is facing this condition, you ask, 'Where's the medicine?' That's why Adam can raise awareness. This ribbon is the unifying symbol of hope we can rally around."

For his part, Adam said he and Chris had a phone call a little while ago that reminded him of the urgency of what he's doing.

Adam's older daughter, Caroline, kept tugging at him while he was holding the phone to his ear. Daddy, she said, "Daddy, I want to watch a show!" She kept pulling at him and yelling. Finally, Adam had to stop the call, saying to Chris, "My daughter wants to watch something on TV, will you please just excuse me for a moment?"

When he got back on the telephone, Adam said, "Sorry about that."

Chris said, and she wasn't being mean about it or feeling sorry for herself or her husband, Hugh, "I wish my daughters could yell at me. That would be a great day."

New USATF CEO: Max Siegel

USA Track & Field announced Monday that Max Siegel, the marketing consultant it had hired last October, was now its new chief executive officer. Can't say that's much of a surprise.

The question, as ever with track and field in the United States, is its future. During the last week of the Olympic Games, it commands TV time and headlines; the rest of the time, not so much.

Years ago, though, track and field used to be a major sport in the United States. Now it's not. Can it ever be again?

The corollary question for the people who run track and field in the United States -- not Siegel but the people he now will have to deal with on a day-to day, real-life basis -- is whether they will let him do his job.

Here's my dream for the sport: The U.S. Olympic Trials in Cowboys Stadium, with 100,000 people jamming the place, night after night. Why not?

Here's Siegel's mantra: to make a difference in American culture, with the idea of  competition on the field impacting lifestyle, and -- as he put it in a conference call with reporters -- to "over-deliver" to corporate partners "on their expectations."

Siegel takes over from Doug Logan, fired in September, 2010. USATF has been without a chief executive since; Stephanie Hightower, the federation president, had let it be known in an interview with the Chicago Tribune's Philip Hersh that she might be interested in the position, which of course proved problematic.

University of Oregon coach Vin Lananna reportedly emerged as a top candidate for the position. He's still in Eugene.

All the while, Mike McNees, USATF's chief operating officer, a wholly decent guy, was left to run the ship as interim CEO.

Skeptics, of course, will suggest that the hire of Siegel is proof that no one else wanted the USATF chief executive's job.

You know what's great about covering this kind of thing in track and field? You can't spell dysfunctional without f-u-n!

To the credit of the U.S. athletes -- all they do is go out and win. They pretty much ignore this stuff at the world championships and the Olympics. The U.S. team won 25 medals at last summer's world championships at Daegu, South Korea, one shy of the 26 won by the 1991 and 2007 teams.

Even so, everyone close to the sport understands that better governance might lead to even better results on the field of play.

Logan had said all along that 30 in 2012 was eminently do-able.

To his credit, Siegel said Monday on a conference call with reporters, "We have said 30 medals. And we are sticking by 30 medals."

Getting to 30 medals takes contributions from both the business and culture sides of USATF. That takes a profound understanding. That's what Siegel has been doing since October, taking what he called a "deep dive" into the organization, doing a "lot of the foundational and behind the scenes" work.

That sort of understanding, Hightower said on that same conference call, is what made him an attractive candidate.

Along with the fact that Siegel is truly an idea guy; that he has big-time credentials in auto racing and the music industry; as well as experience and contact in the Olympic scene as a member of the boards of U.S. swimming and USATF.

The perception glitch all along, of course, had been that Siegel had been on the USATF board -- until resigning just a month before -- before being hired as a consultant.

Hightower emphasized that he was not on the board when selected. Steve Miller, a USATF board vice-chair, said on the call, "Perception can go two ways. It can be seen as a negative and as a, why not? What we tried to concentrate on is, why?

"… We feel confident we went through the process … and Max simply was the best candidate."

The hire takes effect May 1. His base salary will be $500,000. He also can earn bonuses, Hightower said on the call without providing details.

Siegel notably becomes the only African-American chief executive among the more than three dozen national governing bodies in the United States.

U.S. Olympic Committee chief executive Scott Blackmun issued a statement that said, "Our relationship with USA Track & Field is very good, and we are particularly pleased with the partnership that we have with them on the high performance side. Having a CEO in place will add a measure of stability as we complete our preparations for London. Max will have our full support and we look forward to working with USATF as they continue to refine their governance model and find ways to enhance the effectiveness of the organization."

Candidly, the USOC -- which for years set the standard for dysfunction -- is arguably now the model for good governance. The USOC board, under the direction of Larry Probst, sets policy and then lets Blackmun run the organization day-to-day.

That's the way things need to go down now at USATF. On the call, they said all the rights things Monday. They said Siegel would have authority.

Hightower said on the call, "We want to become a model NGB as it relates to best practices and model governance," Hightower said on the call.

"I don't want to say we're going to agree on every single aspect on how this organization is going to be run."

She also said, "We trust Max's leadership to move us forward."

Hightower said the time of "chaos" -- "that time is gone, it's over."

One might hope of course that the U.S. relay teams hold on to the baton at the 2012 Games. But should the stick clatter to the ground, could one predict chaos? Would it really be over?

Time, as ever, will tell.

How a team becomes a family

Two summers ago, Lolo Silver was the leading scorer for the winning U.S. women's water polo team at the FINA World Cup, with 11 goals. A few months later, in February, 2011, she and her mom, Kathy Heddy-Drum, were having lunch. Mom, Lolo said, your left eye looks funny.

Thus began a journey that would envelop the entire U.S. water polo team. Truly, it would help transform the team into a family.

Kathy Heddy-Drum, who herself is an Olympian, a swimmer who finished fifth in the 400 meters at the 1976 Games in Montreal, turned out to have a tumor in her eye, behind her socket. The tumor proved malignant.

Doctors scheduled surgery for last March 25.

As it turned out, Jessica Steffens happened to be living at Kathy's house.

Jessica, who was on the U.S. silver medal-winning 2008 Olympic team, had gone to Stanford with Lolo. They had played water polo together there. They were now on the 2012 U.S. national team together.

When Jessica first moved down to Southern California in early 2011 to train for the 2012 team, she didn't have a bed or, really, much stuff to call her own. So she had moved in with Kathy, in Long Beach.

"It was so nice having her here," Kathy said. "She was so nice to talk to. We cooked together, and we laughed, and her father," Carlos, who is well-known in water polo circles, "is really funny."

For her part, Jessica said she was so grateful just to be able to help Kathy in any little way she could. She cooked. She cleaned. Whatever.

"Right before she was going into surgery, we went out with the team to breakfast and we invited Kathy and Lolo," Jessica said. "For both of them, that was really special.

"That was good for us, too, to feel we were part of it and we were there for them."

During the surgery, doctors removed Kathy's eye. Three weeks later, they called with bad news. We are so sorry, they said, but the cancer isn't all gone. You have to undergo 40 radiation treatments.

By the end of the course of the radiation, Kathy was, as she put it, "pretty sick." She had to check into a hospital for a week, right around the 4th of July.

The parents of some of the women on the team, Jessica said, took time to visit Kathy in the hospital.

Lolo, meanwhile, was juggling practice, hospital, practice. Or trying to. She didn't make the U.S. team that went to the 2011 world championships in Shanghai.

"Obviously, I was pretty upset I didn't make the world championships team," Lolo said. "At that point, it kind of showed me that there are bigger things in life."

Understand that Lolo had always been, as one of her oldest and best friends, Jessica Hardy,  who went to high school with her at Long Beach Wilson, put it, "really tough … independent tough."

Jessica Hardy is one of America's top-ranked sprint swimmers. She said, "Kathy is one of the nicest persons to have ever walked the face of the earth. To have this happen to her -- everyone was heartbroken."

Now, Jessica Hardy said, Lolo was "100 percent putting her mom before anybody else -- and that's hard the year before the Olympics when you're doing everything you can to focus on that.

" … I was really proud of her. Everyone was proud of her."

The U.S. team struggled to sixth place in Shanghai. Lolo took the time to go up to Stanford, to train with her coaches there. Next on the schedule: the Pan Am Games in Guadalajara, Mexico, in October.

Lolo was the team's alternate; she attended the team's training camp in Colorado Springs, Colo., but did not travel to Mexico. The U.S. won Pan Am gold, Jessica's younger sister, Maggie, scoring the winning goal in a wild 27-26 penalty shootout over Canada in the championship game.

That victory qualified the Americans for London. Canada was knocked out of the Olympics Friday, losing at a last-chance meet in Trieste, Italy.

Last month, Lolo was on the roster for a tournament in Russia called the Kirishi Cup. She scored three goals against Spain, albeit in a 12-10 loss.

There's no question Lolo can score. As she well knows, she has to play defense, the hallmark of U.S. coach Adam Krikorian's winning way.

"I pride myself in defense. I like playing defense. I don't think people understand that," Lolo said. "It's not that I am so focused on offense that the defense gets overlooked. I understand it really well; I realize what I need to do to play really good defense."

That understanding underscores another layer of Lolo and Kathy -- indeed, the team's -- journey.

For this past year and a half, these 17 women have willingly, readily become a family.

All the while knowing that only 13 will go to London.

The team will be formally named in about a month, on May 17, at a ceremony at the LA 84 Foundation, the legacy building of the 1984 Los Angeles Games.

It is widely believed that Lolo is one of those on the bubble.

The other 16 have done everything and more for Lolo and Kathy, Lolo saying amid tears of release and joy, "I couldn't imagine going through it without them."

One of the others, Kami Craig, said, "Being part of a team, it's always being compared to being part of a family.

"… When we're not at the pool, you can find most of us hanging out with each other. You're doing a year and a half of full-time. That's family. There's not a lot of things you can hide from each other, whether you want to or not. That's the beauty of it. And the discomfort of it.

"When Lolo's mom got sick, it was natural for us to gather around her and make sure she had all the support she needed to handle the situation."

Kami also said, "If anything like that would happen to myself, I would expect the same. It's a no-brainer.

"… It's letting your guard down. It's knowing you can rely on your teammates, not just in the water but out of the water. It's not fake. It's real."

At the same time, the full-on competition to make the team is intensely real, too.

"Of course I want to be there more than anything," Lolo said.

She added, "It's weird. We are a team. It's weird to think about that, that at the end of the day some of us won't make it. We're all so close now."

Listening to those remarks, Krikorian said, "We are almost there," adding, referring to the players, "They have almost taken this thing completely," which of course has been the goal all along, because a team that takes ownership develops communication, trust, respect and, ultimately, confidence.

He said, "We have a few more months to go. I am very thankful for those months because they will get us where we want this team to be. It's not my team. It's our team."

If Lolo does make the 2012 Olympic team, her mom will absolutely be able to see her play in London with her good eye. "It has been a long road," Kathy said.

Kathy is back to running again. She is back in the water, too, at the Seal Beach Swim Club, teaching second- through seventh-graders twice a week, on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.

If you saw Kathy, you wouldn't know anything was amiss. She has an artificial eye; the artists spent considerable time matching the coloring so that the shades of blue look just so.

During the surgery, doctors had to cut an optic nerve; Kathy said the left side of her face is numb. Even so, she said she considers herself fortunate. She has her water polo family. There's a lot of goodness to be thankful for. And, she said, "Luckily, my smile is there."

Alice Coachman: 1948 pioneer, hero, inspiration

In New York on Wednesday, 100 days before the start of the London 2012 Olympics, Alice Coachman was treated like the hero she is, the first African-American -- indeed, the first black woman from any county -- to win an Olympic gold medal. There she was on the set of NBC's Today show, alongside the likes of other U.S. 1948 gold medalists: Ray Lumpp, a play-making guard on the basketball team; Dr. Sammy Lee, the diver and the first Asian-American gold medalist; and Mal Whitfield, the best 400- and 800-meter runner of his time.

For 10 years, Alice Coachman dominated the high jump. War kept her from the Olympics. Finally, she got to go, in 1948, and she won. The ruler of England, King George VI, presented her with her gold medal.

"It was all fine," she said on national television, "fine to have the king to award me the gold medal."

Except -- it wasn't all so fine back then, and Alice Coachman's story is a reminder of just how far we as Americans have come in matters of pluralism and tolerance and diversity, and yet how far we have to go, and how sports and the Olympics can sometimes help us get there.

The story will be told time and again between now and July 27, the opening ceremony of 2012, about how those 1948 Games were the "Austerity Games."

As David Miller, an experienced British sportswriter and author and longtime observer of the Olympic scene, put it in a piece commissioned for the Olympic newsletter Sport Intern, the 1948 Games all but saved the movement -- London coming to the International Olympic Committee's rescue, "rising from bankrupted, war-torn ravages to host an altruistic, economy festival."

The American team that went to London -- for the most part -- got there by steamship. They stayed ready by jogging on the promenade; the rowers rowed on special equipment nailed to the deck. At night, they put on skits and danced for their own entertainment. Alice Coachman was a featured dancer to "St. Louis Blues."

The scale of the spectacle was way different than now, and markedly so coming so soon after the end of World War II.

An Olympic Village was deemed to be too expensive; male competitors stayed at Royal Air Force camps; female competitors in London colleges. Athletes were given increased rations,the same as those received by, say, miners; that meant 5,467 calories per day instead of the normal 2,600.

Artificial track and field surfaces wouldn't be build until the late 1950s. Runners ran on cinders. High jumpers threw themselves not into a pit of cushions but sawdust.

As the Games went on, 74 Americans would win gold medals.

But -- only one woman.

Both Alice Coachman and the high jump silver medalist, Britain's Dorothy Tyler, cleared 1.68 meters, or 5-feet-6 1/4.

Coachman cleared it on her first try. Tyler didn't make it until her second.

Thus Coachman won gold.

In an oral history project recorded a few years ago and now available online, Coachman had said her coach had been chewing her out the day before the competition, worrying she wasn't properly prepared to win.

Don't worry, Coachman said. I'm ready. I have the lemon I use to stay hydrated between jumps. And, she said, "I was talking to the man above, telling him, 'If it's your will, let it be done.' "

So it was.

After winning gold, that same coach, Coachman said, now with a big smile, "All that cussing she did, honey, before -- she took me [and said], 'Where do you want to go tonight?

'… I'll take you anywhere you want to go tonight and you can do anything you want to do!' "

When the American team got back to the States, the party was still on. In New York, Coachman said she got to meet Count Basie and his wife, and have a good time with them for a few days.

After that, though, reality set in.

They held a celebration for Coachman in Albany, Ga., her hometown.

Black people sat on one side of the stage, she recalled; whites, on the others.

Both sides cheered for her.

But the mayor of the town -- who was white -- would not shake her hand.

Asked in the oral history project how she felt about that, she said, "It wasn't a good feeling. You had to accept it. It was done then, you know. You represented the USA. You had to represent the black, the white, the Jews and the gentile. You represented the USA. As this lady told you, you went to England, this was entirely different.

"To come back home, to your own country, your own state and your own city and you can't get a handshake from your own mayor -- it wasn't a good feeling. But it had to be done. That's the way it was."

She went on to say that some people in town sent her flowers, even jewelry, in celebration of her win. But those gifts were sent anonymously -- whites apparently afraid of retribution if it were known that they were sending gifts to a black woman.

"That's the way it was then."

Now, of course, it's unremarkable that black athletes are winning medals for Team USA.

The president of USA Track & Field, Stephanie Hightower, a member of the 1980 U.S. Olympic team, is black. Among other key leaders, so, too, is the organization's chief of sport performance, Benita Fitzgerald Mosley, a 1984 gold medalist in the 100-meter hurdles.

It would belabor the obvious to say that while we have made real progress in bridging the racial divide in the United States we still have many miles to go. Sports, and the Olympics, offers a means by which people of good will can see that the color of your skin doesn't matter a bit; what matters is your heart, your soul and your will.

When Alice Coachman won her medal, the king of England presented it to her but the mayor of her town wouldn't even shake her hand. Now a black man is president of the United States; black women are in senior positions of authority at the United States track and field federation; and, at 88, Alice Coachman is on national TV and everyone wants to shake her hand.

Just to say thank you.

Shannon Miller: happy, healthy, optimistic

It's 101 days to go Tuesday until the opening ceremony in London, and Shannon Miller is in Chicago, up early, on the telephone, happy, healthy, talking about gymnastics, about Nastia Liukin, about how records are made to be broken, about how the 2012 U.S. women's team looks really good. It's all good.

Of course it is. Any day you're cancer-free is, as Shannon Miller makes plain, a great day.

It was just a little bit over a year ago that Miller, America's most-decorated gymnast, was diagnosed with a form of ovarian cancer.

During an annual exam, doctors discovered a baseball-sized cyst,  a germ cell malignancy, on an ovary. The cyst and ovary were removed. Miller then opted for several weeks of preventative chemotherapy said to improve her cure rate to 99 percent.

Early detection -- as ever in many cancer cases -- is key, she said.

A few weeks ago, Miller turned 35; she was 33 when the tumor was discovered.  "With something like ovarian cancer, you think it's for older women," she said. "Cancer doesn't care how old you are. It doesn't care how many gold medals you have. It doesn't discriminate."

Shannon Miller has two gold medals, both from 1996 in Atlanta, the team gold and the individual balance beam. She has five more from 1992 in Barcelona, two silvers in the all-around and the beam and three bronze medals, the team and the individual bars and floor.

For those counting, she also has nine world championship medals.

Nastia Liukin won five Olympic medals in Beijing in 2008. That's of course the same number Miller won in Barcelona.

Liukin, the 2008 all-around champion, is now in training for London. It's unclear whether she can repeat as 2012 all-around champ. She didn't, for instance, even compete at the 2011 world championships; Jordyn Wieber, a 16-year-old from East Lansing, Mich., was the all-around winner, and the Americans surprisingly won team gold.

Then again -- Liukin, when she is in top form, can deliver an almost ethereal performance on the uneven bars. Gymnastics insiders know that the 2012 U.S. team is almost surely going to need a strong bars performer. Might it be Liukin?

"My feelings on Nastia -- I love her," Miller said.

"I see a beautiful, beautiful athlete. I see that classical style. Because I went through my own comeback," from Barcelona to Atlanta, "I see in her that wanting to learn new skills, to wanting to be with my gymnastics family again, to feel that adrenaline rush. I understand that competitive rush.

"If anyone is going to break my records, I would be glad to turn it over to Nastia. That's what the U.S. should be doing. I would be sad if my records stood for decades. Because that means no one would be coming along for decades and decades. It needs to happen."

Since 2000, the U.S. women have dominated world gymnastics, winning 60 world and Olympic medals -- no other nation has more than 35 -- and producing the last two Olympic champions.

But -- the Americans have not won team gold at the Games since 1996.

The American roster this year is so deep that picking five -- that's all you get -- from the roster of 20 on the national team will doubtlessly be an enormous challenge.

But it also, for gymnastics experts and casual fans alike, ought to produce intense interest.

That's what Miller was doing in Chicago -- promoting a meet there at the end of May, the Secret U.S. Classic, a let's-see-what-you've-got-in-your-routines in time for the June 7-10 Visa national championships in St. Louis, which are themselves a get-ready for the Olympic Trials June 28-July 1 in San Jose.

That's a lot of gymnastics to get through before London. At the same time, it's an enormous competitive advantage. Because the five who make it surely should be honed and ready.

Miller said, "I really feel like this year, we are obviously going to … put five incredibly talented, maybe the most incredibly talented, athletes we have ever put out there."

She said, "It's kind of theirs to lose at this point."

And then she added, speaking only about gymnastics but in a reference that bore the wisdom of someone who knows what really matters in life itself, "I think it comes down to: will they be healthy?"

Shawn Johnson puzzles her future

Shawn Johnson has a lot of fans. For good reason. She is the 2007 gymnastics all-around world champion and the winner of four medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. One of those medals, on the balance beam, is gold. In 2009, she won "Dancing With the Stars." Shawn Johnson is the whole package. From the get-go, she has represented herself, her family and her country with class and style.

When Shawn announced almost two years ago that she was going to try to mount a comeback for the 2012 London Games, many of her fans assumed she would be a lock for the U.S. team.

Shawn has known better, and for a long time. So have many gymnastics insiders. The knee she blew out in a skiing accident celebrating her 18th birthday was going to make it that much tougher. So would the extended time off from the gym.

Now, with the London Games about 100 days away, 20-year-old Shawn is diligently working out, once more in the same West Des Moines, Iowa, gym, and again under the tutelage of coach Liang Chow. The aim is clear. The will is there. But, in a frank and revealing conversation Friday, she acknowledged she very well might not make the 2012 U.S. team.

"My biggest goal," she said, referring to the U.S. team, "is for them to get the gold medal.

"If I am not part of the team, I have to accept that."

Which, she said, she has, fully and completely.

"I am OK with that. It's what's best for the USA. It's not what's best for me."

She added a moment later, "It just happens that this time around it's not about the individual part of it. It's about the team. A lot of people might be in shock: 'Oh, Shawn might not be on the team.' They need to understand the bigger picture of it."

Here is the bigger picture:

The U.S. team won the 2011 world championships. Shawn was not on that team.

Jordyn Wieber, who is 16, from East Lansing, Mich., was the 2011 all-around world champion. Beyond which, Americans won gold on vault (McKayla Maroney, 16, of Long Beach, Calif.) and bronze on beam (Wieber) and floor exercise (Aly Raisman, 17, of Needham, Mass.).

Further:

Nastia Liukin, the 2008 Olympic all-around champion, has said she intends to be fighting for a spot on the 2012 Olympic team. As will be the 2005 world champion, Chellsie Memmel. And the 2009 world champion, Bridget Sloan. And a six-time world medalist, Rebecca Bross. And Alicia Sacramone, who -- along with Nastia, Shawn, Chellsie and Bridget (and Samantha Peszek) made up the silver medal-winning 2008 U.S. team -- was also the 2010 world vault champion.

As if that wasn't enough, there's now one less spot available on the 2012 team. In 2008 there were six spots on each team. In 2012, because of a rules change by the international gymnastics federation, only five.

That means each girl has to fit within what is truly an Olympic puzzle piece. If, for instance, Wieber is the all-around candidate -- though logical, that is necessarily an if -- then you have to figure who ought to fill the other slots.

To win the team gold, the puzzle demands specialists, and Shawn -- as she readily acknowledges -- is an all-arounder.

To add to the complexity, there's one more rising star, and Shawn not only knows this all too well but is rooting for her, and big-time:

Gabby Douglas, 16, who is from Virginia Beach, Va., but now trains with Shawn and under Chow in Iowa.

In New York in March, at an event called the American Cup at Madison Square Garden, Jordyn was the official winner, with Aly second. But Gabby, competing unofficially as an "alternate," posted the highest score.

"Honestly, at first through this whole comeback and being back in the gym, it was a little different -- being honest, it was a little difficult to accept," having Gabby there, Shawn said.

"It was almost like sharing a parent for the first time," she said.

She laughed. "Honestly, I have grown to love it and love her like a sister," indeed saying she is now Gabby's "biggest fan and cheerleader."

At competitions, Shawn said, "I'm extremely nervous" for Gabby. It's as if she, Shawn, is "the older sister." Shawn said that when Gabby competes, she "is closing my eyes and praying."

Just the way thousands upon thousands of fans have always done for Shawn.

If they don't get the chance to do that again this summer in London for Shawn, Shawn said -- please understand.

It's not that she's not trying to make it happen. She is in the gym. She is working hard.

But the situation is what it is.

Shawn said she has known with certainty since the 2011 worlds how daunting a prospect it was going to be to make the 2012 U.S. Olympic team.

"It started to not necessarily upset me or give me doubt or anything -- but the whole picture and the whole process of how it was going to work and the  who-fits-where kind of thing, and [how] it would be very difficult for me to fit into this puzzle.

"They have a strong all-arounder in Jordyn Wieber. She was as strong as I was in 2008. To find a place for me to fit in is hard. I am not saying that but-for-the-grace-of-God or a miracle it couldn't happen. But it will be difficult."

A few moments earlier, asked how she was feeling about the prospect of not making the team, she said, "I actually feel pretty good about it, which a lot of people say is weird. I have accepted any outcome since I started coming back. I have accepted how things work.

"Honestly, going back to that first competition" -- a meet in Chicago last July -- "was the biggest success to me."

World Fit Walk: "... really a great thing"

Rod DeHaven ran the marathon at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Now he's the track coach at South Dakota State. A few days ago, he got in his car, and drove three hours, along the two-lane road that is U.S. Highway 14, toward Pierre, the state capital, just so he could give a talk to 180 kids, ages 6 to 15, at the Pierre Indian Learning Center, an off-reservation boarding school for Native American students, about how he had come from a family of janitors and made something of himself and they could, too.

And they could start by just -- walking. That simple and yet that powerful.

"It was really a great thing," Dr. Veronica Pietz, the director of the school, said. "We've even got our little guys participating. Our teachers are participating. Everyone is participating. It's the first time we've ever done anything like this."

"This" is World Fit Walk -- an initiative pushed hard over the past four years in particular by Gary Hall Sr., the gold medal-winning swimmer from the 1970s, in response to two particular and obvious challenges:

One, speaking generally, American kids are fat.

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 time frame, the percentage of adolescents -- ages 12 to 19 -- categorized as obese jumped from 5 to 18 percent, according to the CDC.

Something has to be done.

Which leads directly to the second issue.

There are, roughly, 8,000 former U.S. Olympic alumni -- or, in the parlance they prefer, Olympians, an Olympic athlete being an Olympian now and forever. Aside from those who figured out how to make a living on Olympic fame, the vast majority are pretty much living life in Hometown USA. Most would love the chance to do something as Olympians.

As Olympians, it's logical to assume they could make for an incredibly powerful interest group. Assuming they could, in the first instance, form a coherent group. Which perhaps assumes further they could find a cause around which to rally.

Bingo.

"The most compelling problem this country faces is childhood obesity," Hall said. "And who better than Olympians to lead a healthier life?"

World Fit Walk is a simple concept. For 40 days, kids in elementary and middle school grades walk; the program also includes teachers, families and friends. Olympians and Paralympians "adopt" a particular school. Everyone tallies their miles. The whole thing is a national competition. It generates school spirit. There are prizes galore.

The program launched in South Florida in 2009 with two schools, Hall said.

In 2010 it began expanding around the country to 17 schools; in 2011, it grew to 42.

This year's program launched last week; it will reach 78 schools and roughly 30,000 kids in 18 states, Hall said. One sponsor, Platinum Performance, a California-based dietary supplement company, is already on board; another is expected shortly, he said.

"What are experts at? We are experts at training like crazy people," said Willie Banks, the celebrated 1980s triple jumper who is president of the U.S. Olympians Assn.

"If you go in and say, 'Everyone can walk and if you can't walk, everyone can push their chair, that's exercise.' Who better to ask you to do that than an Olympian or Paralympian. That's where our sweet spot is."

An added 2012 component: a series of 20 community walks held around the United States, organized and led by Olympians and Paralympians who make up the nation's 20 Olympians Alumni chapters. The first was held last week in Los Angeles; the last will be June 23 in Washington, D.C.; the goal is to reach 5,456 miles, the distance from L.A., the 1932 and 1984 Summer Games city, to London, which played host to the Games in 1908 and 1948 and will of course be the 2012 city.

The kids in World FIt Walk are clearly going to have help make up the fictional miles across the Atlantic to get to 5,456, it's pretty clear.

No problem.

Last year, at South Gate Middle School near Los Angeles, more than 2,600 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders took part -- believed to be the most kids of any school anywhere in the country.

Dominik Meichtry, a Swiss swimmer who is now engaged to the American swimmer Jessica Hardy, is South Gate's "adopted" Olympian. He was there last year and is due back at school next week. Already, World Fit is reaching out to Olympians from other nations, too.

"No matter what nationalities we are -- at the end of the day, we share that same bond," Meichtry said.

Patricia Alvarez, the physical education director at South Gate, said of Meichtry's 2011 appearance, "They couldn't imagine meeting an Olympian. He brought a video in where he raced against [Michael Phelps] and he beat him … the kids were overwhelmed."

She also said, "The fact that an Olympian comes to our school, and motivates our kids, really helps the kids realize that it's about the health thing everyone talks about. It's more than just their PE teacher telling them, 'You have to be healthy.' It's about their life well-being."

Dave Johnson, the U.S. decathlon star from the 1990s who won bronze at the Barcelona Games, gave a talk last week at another Native American school, the Chemawa Indian School in Salem, Ore.

He showed some of his old Dave and Dan Reebok commercials -- with 1996 decathlon gold medalist Dan O'Brien -- which, of course, the teachers remembered but not the kids. He talked, too, about how, at those 1992 Games, when he expected to win gold he ended up with a stress fracture in his left foot; he put on a shoe two sizes too big, laced it up tight, sucked it up and went out there and toughed it out for bronze.

"Usually," Johnson said, "you get 100 or 200 kids in a room like that, they're goofy. They were quiet. You could hear a pin drop."

DeHaven, halfway across the country, made the point that it surely doesn't have to be about winning a medal.

The vast majority of Olympic athletes don't. Nine of 10 athletes who march in the opening ceremony don't.

DeHaven, for instance, finished 15 minutes slower in the marathon in Sydney than he had in winning the U.S. Trials.

It doesn't matter.

"For Olympians," DeHaven said, "especially the ones who weren't medalists, which of course many of us aren't, the story I tell for anyone who will have me speak … I fell on my face. The kids in this situation -- they need to see that people who fall on their face, they need to see, look, I was able to get back up."

The kids that day at the Pierre Learning Center didn't much care that Rod DeHaven finished 69th at the 2000 Sydney Olympic marathon. They crowded around him for autographs like he was a hero.

Which he was.

He didn't ask for an appearance fee. He drove three hours there, and three hours back home through the great plains of South Dakota, to tell each and every one of those kids that they could make something of themselves, too.

Wallace Spearmon's soulful 19.95

Wallace Spearmon Jr. has always been one of the most soulful guys on the track and field circuit. He runs with heart. He speaks from the heart. If only he could stay healthy, he could capture America's heart.

Maybe this is his year.

A few days ago, at the UTA Bobby Layne Invitational meet in Arlington, Texas, attended by track geeks along with wives, girlfriends, cousins, aunts and uncles and a few dozen other people who apparently thought that hanging out at a track meet might beat going to the mall, Spearmon ran the 200 meters in 19.95 seconds.

That was a world-leading time.

A note:

No one -- but no one -- runs 19.95 in March.

That 19.95 was the earliest anyone has recorded a sub 20-second time in the Northern Hemisphere, according to USA Track & Field.

A second note:

At that same meet, Spearmon's training partner, Darvis "Doc" Patton, ran a 10.04 100. That was the fastest 100 of the year.

A third note, and this -- particularly if you know track and field, and the potential of both these athletes -- borders on the amazing:

That race -- you can watch it, as well as Patton's, here -- was the first time in 2012 Spearmon had been in spikes past 90 meters.

"This is top-secret info," Spearmon said with a laugh. "We have been doing 30s, 40s, maybe 60s. 90 meters is the farthest I had run in spikes all year. I had been wearing flats," adding a moment later, "In that race I felt sloppy."

Spearmon also said, and here he was back to his serious self, "I have never been 100 percent. This is the first year people are starting to see what I am capable of. I have no idea what I'm capable of. I want to find out."

Spearmon has always had talent. No one has ever doubted that.

His father was the 1987 bronze medalist in the 200 at the Pan Am Games, and in college, at Arkansas, Wallace Jr. won the NCAA title in the 200 in 2004 and 2005.

Running the 200 at the world championships, he won silver in 2005, and bronze in 2007 and 2009.

Again in the 200, he finished in the bronze position at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. But then he was disqualified for stepping out of his lane.

That 2008 DQ claws at him still.

"I dreamed as a child of being an Olympic medalist. Not a world championship medalist.

"Not to take anything away from that. I have between four and eight [world championship] medals. I need that one from the Olympics. If I can get that one from the Olympics, and then when my career is over, I can say I achieved what I was after."

Last year, Spearmon was hurt -- a bad Achilles. That's why there's no "2011 world championship medal" among the string.

That's why, too, he's being cautious and yet aggressive about 2012.

"Doc came up to me the other day and said, 'You want to go home?' I said, 'I just want to go to practice and run 'til I can't walk anymore.' This is how I express myself."

"Typically at practice, I am The Man," Patton said, reflecting on his own long career in the sport. "I run the times. Now he comes in and runs faster than I do. We feed off each other."

Patton also said, "I think that if we both stay healthy, God willing we stay healthy, we are going to have a great year. And we are having fun."

You can see the fun in a series of YouTube videos that peel back the curtain on what Spearmon and Patton have been doing this year, along with others in their training group and coach Monte Stratton.

Tyson Gay, according to ESPN, won't attempt to make the U.S. team in both the 100 and 200; Gay, the 2007 100 and 200 world champ who himself has been dogged by injury, said he plans to focus only on the 100.

Spearmon said he hopes Gay is in the 200. Along with Walter Dix, the 2008 Beijing 100 and 200 bronze medalist and 2011 world championship 100 and 200 silver medalist. And anyone else. All comers.

"If I am ever going to medal," he said, "I would want everyone there, everyone at their best. That way you wouldn't be able to say, 'Oh, he only won because so-and-so wasn't there or this guy had a bad day.'

"I love to compete … I love track and field but I love to compete. Track and field has given me an opportunity to compete."

And he said, "Man, not to toot my own horn, I am trying to be humble and modest, I am healthy. I am healthy for the first time in a long time."