Clutch shooting: U.S. women London-bound

Walking out to the target during one of Thursday's early matches at a shoot-off in Ogden, Utah, Khatuna Lorig raised her arms and yelled, "I love my team." That's when everyone involved with USA Archery knew this was going to be a good day.

Climaxing a long and excruciatingly complex qualifying process, the full U.S. women's team qualified Thursday for the London 2012 Olympics, just 35 days ahead of the July 27 opening ceremony.

Heading to London: Miranda Leek, Jennifer Nichols, Lorig.

They will be the first U.S. women's archery team to compete at an Olympics since Athens in 2004, testimony to upgraded facilities, more funding and better coaching.

"After two Olympics and 11 years of competitive archery, this was the most pressure I have ever been under," Nichols said late Thursday.

"And we did it."

The U.S. men's team, No. 1-ranked in the world, qualified a year ago: Brady Ellison, Jake Kaminski, Jacob Wukie.

The pressure was on the U.S. women Thursday for two very, very different reasons.

One, archery is on the upswing in the United States, in large measure because of the success of the "Hunger Games" franchise, the book and the movie. It was Lorig who taught Jennifer Lawrence, who stars as Katniss Everdeen in the movie, to shoot a bow and arrow so convincingly.

And yet Lorig and the U.S. women found themselves in a fight to the very last day to make it to the Games.

That's because, two, the process for qualifying for London is, in a word, convoluted.

A little history:

In 2008, the U.S. women qualified two spots. Lorig and Nichols went to Beijing. Neither medaled. Lorig took fifth, best on the team, men or women.

For the 2012 Games, the rules are that countries can send either one athlete or a full team. A full team means three athletes. Not two.

The U.S. women did not qualify for the full team slot at last year's world championships in Torino, Italy. Leek and Lorig, with top-eight finishes, qualified for an individual spot. At the U.S. Olympic Trials, held just a couple weeks ago, Leek won that one individual slot.

So, Leek knew coming to Ogden this week, for what was called the Final Olympic Qualification Tournament, that she was going to London, no matter what. The "FOQT" -- archery's procedural machinations can be very, very complicated -- was held in conjunction with a World Cup event.

The question was whether Lorig and Nichols would go, too.

Lorig is not only a kinda-sorta movie star. She is a 1992 bronze medalist. She has competed in four prior editions of the Games, for the Unified Team, the Republic of Georgia and the United States. She is 38.

Nichols, again, was shooting for her third Games. She is 28.

Leek is 19.

To get an entire team to the Games meant Leek had to put aside whatever she might be feeling about her own self -- after all, her own position was set -- and be selfless.

Leek struggled some in the qualification rounds in Ogden. It was actually Olympic team alternate Heather Koehl who helped move the Americans up in the brackets to a third-place ranking for Thursday's decisive rounds, just behind Japan.

The U.S. women had to win three straight matches to get to London -- against Romania, Belarus and Japan.

And here is where Leek, and the others, came on strong.

The Americans defeated Romania, 213-202.

They beat Belarus, 212-210.

Then, finally, they beat Japan, by six.

There was more shooting Thursday in Ogden but what matters is that three U.S. women are bound for London. And aiming for a medal.

"I feel like we shot really well," Leek said, adding, "We really buckled down. We worked as one today. We got the job done."

Lorig said, "I made a promise to Jennifer Lawrence that I would go to London and she made a promise to me that she would say, 'That's my coach.' You know what -- in archery we," meaning the United States, "have a very strong team. The boys are strong. The girls are doing great.

"Expect the unexpected."

Challenges await IOC's next president

Regular readers of this space know I now have the privilege of teaching at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Journalism in Los Angeles. One of the things about being a university professor -- my formal title, by the way, is "lecturer" -- is that for each class they make you write a syllabus. It's not easy. You have to read a lot of books to decide which books you want to use in your class.

Before heading off this week to cover the U.S. Olympic Trials in track and field and then swimming, I have been at work drafting the syllabus for a graduate-school spring 2013 course tentatively entitled "Sports and Society." A book I've run across, and like, comes from two Australian professors, Kristine Toohey and A.J. Veal, "The Olympic Games: A Social Science Perspective," because it not only provides a broad sketch of the movement but also provides excellent context for the issues likely to confront the next IOC president.

This week, it's true, the IOC seems wholly enmeshed in a black-market ticket scandal. But that is temporal. As the book makes plain, the ticket issue will -- like many others -- be confronted, and the IOC will move on.

The IOC has been in existence since 1894. In all those years, remarkably, it has had but eight presidents.

I have been covering the IOC since late 1998. I have known but two presidents: Juan Antonio Samaranch, who held the job from 1980 until 2001, and Jacques Rogge, who has been president since.

Rogge will, by term limit, step down in September 2013. The IOC will elect his successor at a regularly called election at its annual convention, called a session. The location of the session rotates around the world; this session will be held in Buenos Aires.

In about a month, when the IOC gathers in London for the Games, the world will watch Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps and the others who will make the XXX Olympiad what it will be for the history books. The IOC will hold a session in London as well and the members will stay on for the Games. Rest assured: the politicking, looking ahead to Buenos Aires, will be just as intriguing.

The list of potential candidates for the presidency is unannounced but fairly obvious. It's a once-every-12-years-opportunity, and the maneuvering has been going on for months now, if not years.

In alphabetical order, and it's important to note that being interested in running does not necessarily mean electable: Thomas Bach of Germany; Richard Carrion of Puerto Rico; Anita DeFrantz of the United States; Rene Fasel of Switzerland; Ser Miang Ng of Singapore; Denis Oswald of Switzerland. There may yet be others.

No Asian candidate has ever been elected IOC president; indeed, with the exception of Avery Brundage, the American who served from 1952-72, every IOC president has been European. Soft-spoken, well-connected, diplomatic, Ng oversaw the enormously successful 2010 Singapore Youth Olympic Games.

Carrion moves fluidly and fluently between the worlds of business and sports, in Spanish, English and, increasingly, French. In a world buffeted by economic crisis, the IOC has not only weathered the storm but is positioned strategically, thanks in significant measure to Carrion, its banker, a key player in the $4.38 billion rights negotiation with NBC through 2020, and other deals.

Bach comes from an Olympic background; he is a gold-medalist (fencing, 1976). He is a national Olympic committee president (Germany). He has done it all in a long and distinguished career that includes ties to business, law and the Olympics.

The IOC is always about personalities and relationships. One wonders, however, if at some level the 2013 presidential election has to be as much about the issues confronting the movement -- this is why the book is so interesting as background -- and whether the personalities of the potential contenders are best-suited to dealing with those issues.

An explanation:

There are always recurring issues in the IOC scene. For instance -- stadium elephants.

That said, certain issues emerge at particular elections as defining issues in the moment.

In 2001, when Rogge was elected, succeeding Samaranch, the issues confronting the IOC were very different from now.

When the IOC convened for that 2001 session in Moscow, the events preceding and enveloping  that election were largely based on transparency and the dispersion of power.

Rogge won in the wake of the 1998 corruption scandal in Salt Lake City, which then prompted a 1999 50-point IOC reform plan, and in the aftermath of a number of doping scandals, in particular at the 1998 Tour de France, which helped create the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Now?

The challenges are not internal but external.

That is, the next president must be prepared to deal with events that come at him (or her) not from an internal sphere (doping, member corruption) but, indeed, from the outside world.

Indeed, the context and speed at which world events are happening is perhaps the No. 1 challenge to the movement.

Just to rattle off a few items: the global recession and euro sovereign debt crisis, the geographical expansion of the Games (2014 Sochi, 2016 Rio, 2018 Pyeongchang, bids for 2020 from Doha and Baku), the growing threat of illegal sports betting.

It is absolutely true that under Rogge the IOC has seen its financial reserves grow from $105 million in 2001 to $592 million in 2010. The IOC is well-positioned to weather one four-year downturn. This largely unheralded, and under-appreciated, development may be one of Rogge's shrewdest plays as president.

The obvious big-picture question is -- what next?

How much debt, for instance, can you throw at the Olympic scene before something goes amiss? How many countries can keep picking up the tab? Was the decision by the Italian government earlier this year not to push Rome forward for the 2020 Games, citing the ongoing European financial crisis, a signal of things to come -- or was it just an aberration?

Eventually, and most likely during the 12 years of this next presidency, some very hard decisions are going to have to be made, and that will have repercussions for everyone, including the Olympic movement.

A corollary:

It would seem readily apparent that the size and expansion of the movement demand greater partnerships. There are bigger opportunities out there. But also bigger potential pitfalls.

Again, any IOC election is at its core about relationships. But this one has to be about more than schmoozing. There's too much at stake for the members to be looking for more than just comfort. The world we live in can often be not a comfortable place.

The IOC's London ticket problem

In 2005, when the International Olympic Committee awarded the 2012 Summer Games to London, it did so knowing full well the British press would come along for the ride. This, then, is what you have to expect just weeks before the opening ceremony: reports like the one in Britain's Sunday Times, alleging that representatives in more than 50 countries have been involved in selling London 2012 Olympic tickets on the black market for profit.

At issue are tickets given by the London 2012 organizing committee to each of the 204 national Olympic committees to sell at home. Each NOC typically appoints an agent to sell those tickets.

IOC rules do not allow NOCs from selling tickets abroad, from inflating ticket prices or from selling tickets to unauthorized re-sellers. The newspaper said it intends to deliver a dossier to the IOC on 27 officials controlling the tickets for 54 countries.

The IOC's policy-making executive board held a hurried telephone conference call and referred the matter to the IOC ethics commission.

The IOC issued a statement saying it takes the matter "very seriously." By all accounts there is a will to do something about it, and with due speed. It seemed evident a full resolution is unlikely before the July 27 opening ceremony. The London 2012 committee itself is not implicated; this is IOC business.

Immediate denials of wrongdoing were issued from all corners of the world, including the United States. Greg Harney, one of those identified in story, a former U.S. Olympic Committee staffer, identified in the story as a vice-president of ticket broker Cartan Tours, was said in the story to have "encouraged" the paper's undercover reporters to "set up a sham address" in "one of the 40 countries whose tickets he controls to conceal an illicit foreign sale."

Harney told the Olympic newsletter Around the Rings that his firm did not violate any rules and will "fully cooperate" with the IOC investigation.

One does wonder about the Sunday Times story when it can't get a basic fact right:

The piece identifies Harney as "organizer of the failed US bid for the 2012 Games." He was not. Again, he was a USOC staffer. Dan Doctoroff was of course the head of the New York bid.

No one in Olympic circles -- repeat, no one -- can be all that surprised that there might be issues with ticketing, and that people might say they have access to control tickets when they might or might not.

For one, ticketing is an extraordinarily complex, multi-layered affair.

For another, pretty much everyone suspects Olympic tickets were sold on the black market at prior Games.

On top of which, demand for tickets to these Games is keen, both in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. It's easy to understand why. The London 2012 committee has marketed the Games brilliantly. Moreover, Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps are due to star. London is accessible and relatively easy to get to from everywhere.

So what, if anything, the IOC really do about it?

Dealing with the NOCs is straightforward. They fall under the auspices of the ethics commission.

Dealing with the agents -- that is more difficult.

The clear solution, of course, would be to remove from the future ticket distribution list the name of any agent found liable of misconduct. But ought such expulsion be temporary or permanent?

And how to measure misconduct? In the European Union, tickets can legally be re-sold anywhere within the union. For the sake of argument, is it fair to say that a ticket to the men's 100-meter final so transferable within so many countries in Europe without sanction ought to be restricted within, say, the remote Pacific island nation of Vanuatu simply because the luck of the draw sent a particular ticket to Vanuatu? Does that really make sense?

Yes, those are the rules -- but when rules run into supply and demand, and you mix in human creativity and ingenuity, you get what you get.

Allegedly.

Denis Oswald, the Swiss lawyer and head of the international rowing federation who sits on the IOC executive board, told Inside the Games, a British Olympic newsletter, that simply banning agents might not be enough. He suggested that agents who can be proved to have committed wrongdoing "should no longer belong to the Olympic movement."

It would seem obvious, no matter the outcome of the ethics inquiry, that after years of confusion and whispering about the NOC ticketing process, the IOC ought to use this occasion to take a hard look at how the process works. Here is the most important reform:

Make the entire ticketing process far more transparent.

To generalize, no one understands it.

Because no one understands it, everyone thinks it's a screw job. The people who got tickets think they simply got lucky. The millions who don't think they are getting the shaft, and stories like the Sunday Times' report powerfully reinforce that notion.

The IOC has gone far in recent years in restoring public confidence in other sectors -- anti-doping, for instance. Now it needs to undertake that same effort with regards to ticketing. If it's too late to change for London, that ought to be the message for the next Winter Games, Sochi 2014, and absolutely the next Summer Olympics, Rio de Janeiro, in 2016.

Lance Armstrong accused of "pervasive pattern of doping"

The case launched Wednesday by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency against Lance Armstrong is notable not just because it's Lance Armstrong, and because, well -- finally. It promises to highlight the role of the entourage in elite cycling and, by extension, Olympic and international sport.

It could well crack the code of silence in cycling, once and for all. Testimony under oath can be a powerful thing.

Moreover, assuming this case against Armstrong moves as far as a hearing, and if that hearing is public, the opportunity would at long present itself to test evidence in cross-examination for all to see. Armstrong is an immensely polarizing figure. Those who see Armstrong as hero, as well as those who allege he had to have been taking something to win and keep winning, would get the chance to see evidence put to the test.

Process may not seem sexy. But process is critically important, to Armstrong and, as well, to USADA, the quasi-governmental organization that oversees the anti-doping campaign in Olympic sports in the United States. That is the American way.

As is this: Armstrong is innocent until proven otherwise.

This, too: USADA surely would not have brought a case against a figure of Armstrong's stature unless it had confidence it could deliver. There are budgets and reputations at stake amid what is likely to be an enormous variety of pressures.

"We do not choose whether or not we do our job based on outside pressures, intimidation or for any reason other than the evidence," USADA chief executive Travis Tygart said in a statement.  "Our duty on behalf of clean athletes and those that value the integrity of sport is to fairly and thoroughly evaluate all the evidence available and when there is credible evidence of doping, take action under the established rules."

Much of the media will want this to be about soundbites and first impressions and an instant rush to judgment. It can't be. We don't yet know what we don't know.

The 15-page USADA "notice letter" describes -- but does not name -- "more than 10 … cyclists as well as cycling team employees." That is a substantial number of witnesses. Further, it declares that "numerous riders, team personnel and others will testify based on personal knowledge acquired either through observing Armstrong dope or through Armstrong's admissions of doping to them" that Armstrong used EPO, blood transfusions, testosterone and cortisone from before 1998 through 2005, and that he previously used EPO, testosterone and human growth hormone through 1996.

It further alleges Armstrong's doping will be "evidenced by the data from blood collections obtained by the UCI," cycling's international federation, taken from Armstrong, in 2009 and 2010, numbers  "fully consistent with blood manipulation including EPO use and/or blood transfusions."

The letter, dated Tuesday, alleges that Armstrong and five others engaged in a conspiracy, a "pervasive pattern of doping," that started in 1998.

Named along with Armstrong were: team manager Johan Bruyneel, the team director; Dr. Pedro Celaya, a team doctor; Dr. Luis Garcia del Moral, a team doctor; Dr. Michele Ferrari, an Italian physician well-known in cycling circles described here as a "consulting doctor"; Jose Pepe Marti, a team trainer.

To read that notice letter is to understand immediately that the evidence at hand is not everything. It is, as the letter says, a "portion" of what USADA has. Further, it is apparently not evidence that USADA just scooped up in the wake of the federal investigation that ended in February, when the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles announced abruptly that it would not -- after a nearly two-year criminal probe -- charge Armstrong or other members of his riding teams.

Armstrong rode for the U.S. Postal Service and then Discovery Channel teams from 1998-2005. In 2009 he rode for the Astana Cycling team. In 2010-11, he rode for the RadioShack team.

Again: this case would appear to be built without whatever USADA might, or might not, have in hand from the Feds. One wonders whether there is more, and whether it might ever emerge.

Armstrong is of course a seven-time winner of the Tour de France, from 1999-2005. He retired from cycling in early 2011 and took up triathlon, which he had done before turning to cycling. The letter Wednesday means he is immediately banned from competing in triathlon. USADA is not empowered to bring criminal charges.

Armstrong, who has repeatedly maintained he is innocent of any wrongdoing, issued a statement Wednesday that said, in part, "I have never doped, and, unlike many of my accusers, I have competed as an endurance athlete for 25 years with no spike in performance, passed more than 500 drug tests and never failed one."

To pass so many drug tests, though, means virtually nothing. Marion Jones, the U.S. sprinter, passed more than 160 drug tests. She ultimately was revealed as a chronic drug cheat who would give back the five Olympic medals she won in Sydney in 2000.

This is, among other reasons, why the process element is so important.

Floyd Landis protested mightily when he was charged. Indeed, he even wrote a 2007 book, "Positively False," in which he said, on pages 196 and 197, "I did not use performance-enhancing drugs in the 2006 Tour de France or any other time in my career."

Evidence at a 2007 arbitration panel hearing proved that wrong.

Subsequently -- in May, 2010 -- Landis sent e-mails to cycling officials admitting that he was a serial doper. He has since accused Armstrong.

Armstrong, as his competitors and others who have encountered him know, can be fantastically combative. He has done great things for cancer survivors and along the way he has made powerful friends, some in Washington. Some of those friends doubtlessly will wonder why he is being subject to these accusations.

Indeed, you could see him working the angles Wednesday in that statement. It starts this way: "I have been notified that USADA, an organization largely funded by taxpayer dollars but governed only by self-written rules, intends to again dredge up discredited allegations dating back more than 16 years to prevent me from competing as a triathlete and try and strip me of the seven Tour de France victories I earned."

It goes on to say that these are the "very same charges and the same witnesses" the Justice Department "chose not to pursue" -- though no one outside the Department knows why -- and, a few words later, alleges that USADA's "malice, its methods, its star-chamber practices, and its decision to punish first and adjudicate later all are at odds with our ideals of fairness and fair play."

Reality check: if the conduct USADA alleges can be proven, under oath, then Armstrong and the others should be held accountable. That's our ideal of fairness and fair play.

That's process, and it should play itself out, and no amount of pressure -- financial, emotional or otherwise -- from Armstrong or his friends, no matter how high up in Washington or elsewhere, should deter that. That's fairness and fair play, too.

But to start, there's this: Armstrong is innocent until proven otherwise.

Katey Stone: a woman's place is behind the bench

A woman has run for president and vice-president of the United States. Women have been running the marathon at the Olympic Games since 1984. There will be female boxers this summer in London and female ski jumpers in Sochi in 2014. There will come a time, surely, when those of us in the media no longer have to write columns that say so-and-so is the first woman to do such-and-such.

That time, though, is not yet upon us, and so the symbolism is inescapable with the announcement Friday that Katey Stone will be the American women's ice hockey coach in Sochi. She is the first woman to lead a U.S. Olympic ice hockey team.

Stone, 46, the longtime Harvard coach who knows what it takes to win on the biggest stage, understands that she is -- even in 2012 -- a pioneer. She also has the pitch-perfect answer to the obvious question about being the first woman, all the better because like everything about her it's direct and transparent, not canned or the least bit packaged for media consumption.

"I have been involved in sports for so long that I know that the most important thing, the No. 1 ingredient, is competency," she said. "I certainly hope I am not the last female. I know I am the first. But I don't want to be the last."

She also said, "I'm one of those kids who just keeps doing the job in front of them. I have to be honest … it's starting to get to me. My friends and family keep reminding me: you're the first woman. I obviously want to be the best at it. It is significant. There is no question. I understand that. It comes with the responsibility -- that there is an extremely high level of competency."

That's what you get with Katey Stone. Extreme, if not extraordinary, competency.

Don't misunderstand. That is by every measure a compliment.

In 18 years at Harvard, Stone has coached nine Olympic athletes and six Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award winners, the trophy given annually to the top player in NCAA Division I women's hockey. One of those award winners: Angela Ruggiero, a member of the 1998 gold medal-winning U.S. women's team, now an International Olympic Committee member.

Stone's Harvard teams have a record over those 18 years of 378-164-32; she is the all-time wins leader in women's college hockey.

Stone said she will take a leave of absence from Harvard, beginning in July 2013 and returning in April 2014, emphasizing that the university has been "extremely supportive," and that her "incredibly competent" -- there's that word again -- coaching staff will see the team through the 2013-14 ECAC season. For emphasis, during that season she will not be on the Crimson bench.

"I don't believe that would be a fair thing to do," she said.

Stone has been involved with the U.S. national team program since 2006. She has served as head coach of a U.S. team on four occasions, including the 2011 International Ice Hockey Federation women's world championship in Zurich, Switzerland, which saw the American team's third straight world championship gold medal.

The Canadians won the 2012 worlds, and 39-year-old Dan Church, who led that team, was this week named the Canadian coach for the Sochi 2014 Olympics. Church has coached the women's team at York University in Toronto for nine years.

The 2012 worlds title was Canada's first since 2007. The Canadians, however, have won gold at the last three Olympic Games.

IOC president Jacques Rogge has emphasized the need to grow women's hockey beyond the powerhouse American and Canadian teams, and though significant efforts are indeed being made to do just that, it figures that in Sochi the Olympic gold medal game may yet again come down to the U.S. and Canada.

Again, the obvious question: what will it take for the Americans to prevail in 2014?

"Commitment to little things," Stone said. "It's not a complicated answer. It's commitment to little things and everyone buying into a 'team-first' mantra, which encompasses little things. It's not a complicated game. We are just trying to get everyone to play their best when they need to play their best."

Shawn Johnson: "Time ran out"

Two and a half years ago, the gymnast Shawn Johnson went on a ski trip to Beaver Creek, Colo. On the very last run of the day, everybody else in her group went down an expert run. Shawn, who by then had become a pretty good skier herself, opted to go down a super-easy trail. Everyone else made it down safely.

About halfway down her run, though, Shawn lost control. The safety release on her ski didn't work; her ski caught in the snow; and she rolled over on her left knee. At that instant her knee popped.

That pop led directly to the announcement Sunday that pretty much everyone in American gymnastics knew was coming, had even already accepted but had nonetheless been dreading: Shawn Johnson, 20 years old, was retiring.

She said on a conference call with reporters: "Time ran out. I had to accept the fact it wasn't a possibility any more."

The timing here is everything. The U.S. nationals get underway this week. Shawn wanted this announcement out there so that the spotlight would, appropriately enough, be on those competing, not on her.

She'd had a conversation Friday with her longtime coach, Liang Chow; there had been ongoing conversations with Martha Karolyi, the U.S. team national coordinator. Everyone was assessing the upsides and, at the same time, the hard truths:

Shawn Johnson was an able, gutsy competitor. She won four medals in Beijing, three silver, one gold. She was the 2007 world all-around champion. As Steve Penny, the president of USA Gymnastics, would put it on the call Sunday, Shawn "always delivered ... she was always going to be there with tons of guys and ready to go."

After taking two years off from gymnastics, after winning "Dancing With the Stars," after the ski wipe-out, she came back to the sport and made the Pan Am team last fall with her eye on London.

But the knee just would not cooperate.

It was a "constant fight" all along with the knee, she said, adding at another point in the call, "Talking to Chow and talking to Martha and coming to reality, I couldn't push myself any further."

Asked about making the 2012 team, she said: "It would have taken everything I had, and it would have taken luck."

What's next remains immediately unclear. Shawn is dead-set to go to college. Moreover, she doubtlessly will continue to have sponsor opportunities because her agent, Sheryl Shade, has done a terrific job behind the scenes over the years and she is, as Penny said, the embodiment of the "girl next door."

In the near future, Shawn predicted that the U.S. women's team -- whoever is ultimately on it -- will be the one to beat in London. She said she intends to be their "biggest cheerleader."

Who knows why somebody with unbelievable balance fell down and popped her knee on a ski run she surely should have had no trouble handling? Life works in mysterious ways.

To Shawn Johnson's credit, she has always been extraordinarily gracious in dealing not just with the injury but the aftermath and the inquiries about it. Of which there was, naturally, one more on Sunday.

No surprise, she was a class act: "Everything happens for a reason. I can't take it back. I can't regret it."

LaShawn Merritt makes a statement

EUGENE, Ore. -- There was a moment when it could have been déjà vu all over again for LaShawn Merritt and Kirani James, just like last year at the world championships in Daegu, coming down the stretch in the 400. But it wasn't.

Instead, this was a clear case of role reversal.

Which means it's really on heading into London. Because, as Merritt observed, this was a field so loaded it sure looked like an Olympic final Saturday at the Prefontaine Classic.

Last year in Daegu, James caught Merritt about three meters from the finish line, then passed him to become the first-ever medalist from Grenada. Now 19, James is a two-time NCAA champion at the University of Alabama.

On Saturday, Merritt, the 2008 Olympic champion, clearly showing that he has returned to form, caught James coming down the stretch. He poured it on for a decisive victory, finishing in 44.91 seconds.

James finished in 44.97.

You won't find that 44.97 in the official records of the race.

Officially, James didn't even run.

He false-started, and then ran the race under protest, a protest that was promptly denied.

James -- this is an amazing statistic -- has never lost a race run outdoors. Because this race will show in the books as a DQ, it won't count against that mark.

To James, however, it felt like a loss. Which, let's be real -- it was.

"Of course, it's a loss," he said. "I actually ran the race."

He said of the false-start, offering no excuses, "It's entirely my fault," adding he was simply "anticipating too much."

And he said, "It's a learning experience. I'd rather have it happen here" than, say, the Olympic final.

Christopher Brown of the Bahamas was upgraded to second. He finished in 45.24.

Angelo Taylor of the United States was moved up to third. His time: 45.59.

American Jeremy Wariner, the 2004 400 Olympic champ, was not a factor. He was bumped up to fifth in the final standings, at 45.58.

Oscar Pistorius, the South African "Blade Runner" who needs to run under 45.30 one more time to meet his nation's qualifying standards for the London Games ran 46.86.

He ran 45.20 in March.

"Today, there is nobody to blame but myself," he said.

Usain Bolt is far and away the best-known name in the world in track and field. No one else -- for emphasis, no one -- is close. Pistorius is arguably second; all over the world, people are rooting for him to make it.

He has two, perhaps three, more chances, including next week in New York.

"It's not nice as an athlete when you've worked hard and the times aren't coming but that's part of the game sometimes," Pistorius said. "I have to re-focus after this and get some fuel in the tank for the next race."

It is of course conceivable that Pistorius does not meet the 45.30 time again. If not?

"I guess then I won't go," he said. "They haven't given us that side of the coin. The requirement is that we have to run the time twice."

For Merritt, it's all coming together. Last year, he was just coming back from a lengthy suspension served after taking a male-enhancement product. "In Daegu," he said, "there were a lot of things I did that my mind and my body didn't connect."

That is, he would tell himself to go faster -- but there was no there there.

This year, it's there.

"It's a matter of your mind and your body connecting," he said. "I've worked on some things. I came here and I knew what that race was going to be."

He also said, looking forward to the Trials, "I'm coming to run." So, too, are the others: "Everybody's coming to run this year," LaShawn Merritt said, with a smile that said he was ready for anyone and everyone to bring it on.

Liu Xiang is most definitely back

EUGENE, Ore. -- If all had gone according to plan, of course, Liu Xiang would have repeated as Olympic champion in the 110-meter hurdles before a delirious home crowd in 2008 in Beijing. Fate had other plans. The image that lingers still, nearly four years later, is Liu, in the morning glare, pulling out of the heats, injured.

It is so desperately difficult to recover from an injury as severe as the torn Achilles tendon that sidelined one of the great hurdlers of this, or any, time. But Liu served notice Saturday, and emphatically, that he is back.

Liu not only won the Prefontaine Classic against a stacked field -- essentially everyone expected to be in the Olympic final save Cuba's Dayron Robles -- he did so in a wind-aided 12.87 seconds.

That equaled Robles' world-record time, set four years ago in the Czech Republic.

Liu is not especially given to public displays of emotion. But here, given the dominating nature of what he had done, given the time, he went windmilling around the track.

It wasn't showboating. It was more child-like glee.

"I love Eugene," Liu said later, speaking through a translator. "I like all the crowd here. So I am happy not only because of my time."

American Aries Merritt, the 2012 world indoor champ, finished second, in 12.96. The 2011 outdoor champ, Jason Richardson of the United States, finished third, in 13.11.

Dexter Faulk, another American, finished fourth, in 13.12.

David Oliver, the 2008 Olympic bronze medalist from the United States who came to Eugene last year having won 18 of 19 races, who won here last year in 12.94, took fifth, in 13.13. He insists he is fully recovered from the injuries that slowed him during the latter part of 2011.

Robles had been due to run here but, on Thursday, it was announced that he would be a no-show, purportedly because of visa problems. It was also announced that he would make the race this coming week in New York.

The Pre is a Nike event. This New York race is an adidas event. Robles is sponsored by adidas. Whether it was geopolitics, or shoe politics, that kept Robles out of Oregon -- such things are as unknowable as grassy knolls.

If Merritt was considered by some a sleeper -- no more. He had said in the lead-up to this race that he expected it would take a 12.93, or better, to win, adding, 'I have training sessions when I'm running world-record pace."

Richardson was named 2011 world champion after a bang-bang sequence near the finish line in Daegu. Robles crossed the line first. But he was then disqualified, video showing that he had twice touched Liu's arm going over the ninth and 10th hurdles. That elevated Richardson to first, Liu to second.

At the 2012 world indoors in Istanbul, Robles didn't run. Merritt won. Liu finished second.

A few weeks ago in Shanghai, Liu won in 12.97. That night, Oliver ran second, Richardson third, Merritt fourth.

"He's just amazing," Richardson said Saturday of Liu. "It almost goes without saying."

What makes Liu's performance in Eugene all the more amazing is this:

The wind was "wind-aided" because, at 2.4 meters per second, it was a tailwind. Hurdlers hate this. This is simple logic. A tailwind pushes a hurdler closer to each of the hurdles. So the fact that Liu equaled the world record under these conditions is even more impressive, not less, as "wind-aided" might otherwise suggest.

Roger Kingdom, the 1984 and 1988 Olympic gold medalist, has a wind-aided 12.87 in the books as well -- in Barcelona, on Sept. 10, 1989. (The wind that day: 2.6.) What that means, in plain English: it's not a world record but no one has ever run faster than Liu ran Saturday in Eugene.

Liu understands English reasonably well. But when he meets the press at meets such as these, he typically answers Chinese reporters first and then responds to English speakers through a translator. The answers delivered in translation are necessarily filtered and more bland than they might, perhaps, be in the original.

Even so, you know he knows he's back. Come London, watch out for Liu Xiang.

"Of course I am happy," he said. "But it is just a race. For me, I need to look forward."

Allyson Felix: "... right where I need to be"

EUGENE, Ore. -- The signs were there last month, when Allyson Felix blasted to a 10.92 to win a 100-meter Diamond League sprint in Doha, Qatar, defeating both the reigning Olympic champion, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and the 200-meter champ, Veronica Campbell-Brown, both Jamaicans. Here Friday, she had said, "I feel like I'm right on schedule, right where I need to be."

She showed up Saturday for her baby, the 200, in a black bodysuit that evoked comparisons to something Cathy Freeman might have worn back in the day. And then Allyson Felix went out and made everyone else in the field look slow, and in particular the 2011 world championship silver medalist, Carmelia Jeter.

Felix won in 22.23 seconds, just one-hundredth off the year's best time, run by LSU junior Kimberlyn Duncan at an NCAA regional meet last week.

Jeter, who has a personal best of 22.20 in the 200, a season's-best of 22.31, managed only 22.78. She finished fifth.

American Jeneba Tarmoh finished second in 22.61, Blessing Okagbare of Nigeria third in 22.63, and another American, Bianca Knight, fourth, in 22.64. The times don't tell the true story. If it's possible to jog to the line in a 200, Allyson Felix kinda sorta did.

An Allyson Felix who is right on schedule, right where she needs to be, means big things.

It's big for the United States track program. She could -- should? -- win four medals. Some number -- four? -- should be gold.

It's big for NBC. (Let's face facts.) The network needs to build story lines around all those nights of television programming. Allyson Felix is everything you'd want: she's well-spoken, and the camera loves following her around the track, even in a black bodysuit.

Plus, she's on a mission: she has done everything in the sport. Everything. Won it all, done it all.

Except -- except the one thing she has always wanted, Olympic gold in the 200.

Twice she has won Olympic silver in the 200, in 2004 and 2008, both times behind Campbell-Brown.

The issue on the table, as it has been for months, is what events Felix will run in London -- that is, besides the 200.

Start with the relays. Those are a given.

She has long said she wants to double up her individual events.

Last year, in Daegu, she ran the 200 and 400.

This year, could it be the 100 and the 200?

For starters, the 400 comes first in the Olympic program. It's way more taxing.

If the 400 came after the 200, Felix said here Friday, "it would be very, very easy," meaning she would for sure do a 200-400 double.

Complicating the decision, perhaps, is the resurgence of American Sanya Richards-Ross. Hurt in 2011, fully healthy now, Richards-Ross ran a world-best 49.39 here Saturday for the win, defeating Amantle Montsho of Botswana, the 2011 400 champ; it was Montsho who defeated Felix last year in Daegu by a mere three-hundredths of a second.

Montsho's winning 2011 Daegu time: 49.56.

The challenges in the 100 are who she's running against -- Jeter, Fraser-Pryce, Campbell-Brown -- and herself. "The start has always been my issue," she said, and in a race that quick, a bad start and it's all but over.

Felix had said Friday that both the 100 and 400 were "still on the table." She said she intends to run next week in New York and then sit down with her longtime coach, Bobby Kersee, to make a decision.

She left here Saturday feeling strong. "I feel," she said, "like I'm in a good place."

Two "gods" delight kids at Eugene Family YMCA

EUGENE, Ore. -- Maybe David Oliver wins the 110-meter hurdles here Saturday at the Prefontaine Classic against a stacked field. Doesn't matter. Perhaps Leo Manzano wins the Bowerman Mile against a loaded field here at the Pre. Again, doesn't matter.

They're both heroes already.

Quietly, David Oliver and Leo Manzano spent a half-hour Friday afternoon with about three dozen kids at the Eugene Family YMCA. The kids, ages 2 1/2 to 9, were awestruck to be in the presence of two guys who were, in fact, Olympians.

Asked to describe what an Olympian was, JJ Anderson, 9, said, "A professional player -- the best of the best!"

Ryan Coplin, also 9, went even further: "A god!"

Oliver and Manzano are two of just some of the good guys -- and gals -- who make up the U.S. Olympic scene. Their appearance Friday at the Y was part of two distinct programs that get little attention but deserve more because, let's face it, it's the idea that little kids want to be just like David Oliver and Leo Manzano that keeps the entire Olympic enterprise going day after day, year after year, in these United States.

The U.S. Olympic Committee's "Team for Tomorrow" initiative, launched in 2008, is now in its third cycle with 10 Olympic and Paralympic athletes and hopefuls. Among them: triathlete Gwen Jorgensen, swimmer Jessica Hardy, water polo player Tony Azevedo and Paralympic standouts Rudy Garcia-Tolson and Anjali Forber-Pratt. Volunteer time includes visits to hospitals, schools, YMCAs and other community institutions.

USA Track & Field's "Win With Integrity" program dates back to 2004. It aims to stress the benefits of an active, healthy lifestyle and making decisions -- on and off the field -- with integrity.

Some of that was obviously a little much Friday for pre-schoolers. Sierra St. Johns, 5, was a little distracted because she lost a tooth (only her second!) while Oliver and Manzano were talking. To her credit, she didn't make any fuss -- just went out to the bathroom and came back clutching her prize in a bag for the tooth fairy to visit Friday night.

As Oliver, who does a lot of these reach-out programs, said in an interview, "It's best at high-school age. You try. You may only reach one kid out of 100. But these are the future leaders of our world. If I can just tell them something positive, maybe it sinks in."

A Howard University grad, Oliver said, "Look, I'm a good athlete. But I didn't take the 'student' out of 'student-athlete.' The two go hand in hand. I did not to go school to be a professional athlete."

Manzano struck much the same notes. He said, "For me, growing up I never saw a Hispanic role model. It's important to show these kids they can anything want to do. Not just running. Anything."

He said, "A lot of kids go home from a place like the Y, it might be kids like David Oliver or myself. My family couldn't afford to buy me shoes or the best clothes. Sure, there were coaches or other people to look after me, who motivated me. And, lo and behold. I do feel very lucky."

When it came to question and answer time, the kids wanted to know what these two gods liked to eat.

Oliver said he liked vegetables, steak, chicken and fish.

Everyone thought that was ok.

Manzano said he liked apples and broccoli.

Broccoli?

Even gods, you know, can't win at everything.

"My question," Emma Nordahl, 7, wanted to know right after that, "is when is this gonna end?"