USOC's Probst: "We do want to bid ..."

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- The glow from the London Games still fresh in the minds of everyone in the audience, the chairman of the U.S. Olympic Committee's board got right to the question on everyone's minds right away. "Make no mistake," Larry Probst told the USOC's annual assembly here at the Antlers Hilton Hotel, "we do want to bid, and we do want to win.

"But we will only bid if the business logic is as compelling as the sport logic."

Probst's comments highlighted the remarks at a markedly low-key assembly in the wake of the high-octane American performance in London -- the 46 gold medals and 104 overall, both best in the world.

All along, Probst -- and USOC chief executive Scott Blackmun -- had been quietly confident that American athletes would perform well at the 2012 Olympic Games. Probst said Friday that "despite the naysayers and predictions of the end of Team USA's preeminence, our athletes rose to the challenge and demonstrated, once again, just how deeply the pursuit of excellence is ingrained in our character."

He said that one of his favorite in-person London moments was getting to watch Serena Williams defeat Russia's Maria Sharapova at Wimbledon for the women's singles gold medal, and said that Williams represents the "heart and soul" of the USOC's mission, to "produce sustained competitive excellence over time."

The obvious question, Probst said, having seen the excitement that the Games brought to London and Britain, is when the United States will be back in the bid game.

For those unfamiliar with the story, he reminded everyone that when he became board chair four years ago, the USOC was, as he put it, "engulfed in a period of challenge and turmoil."

New York was put forward in 2005 for the 2012 Summer Games. Chicago was the candidate in 2009 for the 2016 Games. Both lost, and lost big, because of the USOC's relationship with the wider Olympic movement.

As Probst put it Friday, the USOC needed a "major course correction."

That course correction came this past May, when the USOC and International Olympic Committee struck a deal that resolved a longstanding dispute over certain broadcasting and marketing revenue shares.

Friction over the current deal played a key role in the wider bad karma that helped sink the New York and Chicago bids.

The new deal runs from 2020 until 2040, and gives the USOC removes "the largest single impediment to building the kind of international partnerships we have always desired with the Olympic movement," Probst said.

The deal was negotiated by Blackmun and Fraser Bullock on the USOC side and by IOC members Gerhard Heiberg and Richard Carrion and IOC director general Christophe de Kepper. Probst said all "approached the final discussions with openness and an honest desire to move beyond the conflict."

A USOC working group on the bid process is due to report back to the full board in December. Up for study is either the 2024 Summer or 2026 Winter Games; the smart money, ultimately, would seem to be on a 2024 Summer bid, with San Francisco and New York atop the list of possible cities and Chicago sure to be mentioned again.

At a news conference later Friday, both Probst and Blackmun cautioned that the working group is not -- repeat, not -- going to come back with specific recommendations, Summer or Winter, this city or that.

Probst said it would focus on "guiding principles around the bid or next steps," with Blackmun emphasizing that budgets, economics and due diligence in a variety of areas are a must.

The IOC demands certain guarantees from a bid city. The nature of American federalism -- with the national government traditionally not involved in the bid business, leaving state and local governments on the hook -- makes those guarantees particularly difficult to satisfy. Both Probst and Blackmun said that issue deserves renewed study.

Both also cautioned repeatedly that a bid simply has to make sense, Blackmun saying at that news conference, "If we don't think we will win, we will not bid."

What they didn't say is what they didn't have to. The resolution of the revenue dispute, as well as the geopolitics of the 2000 (Sydney), 2004 (Athens), 2008 (Beijing), 2012 (London), 2016 (Rio de Janeiro) Games and the 2020 campaign (Tokyo, Madrid and Istanbul) mitigate strongly in favor of a first-rate bid from the United States for 2024.

"We want the Games back in the United States, and we have a number of friends in the international community who want us to host the Games as well," Probst told the assembly, adding, "That's perhaps the best news I could possibly give you today."

Reedie to lead IOC 2020 evaluation

Sir Craig Reedie, Britain's recently elected International Olympic Committee vice president, will lead the team that inspects the three cities in the hunt for the 2020 Summer Games, the IOC announced Thursday. Reedie -- who has extensive experience in sports, business and politics -- is superbly positioned to do a first-rate job leading the nine-person panel, which next March will tour Madrid, Tokyo and Istanbul. After those visits, the commission will then write a report detailing each city's so-called "technical" strengths and weaknesses.

The IOC will select the 2020 site next September at an assembly in Buenos Aires.

Reedie said in a telephone interview, "Clearly I'm very pleased to be doing this," adding he's looking forward to what he predicted would be an "interesting exercise."

The commission will visit Tokyo March 4-7, 2013; Madrid March 18-21; and Istanbul March 24-27. The order was based purely on logistical considerations, the IOC said.

Reedie is the former president of the international badminton federation and has been an IOC member since 1994. He has served on the 2008 and 2016 evaluation commissions and, as well, on the 2004 and 2008 coordination commissions.

He has been an IOC executive board member since 2009.

Reedie played a key role in London's winning 2005 bid for the 2012 Games. Since 2005, he has served on the London 2012 organizing committee's board of directors.

The IOC president, Jacques Rogge, said in a statement that Reedie "knows as well as anybody what it takes to host a sustainable, well-organized and ultimately successful Olympic Games."

The eight others on the evaluation commission:

Guy Drut of France; Frank Fredericks of Namibia; Nat Indrapana of Thailand; Claudia Bokel of Germany; Eduadro Palomo of El Salvador; Pat McQuaid of Ireland; Andrew Parsons of Brazil; and, of course, Gilbert Felli, the IOC's Olympic Games executive director.

The IOC sports director, Christophe Dubi, will aid the commission, as will the IOC's head of bid city relations, Jacqueline Barrett, and a number of advisors who have yet to be named.

All of this is normal.

Drut's appointment is noteworthy for two reasons. It means the IOC is reaching out, even if in a small way, to France. It also signals that Drut's rehabilitation within the IOC is apparently total and complete. In 2006, the IOC reprimanded Drut and barred him from chairing any commissions for five years in connection with a corruption case in France.

Indrapana ran for senior IOC office at the session before the London Games but didn't win.

Bokel is -- make no mistake -- a rising star in OIympic circles.

So, too, may be Palomo, and his name may be the most interesting of all on the list. Any name from the western hemisphere in the European-dominated IOC must always be understood to be intriguing, and Palomo -- head of El Salvador's national Olympic committee -- is fluent in both Spanish and English and, as well, Latino and American cultures. He is a Texas A&M graduate.

Reedie and the others on the commission doubtlessly will be met at each stop next March by breathless television crews hoping for a scoop about who has the inside line in the 2020 election. The reality is that the process is thoroughly anodyne.

Absent a major mistake in protocol -- hugely unlikely under Reedie's watch -- the commission is a traveling road show that is, in a way, both a bit of IOC genus and simultaneously a missed opportunity.

It's genius because it generates astonishing publicity. And yet, thoroughly by design, pretty much nothing happens.

Nothing can happen because the IOC vote itself will be months away, and because of the Salt Lake City corruption scandal of the late 1990s the 100-plus members themselves are forbidden from visiting the bidding cities. So this -- the evaluation commission visit -- is the next best thing.

The missed opportunity is that, for all the publicity, the IOC has since the late 1990s largely failed to communicate what its evaluation teams are doing during its four days in each city and why those visits actually really matter.

There is no behind-the-scenes what-is-really-going-on. There is for sure no 21st-century social-media presence.

There is -- to put it simply -- a lot of show but very little tell.

Without that, pressure is going to continue to build to resume the member visits. That pressure is going to come not just from the public but, way more important, from the members themselves.

Rogge is adamantly against member visits. And that's fine, indeed a thoroughly defensible position. But Rogge's 12 years in office will end next September. And then what? With time, the Salt Lake scandal is going to keep receding farther and farther into history.

Having myself covered these evaluation visits for many of the recent IOC elections, it begs the obvious question -- should I know more, or have a better feel, about what's literally on the ground in these cities than the members themselves? I don't have a vote, and they do. Does that make sense?

Brad Snyder sees what is possible

In April, First Lady Michelle Obama visited the U.S. Olympic Committee's training base in Colorado Springs, Colo., where she met, among others, Navy Lt. Brad Snyder, blinded last September in an explosion in Afghanistan. He said at that April ceremony, "I’m not going to let blindness build a brick wall around me. I’d give my eyes 100 times again to have the chance to do what I have done, and what I can still do.”

In London Friday, at the Paralympics, Snyder won gold swimming in the men's 100-meter freestyle (category S11). Here is a link to his medal ceremony: http://ow.ly/dnJCU

Lance Armstrong drops this fight

The enduring image of Lance Armstrong, the cyclist, is not the guy in the yellow jersey on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées on any one of the glory rides in his seven Tour de France wins. It's Lance Armstrong, dripping sweat, grimacing, fighting with every ounce of his being as he conquered the Alpe d'Huez or some other grueling mountain test during those seven victories, the ones that made him not just an American icon but a legend known around the world for beating cancer and the rigors of the Tour, the guy who from 1999 through 2005 could and did do it all.

So why on Thursday did Lance Armstrong, a fighter known for fighting relentlessly, abruptly announce he was done fighting the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency?

The news means Armstrong will forfeit the seven Tour de France titles as well as all awards -- his 2000 Olympic bronze medal -- and money won since August 1998. It also means he will be barred from life from competing or having any official role with any Olympic sport or other sport that follows the World Anti-Doping Code.

This announcement was as big as it gets. It was a defining moment in our sports history.

In breaking the news, Armstrong -- who has continued to deny ever doping -- would release a statement that said, "There comes a point in every man's life when he has to say, 'Enough is enough.' For me that time is now."

He said in the statement, "I know who won those seven Tours, my teammates know who won those seven Tours, and everyone I competed against knows who won those seven Tours."

He said USADA had been engaged in an "unconstitutional witch hunt," said it had "played the role of a bully" and declared: "… I refuse to participate in a process that is so one-sided and unfair."

Armstrong has long been one of the most polarizing figures in international sports.

There are those who believe he did, and those who believe he didn't, and of course there is here the complex intersection of the compelling work Armstrong and Livestrong have done on behalf of cancer patients and their families.

But this is not about cancer.

This is about allegations of performance-enhancing drugs and the Tour de France.

For the true believers, Armstrong's accusations about USADA are sure to play well.

But just pause for a moment.

If you were advising Lance Armstrong, what would you tell him?

-- For starters, USADA has operated in the same manner for a dozen years now. Every athlete has been treated to the same process. You're no different. Moreover, it's the same arbitration process that huge commercial concerns use each and every day. And these would be three experts deciding the case, not a jury of 12 with some retired postal clerks tempted to snooze off after lunch.

Not only that -- let's say you lose the first round. If you want to appeal, to the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport, you get an entirely new trial. To repeat: an entirely new trial. That's way better than a criminal defendant gets in any court in the United States of America. If you get convicted of, say, felony burglary in Rancho Cucamonga, you might get the pleasure of going to prison while some three-judge appeals court panel takes up your case, maybe. You don't get a brand-new trial.

So the USADA process -- it's legitimate, and that's what you'd be working with.

-- USADA had made it abundantly clear that they were more than ready to present evidence against you at a hearing. They said they had 10-plus witnesses -- the guys you rode with -- lined up to testify against you.

Let's be really clear again. This was not a criminal case. But any prosecutor with 10-plus witnesses, all more or less saying the same thing, would feel really comfortable about the odds of winning.

-- It's true you never failed a doping test. (You did test positive at the 1999 Tour for a corticosteroid and then produced a back-dated doctor's prescription.) Those tests are only a starting point for the discussion. This is why the expert judges hearing the case would be so important. They know all about, say, Marion Jones, and how she passed 160 tests -- and turned out to be a chronic doper.

As in the Jones case, as in the far-flung BALCO affair, USADA was basing its case not on positive tests but on other evidence.

What kind of supporting evidence would USADA have been able to produce?

Would there have been FedEx tracking numbers?

Pharmaceutical trial medicines?

Swiss bank account receipts?

What sort of corroboration -- under oath -- would your fellow riders have been able to produce?

This is the gut question, really.

If the case had gone to a hearing, and the parade of 10 or more witnesses had testified to what had gone on backstage at those seven Tours, and Lance Armstrong had been forced to sit there, day after day, week after week, and listen to it all -- how much damage would that cause?

Not just PR-wise.

At issue is potential criminal exposure -- just because the U.S. Attorney's office in Los Angeles dropped its investigation earlier this year doesn't mean another office somewhere couldn't launch another inquiry -- as well as possible civil liability.

Meanwhile, wouldn't it also make sense that the U.S. Postal Service -- Armstrong's sponsor for many of those years -- would still be wondering if its money was spent judiciously?

No one knows the answer to many of these issues just yet because we don't know what we don't know. That is, the public doesn't even begin to know the full range of the evidence.

But USADA knows. And you can bet Armstrong and his lawyers know, too.

Perhaps it's inevitable that what may or may not have happened behind the scenes at those Tours will make its way into the public space. But -- absent another legal proceeding -- it won't be under oath, and won't have the ring of cross-examination. By dropping the matter now, that's a huge benefit to Armstrong.

It's one thing to fight. Sometimes it's best to drop the fight. The Armstrong way Thursday was to make it seem like he was going out fighting.

Travis Tygart, the chief executive of USADA, was asked in an interview with the cycling website Velonation if he was surprised by the turn of events.

"No," Tygart said, "I think it was our expectation from the beginning. He knows all the evidence as well and he knows the truth, and so the smarter move on his part is to attempt to hide behind baseless accusations of process."

Tygart also said, "We never would have brought a case if we were not extremely confident in the level of evidence. And the truth -- at the end of the day, our job is to search for truth and justice, to expose the full truth and ensure, to the best of our ability, perfect justice."

U.S. teens stomping the road to Sochi

The Summer Olympics just ended. The major-league baseball season is slogging through the dog days. It's two-a-day time on football fields all across these United States. But Down Under, in the mountains of New Zealand, it's winter, and on Wednesday, far away from baseball and football and anywhere but the back pages and small print of most everyone's hometown newspaper sports sections, one of the best stories of the Sochi 2014 Winter Games began to take shape.

Two American teen-agers, Torin Yater-Wallace and Devin Logan, opened the Sochi 2014 qualifying period with a U.S. sweep of the FIS World Cup halfpipe ski competition in Cardrona, New Zealand.

Going back to March of 2011, American halfpipe skiers have won each of the last six World Cup events.

Five U.S. men placed Wednesday in the top 15; three American women made the top 10.

At issue -- already -- are rankings and quotas for Olympic selection in Sochi.

And, of course, the thoroughly awesome culture of freeskiing.

"It was a fun competition and I am so stoked to be here," Torin said upon winning.

Torin, who is the reigning Association of Freeskiing Professionals halfpipe champion, is from Aspen, Colo. He is 16 years old.

Devin, 19, from West Dover, Vt., is the current AFP overall and halfpipe champ. She won Wednesday by a ridiculous three points.

In this context, three is a lot.

Devin fell during the first of her two runs, meaning she had to come back and, as she put it, "stomp" a big second run, telling a FIS website afterward, "All the girls were killing it. I'm stoked to see the progression. I'm happy. A little lucky, but happy."

Here in the States, the big names from the Summer Games are -- understandably, appropriately -- making the rounds of TV talk shows and making other star turns. Those London Games ended just 10 days ago.

The glow is great, of course. The U.S. team won 46 gold medals, 104 overall, tops in both categories.

But, as the song says, time waits for no one. Sochi is a mere 17 months away.

In Vancouver, the U.S. team won the overall medal count, with 37.

As 2014 approaches, it must be unequivocally understood that the Sochi project is a matter not only of national significance but a personal priority for Vladimir Putin. After being sworn in again as president of Russia this past May 7, Putin could have held his very first meeting that day with anyone in the world he deemed of consequence.

He chose International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge.

To thus note that it will be important for the Russians to win Olympic medals in Sochi is thus a grave understatement.

In Vancouver, there were a total of 24 medal opportunities in snowboard and freeskiing.

In Sochi, because of new events added last year by the IOC, that total will jump to 48.

To be clear: that's for men and women -- 24 and 24, a total of 48.

The New Zealand World Cup on Wednesday marked the start of the Sochi qualifying period. To be abundantly obvious, it runs over the next 17 months.

The U.S. goal -- with an extraordinarily deep roster already -- is to try to qualify four men and four women in each Olympic event. Given that the freestyle/freeskiing team size by rule will be capped at 26, and there's a further max of 14 athletes per gender between all disciplines, there's obviously going to have to be some give.

When you have athletes like Devin Logan and Torin Yater-Wallace, these are nice problems to have.

This was Devin's winning run: left 540 tail grab to flair, mute grab air, alley oop mute grab, 720 mute grab to switch alley oop 360.

Here is Torin's: right double cork 1260 mute grab to alley oop rodeo Japan grab, 900 tail grab, 1080 tail grab, finishing things off with a switch 900 mute grab.

If that looks like something badly transcribed from one of Putin's cabinet meetings, good news -- there are still 17 months to learn all about it.

Be assured that in Putin's cabinet: they're studying up.

And at the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Assn. -- they're on it, too.

The best U.S. Summer Olympic team ever

After the Jamaican 4x100 relay team, anchored by Usain Bolt, had lowered the world record to 36.84 seconds in the final event on the track at the London 2012 Olympics, there was one last news conference under the stadium, at which Bolt and the others on the winning team held court. During the meet, of course, Bolt had repeatedly shown off his "To Di World" pose. Yohan Blake, his training partner and the world's second-best sprinter, had similarly offered up for the television cameras interpretations of his nickname "The Beast," posing with his "claws."

Now, at this last news conference, Blake shared these thoughts about the Jamaican sprint team: "We're not normal. To run 36 [seconds] is not normal. We're flying. People call us robots. I said, 'No, we're from space. We drop from the sky like Mr. Bean. Because when he started he dropped out of the sky.' It's just the fun stuff, you know, that we always do. I'm from Mars because I'm not normal. I'm 'The Beast.' "

To which Bolt said, "Yohan is crazy. If he keeps talking like that, someone is going to put him in a straight jacket one day."

There are two lessons here.

One: Usain and Yohan can do and say what they like, and for most it's all in good fun. Track and field needs a lot more fun, frankly.

Two: If Usain and Yohan were Americans, and they did this kind of stuff, there likely would be hell to pay. Double standards are unfair, but that's life.

It's always going to be different for Americans. It just is.

Just in case there is any doubt that we in the United States are viewed differently than everyone else:

During the women's indoor volleyball gold-medal match in London between the U.S. and Brazil, there were unceasing boos from many in the Brazilian section in the crowd virtually every time the Americans served.

During a Games that was memorable for so many fine reasons, arguably a best-ever Summer Olympics for a multitude of logistical and legacy reasons, this was a jarring note that served -- again -- as a reminder of the United States of America's unique station in our world.

And perhaps -- only perhaps -- of what awaits the U.S. team at the next Summer Games, four years from now in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

There were no slip-ups from the 2012 U.S. team -- at least none that came to light publicly.

That sentence is not in there as if there's something hidden. That's not the case. To reiterate: no slip-ups that we know of. For now, credit to all involved.

The caveat, and this is only cautionary journalism rooted in years of experience: let's simply see if, as time unfolds, we learn of unfortunate incidents like smuggled guests into the athletes' village in 2008 in Beijing, courtesy of soccer star Hope Solo's disclosure a few weeks back to ESPN The Magazine.

In our world, there simply can't be any slip-ups.

Even if it's serious, like guests in the village in 2008, or silly nonsense, like talk about being from Mars, American athletes have to conduct themselves differently on the Olympic stage.

That's reality when you are the world's lone super-power; when you have an army on the ground in Afghanistan; when sports and politics shouldn't mix but inevitably do, and everyone needs to remember that always, at all times and in all circumstances.

Twelve years ago in Sydney, the American 4x100 men's relay team preened and clowned its way through their victory lap on the track and even afterward. My former boss, Bill Dwyre, then the sports editor of the Los Angeles Times, put it so succinctly and appropriately, calling it the "bad-taste-in-the-mouth gold medal."

A huge difference with Bolt and Blake, by the way: they were magnificently respectful during the playing of not only their national anthem but others as well. Bolt stopped dead during an interview session in what is called the "mixed zone" -- where reporters mix with athletes -- and came to abrupt attention while the American anthem was played. When the music stopped, he resumed the interview.

The USOC has over the past few Olympic cycles put into place what it calls an "Ambassador" program that aims to relay the distinct challenges of being an American athlete at the Games. Most if not all U.S. Olympic athletes go through the program before a Games.

At the same time, make no mistake, the USOC's mission is to win medals.

The U.S. team left London atop the medals count, gold and overall, with 46 and 104. It won the overall medals count in Vancouver in 2010, with 37. It is very, very likely to challenge for -- if not win outright -- the medals count in Sochi in 2014, now just a mere year and a half away, because of an avalanche of new action sports -- slope style and halfpipe events, in particular -- that figure to play to U.S. strengths.

At the U.S. Olympic Committee's wrap-up news conference in London, board chair Larry Probst said, "We like to come in first. There's nothing wrong with that," adding a moment later, "I like to hear 'The Star-Spangled Banner. A lot.' "

Probst has every right to make such comments. They're the farthest thing from a declaration of American superiority or, worse, obnoxiousness. In Beijing in 2008, the Chinese won more gold medals than the Americans; the Americans won more medals overall.

In London, again, the Americans topped both tables. To put this in its proper perspective: the USOC's annual budget runs to about $135 million, about what Ohio State spends annually on its athletic department. All USOC revenue has to be raised from corporate and other private donations. Compare: every other national Olympic committee in the world is an arm of its federal government. For the USOC -- and the national governing bodies that feed into the USOC -- to come out on top is, in a word, amazing.

More amazing, and yet not, is that, as USOC chief executive Scott Blackmun put it in at that same wrap-up news conference in London, U.S. athletes "comported themselves in a way that made America proud." He said, "We wanted to be good guests while we were in Britain," and they were.

Probst said, too, "When we leave London, do people perceive our athletes as good ambassadors for the United States? I think the answer is a resounding yes. We are really proud of them."

This week, most of America's Summer Games athletes will be settling back into their lives, back in their towns, home with their families and friends. The numbers say most did not win a medal. That's a fact of Olympic life, too. No matter. It's like Probst and Blackmun said -- this, if you count medals and then the measure that matters in the way people everywhere else perceive us as Americans, was the most successful U.S. Summer Olympic team ever, and from New York to California the people of the United States have every right to be "really proud of them."

"Happy and glorious Games" come to a close

LONDON -- The 2012 Summer Games, arguably the best-ever, came to a close Sunday night amid a big party at Olympic Stadium, a rock 'n roll show that reminded everyone everywhere that for all the solemnity and the gravitas, the Olympics are Games and games are fun. Such a simple concept. Such a remarkable premise. This, among so many extraordinary notions, is likely to be one of London's far-reaching legacies.

They promised a party.

They delivered.

"These were happy and glorious Games," International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said in his remarks Sunday night to the thousands who jammed Olympic Stadium.

Added London 2012 organizing committee chair Seb Coe, "We lit the flame and we lit up the world." Moments afterward, the cauldron was extinguished.

Read the rest at NBCOlympics.com: http://bit.ly/NZJVBm

Allyson Felix -- a performance every bit as impressive as Bolt's

LONDON -- David Rudisha provided the signature moment of the track and field meet at these Olympic Games. Usain Bolt rocked the house.

But Allyson Felix turned in a performance every bit as impressive as Bolt's, and if that sounds grandiose -- facts are facts. He will be leaving London with three gold medals and a world record. So will she.

Read the rest at NBCOlympics.com: http://bit.ly/QpVxOT

Usain Bolt: "These are the glory days"

LONDON -- This was one for the ages, a record-breaking performance so dominating it electrified everyone who saw it in person at Olympic Stadium, who watched on television around the world and who will watch it in the days and years to come. Usain Bolt is a once-in-history athlete. On Saturday night, in the final event of the track meet, in what may have been his final Olympic race -- or may not, depending on his health and any number of variables -- he unleashed raw, primal speed. It was at once fearsome and exhilarating.

Bolt and American Ryan Bailey, each man running the anchor leg in the men's 4x100 relay, got his baton at roughly the same time, in the lane next to the other. The race was on. But only for an instant. Bolt separated himself, with every step widening the gap, the crowd roaring with the roar of an airplane on takeoff as he hammered toward the finish line.

When Bolt crossed, the clock stopped but the noise did not: 36.84 seconds, a new world record.

Read the rest at NBCOlympics.com: http://bit.ly/OgAd37

Stick-to-itiveness pays off for U.S. relay

LONDON -- When she is on the track, Carmelita Jeter  is all business. So when, as she crossed the finish line Friday night, her outstretched left hand -- baton in hand -- pointing out toward the red-and-black digital clock just in front of her, you knew it was something special. An instant later, the clock flashed: "New WR."

Jeter's anchor leg put the exclamation point on a spectacular race, the U.S. 4x100 women's relay team winning its first gold medal in 16 years. The clock stopped at 40.82 seconds.

It was the first time any women's relay team would run under 41, and it put an immediate and emphatic end to years of drama over dropped batons and other mishaps involving U.S. women's sprint relay teams. The U.S. men's 4x100 team gets its chance at redemption Saturday night.

"It feels surreal," Tianna Madison who ran the first leg Friday night, said, adding a moment later, "We really came together and made it happen."

Read the rest at NBCOlympics.com: http://bit.ly/P6fv4e