Shiffrin's 5th hints at greatness

KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia — When Michael Phelps would stand on the blocks in an Olympic final and do that thing he did, wrapping his arms around and around and making that whap-whap-whap sound, was there really any doubt in his mind — or anyone’s watching — what was going to happen? In the chaos of an Olympic short-track speed skating race, when Apolo Ohno toed the line, his bandana tucked under his helmet, his gaze locked like steel on the first few meters of ice ahead, he was all purposeful calm. He knew what was what, and everyone else — on the line around him — and the thousands in the arena did, too.

It takes great physical talent to become an Olympic athlete. A select few have something more. They have an extra level of mental awareness, purposefulness, toughness.

Even on a day when there is no medal — there are those in whom the signs are there of greatness assuredly to come.

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Julia: 'I got a medal today!'

KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia — Norman Vincent Peale, the power of positive thinking guy, has nothing on Julia Mancuso. Tony Robbins, the self-help guru? Julia could teach him a thing or two.

“As you know,” she was saying Monday, “ it has been a tough season for me,” and that was a gentle understatement, her finishes looking too often like she was trying out NFL running back jerseys: 27-20-29-26-21. This was before she decided around Christmas time to take a break and get focused on what matters, what has always mattered to Julia, the Olympic Games.

Has there ever, in the history of American skiing, been a better big-game skier than Julia Mancuso?

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Vonn to miss Sochi

No one on Planet Earth — repeat, no one — has more heart, will, desire, call it what you will, than Lindsey Vonn. So her announcement Tuesday that she won’t be able to ski next month at the Sochi Games can reasonably mean only one thing, and by this no one should draw any conclusions about any NFL players who have made incredible comebacks but under their rules don’t get tested for, say, human-growth hormone:

It is absurd, far-fetched indeed, to come all the way back from a world-class knee injury in under a year when you must comply with Olympic-style drug-testing protocols.

Four years ago, at the Vancouver Games, Vonn became the first American woman to win the Olympic downhill. In an announcement she posted Tuesday to her Facebook page, Vonn said she was “devastated” she would not compete in Sochi.

The “reality,” she said, is “my knee is just too unstable to compete at this level.”

Last February, at the world alpine ski championships in Austria, Vonn tore two ligaments in her right knee and broke a bone in a spectacular fall. In November, she crashed again; that tore the surgically repaired ACL. In December, she sprained her MCL during a downhill in Val d’Isere, France.

Vonn also said she is having surgery now in a bid to be ready for the 2015 alpine world championships in her hometown, Vail, Colo.

Since no one works harder, she will — barring any more setbacks — be ready.

A few more realities:

Vonn was widely expected to be the biggest star on the U.S. team in Sochi.

She — like short-track speed skater Apolo Ohno in 2010 — is one of the few who have crossed over from the comparative anonymity of winter sports to become a mainstream celebrity. And then there’s the whole Tiger Woods thing.

She will be missed.

That said, the U.S. alpine team should still be very, very good.

Ted Ligety is the best giant-slalom skier in the world, and won three golds at last year’s alpine world championships. Bode Miller is simply the best male skier the United States has ever produced and, after taking last year off, has shown signs of coming back strong this season.

All six of the women on the U.S. “speed” team — that is, downhill and super-G — finished one, two or three in a World Cup event last year. Teen Mikaela Shiffrin is last year’s slalom champion. Julia Mancuso has not had a top-10 finish this season, true, but does have three Olympic medals and a track record of consistently rising to the pressure of the big stage.

Math for a moment or two:

The U.S. alpine team won eight medals in Vancouver. Vonn won two, that downhill gold and a super-G bronze. Would she have won medals in Sochi? Was the U.S. Olympic Committee counting on Vonn in its medals calculations (which it insists it doesn’t do)? Again, realities here.

Same deal with Evan Lysacek, who won gold in men’s figure skating in Vancouver but hasn’t  competed since. Do you really, seriously think the USOC was counting on him to win in Sochi? When he bowed out a few weeks ago, did that alter anyone’s projections?

Reality, everyone.

The U.S. Ski Team — everyone from the Nordic combined guys to snowboarders to the alpine racers — won 21 medals in Vancouver.

Overall, the U.S. team won 37. That topped the medals table.

In Sochi, the U.S. team could legitimately figure, conservatively, to win 30. Aggressively, 40.

For real.

For sure the Vancouver Games were akin to a home Olympics, and that probably helped the U.S. team. But here is what is going to help the U.S. team in Sochi:

In Vancouver there were 24 snowboard and freeski medal opportunities. In Sochi, 48. These are the actions-sports events in which Americans typically rock.

In Vancouver, moreover, the Americans didn’t win even one medal in cross-country or biathlon.

To return to football, as it were: it is an enduring football cliche that when one guy goes down, another steps up.

Translation: the U.S. Olympic Team itself is still loaded with talent. Barring further injury:

Shaun White, who threw the Double McTwist 1260 to win gold in the snowboard halfpipe in Vancouver, has now added another 180 degrees of twist. The thing is now called a Frontside Double Cork 1440.

A simple explanation: the winning run in Vancouver was two flips and three and a half spins. White has now added another half-revolution of twist inside the two somersaults.

The U.S. women’s cross-country team, led by Kikkan Randall, stands ready to win its first-ever Olympic medals. The Americans haven’t won a medal of any kind in cross country since Bill Koch in 1976.

America, meet Nick Goepper. He is 19 years old, 20 in March, and does slopestyle — skiing, not boarding. (White does it boarding as well.) Slopestyle is when you navigate a course filled with rails, jumps and other obstacles and do tricks for amplitude and style points.

Did you know you can become a champion slopestyle artist from Lawrenceburg, Indiana? Growing up on a hill with a vertical drop of all of 400 feet?

Goepper won gold at the X Games in Aspen last January.

On Dec. 21, Goepper became the first skier to grab a spot on the first-ever U.S. freeski Olympic team by virtue of his second-place finish in a Grand Prix slopestyle event at Copper Mountain, Colorado. The third of five Olympic qualification events gets underway Wednesday and runs through Sunday in Breckenridge.

When he qualified for the Olympics, Goepper was naturally asked about it.

“It’s not grueling at all,” he said. “It’s a dream come true. It’s super-fun. The Olympics add a bit more pressure but we’re just out here trying to get creative and have fun.”

The thing is, every Olympics produces its own history. One of the new realities of the 2014 Olympics is that slopestyle — in both its board and ski iterations — is poised to explode in super-fun on television screens, tablets and cellphones across not just the United States but the world.

It won't be the same without Lindsey Vonn in Sochi.

But she would be the first to tell you — it’s not all about her.

One more reality: it never was.

The Jordan Burroughs problem

Quick. Name the best wrestler on the Olympic and international scene the United States has ever produced. The name most people would name -- if, that is, they could name even one name -- would be Dan Gable, who won Olympic gold in Munich in 1972 while not giving up even a single point. The Gable legend was, over the years, further enhanced by his incredible coaching career at the University of Iowa.

There are, of course, others. Just to name a few, and the proud history of American wrestling means a list like this runs the risk of omitting many others: Lee Kemp, Dave Schultz, Steve Fraser, Bruce Baumgartner, John Smith, Cael Sanderson, Rulon Gardner, Henry Cejudo.

A few days ago, 25-year-old Jordan Burroughs won the 74-kilo/163-pound freestyle class at wrestling's world championships in Budapest, Hungary. The victory ran Burroughs' unbeaten streak to 65. The man has not lost at the senior level since he started competing internationally.

The sport of wrestling, as is widely known, got itself back into the Summer Games in 2020 and 2024 via a vote earlier this month by the International Olympic Committee's full membership in Buenos Aires. That's a big win. But, to be blunt, there's still has a long way to go. Wrestling, to sum up, has a Jordan Burroughs problem.

It's not that Jordan Burroughs himself is a problem.

Far from it.

The problem is the other way around. Who knows about Jordan Burroughs?

Now that wrestling is back in, the same energy, enthusiasm and passion that got it there has to go toward building the brand. Right now, wrestling has a window of opportunity. Burroughs is without doubt its biggest current star, particularly in the United States.

So why isn't he on SportsCenter? Leno? Letterman? Conan? The Daily Show? The Colbert Report? Making the rounds of the early-morning TV shows as well? Being offered up for bit roles in movies? For that matter, why aren't people scrambling to make documentaries about him -- or making him the centerpiece of films such as The Great Wrestling Comeback of 2013?

Wrestling is huge in Russia. Wouldn't it score political points to bring Burroughs to Sochi to have him mingle with the IOC bigwigs and maybe even Russian President Vladimir Putin himself this coming February?

Attention, Billy Baldwin. You were front and center in the months up to the IOC vote. By all accounts, you played a significant role in rallying Hollywood and even Wall Street in fund-raising drives that helped lift wrestling's profile.

Now comes Phase Two.

"The Miami Heat," Burroughs said in a phone interview, "had a 27-game winning streak. It was all on SportsCenter. It got huge press. Here I am at 65 and no one even knows.

"This is important to help the sport," he emphasized. "It is not important to me personally. It is something I wish we could do more of. It is not, let me repeat, something to me to be a self-fulfilling guy."

Burroughs is the 2012 Olympic gold medalist; the 2011 world champ; and, now, the 2013 world champion, too. He is a two-time NCAA champion, in 2009 at 157 pounds and in 2011 at 165. In 2011, he won the Hodge Trophy, wrestling's equivalent of football's Heisman.

In the final in Budapest, Burroughs defeated Iran's Ezzatollah Akbarizarinkolaei, 4-0. The victory made him the first U.S. men's freestyle wrestler to win back-to-back world titles since Smith, in 1990 and 1991. Burroughs also became only the second U.S. men's freestyle wrestler to win three straight world or Olympic titles; Smith won six straight world or Olympic titles from 1987-92.

The victory in Budapest is all the more remarkable because, as Burroughs disclosed afterward, he suffered a broken ankle training Aug. 22 in Colorado Springs, Colo.; he had surgery the next day and at the worlds still had five screws in his left ankle for stability. He guessed he was perhaps at 75 to 80 percent when he arrived in Hungary.

Burroughs is thoughtful, well-spoken, an incredible role model. He is just about to get married. He is everything USA Wrestling -- indeed, the U.S. Olympic Committee -- would want.

Even so, Jordan Burroughs could walk down most streets in the United States of America and no one would know who he is.

On most blocks they know who LeBron James is. And Peyton Manning. Switching to Olympic sports -- Michael Phelps and Apolo Ohno, too.

But not Burroughs.

That is a big problem for a sport that is -- and make no mistake about it -- still going to be fighting for its Olympic life.

As Serbia's Nenad Lalovic, the new president of FILA, the sport's international governing body, said in an interview in Buenos Aires, a couple days after the IOC vote, "This job is not finished. We are just starting."

Burroughs is a bigger star in Iran than he is in either New Jersey, where he grew up, or even Nebraska, where he went to college. This fall, Taylor Martinez, the Cornhuskers' starting quarterback, is a way bigger deal in Lincoln.

In Teheran? This past February, the U.S. team took part in a World Cup there. The just-released book "Saving Wrestling," by James V. Moffatt and Craig Sesker, is filled with inside nuggets on wrestling's path back to 2020. As the book recounts, in Teheran, after he won, Burroughs had to be pushed through the crowd by U.S. assistant coach Bill Zadick to get to the team bus.

Mind you, this was a crowd of bearded Iranian men seeking photos or an autograph from an American wrestler. The two countries' political leaders -- until President Obama's telephone call last week to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani -- have had no high-level contact since 1979.

Burroughs says in the book, "I received more attention there than I receive on my home soil. It was kind of like being Justin Bieber with all the attention that I was getting. It was nuts."

The competition in Iran took place just days after the IOC's policy-making executive board move to boot wrestling out of the Games.

As the saying goes, sometimes a crisis presents unexpected opportunity.

In wrestling's sake, the sport effected in seven months the sorts of changes -- political, governance, rules -- that would otherwise have taken 15 or 20 years. Or maybe longer.

"This is the best thing that ever happened to wrestling," said Jim Scherr, the former USOC chief executive who played a key role in presenting FILA's winning case to the IOC.

Among the changes were the development of women's and athletes' commissions. FILA didn't have such boards. So simple. One of the members of the new athletes' commission is American Jake Herbert, a 2012 Olympian. He called it a "step in the right direction," adding, "They are getting there."

This is the thing, though -- they are not there yet.

The sport essentially faces two big-picture challenges, all of which is clear from reading the IOC materials that led to the executive board action in the first instance:

One, it needs to do a much better job of promoting itself at the high end, meaning the creation and promotion of a brand and image for the sport and its athletes.

Two, at the grass-roots and club levels it needs to attract way more kids and young people -- boys and, in particular, girls -- and make the sport more friendly to them and their parents.

Bill Scherr is Jim's twin brother. Bill is chairman of what was called the Committee for the Preservation of Olympic Wrestling, and said, "All sports federations have their problems and issues. 2024 is 11 years away." Referring to FILA, he added immediately, "We face elimination again. I would think they would be motivated to make the changes necessary."

This all leads back to Jordan Burroughs.

It's not complicated. All sports thrive on stars.

When he gets back from his honeymoon, you'd like to think there would be some really smart people waiting to talk to him. With real money for a PR campaign, or two, for the sport, built around this All-American guy.

"What wrestling has done," Burroughs said, "is put itself back in the spotlight." In Rio de Janeiro, at the 2016 Games, "We are going to be one of the 'it' sports -- people are going to be watching, asking, 'Let's see why this sport deserves to be in the Olympic Games.' People are going to be paying attention.

"I think," he said, "we have all the tools."

Wrestling? How about surfing?

The agenda is patently obvious Wednesday, when the International Olympic Committee's policy-making executive board meets in St. Petersburg, Russia, to determine the next steps for the sports program at the 2020 Summer Games. Does wrestling stand a chance to get back in? Or will it be irretrievably out for at least for four years? What about baseball and softball's combined bid -- does it deserve the one spot now open for 2020? Or will the other sports, such as squash, karate or climbing, be given an opportunity to make their case?

No matter the decision, the bigger picture has already been revealed. The IOC's process for figuring out what sports should be in the Games is fundamentally flawed and needs wholesale review.

The fix the IOC is in can be crystalized by assessing the outcome of the wrestling dilemma -- a crisis of the IOC's own making.

If wrestling, which the board voted out in February, gets a chance Wednesday to come back, and then -- in September at the all-members session in Buenos Aires -- actually gets voted back on, that's testament to an an appropriately aggressive response from FILA, the international wrestling federation, and power politics from, among others, Russia, where wrestling really matters, and President Vladimir Putin.

Russia is playing host to the Sochi 2014 Winter Games in just a few months. At Putin's direction, some $51 billion has already been spent -- that we know of -- getting ready for Sochi.

Putin is due in St. Petersburg to meet Thursday with Rogge, the day after the executive board vote.

If it's ultimately wrestling again on the program, and you can for sure make that argument in good faith, here's the problematic next question: what changes will the IOC's post-London Games review toward 2020 have actually effected?

Zero. Zip. Nada.

This raises a completely different set of issues and questions. Because, one might argue, it is counter-productive indeed for the IOC to do nothing, to seem stale, when it proclaims time and again that its mission is to reach out to the young people of the world.

To be blunt: the IOC's No. 1 priority in an ever-changing world is to remain relevant. There's a reason why sports such as jeu de paume, pelota basque and croquet, once features of the Summer Games program, aren't on it any longer. The program evolves with time and circumstance.

Yes, and understandably, wrestlers want to shine at the Games. But so do shortstops on baseball teams. And girls around the world who play softball.

And, for that matter, so do surfers, skateboarders, dancers, mixed martial artists and others.

The IOC has spent more than 10 years, essentially since the Mexico City session in 2002, trying to figure what to do about the Summer Games line-up. With this result: baseball and softball out, golf and rugby sevens in.

That is not considerable progress.

It is abundantly plain that more progress on this issue is not going to, or can not, take place until after the election of the new IOC president, at the Buenos Aires session, in September.

After that, though, this issue ought to be a key priority.

Mindful that the IOC -- at least for now -- caps participation in the Summer Games at 10,500 athletes and 28 sports, and also appreciating that a logjam like this is going to take both time, some direct conversation and some out-of-the-box thinking, here is a proposal to start the dialogue.

To begin, because of the 10,500 cap, somebody's got to go.

Say good-bye to soccer (504 athletes in London), shooting (390) and equestrian (200). This assumes wrestling is gone as well (344). Now you have cleared 1438 spaces.

Soccer for sure does not need the Games. Obviously, the men's component at the Olympics is not even the beautiful game's top priority since the best players don't play.

As for shooting -- people are going to shoot guns no matter what.

And for equestrian -- horse shows will survive without the Olympics, it's always a complication getting the horses to the Games and while the proponents of equestrian sport like to talk about how it fosters an amazing connection between man and beast that anyone can enjoy, doesn't it really cost a lot of money -- an awful lot of money -- to compete at an elite level?

Another way to approach the 10,500 cap is to ask why there is a 10,500 cap. And why the Games only run for 17 days. But that's a different philosophical issue entirely.

At any rate, once you make room for new sports, here are sports to consider, sports that young people actually like and that would not only make for hot tickets live but would crank up TV ratings, too:

Surfing

Is there anyone who doesn't think surfing is cool? Who in the world doesn't think Hawaiian surf god Laird Hamilton is, like, the coolest guy on Planet Earth? Wouldn't he be an invaluable asset to the movement? Dude, there is an entire culture devoted to this sport.

The head of the International Surfing Assn. recognizes that the only way surfing makes its way into the Games is not out in the ocean. It's through man-made wave-park technology.

Purists would assuredly argue that would be betraying some of surfing's soulfulness. Who, though, says the soul of surfing requires it to be a sport for only those who live by the shore? That technology would spread the sport far and wide, allowing millions -- if not billions -- more access to it.

If you think beach volleyball is now the hot ticket at the Games -- imagine the scene at Olympic surfing.

Fernando Aguerre, 55, a surfer (of course) and president of the ISA, is a visionary, not just an entrepreneur and environmental activist but someone who for years now has understood the power of the Olympic movement to effect change.

Born and raised in Argentina -- where he founded the original Argentinean Surfing Assn. despite a military dictatorship ban on the sport at the time -- he now lives near San Diego, Calif.

Reef, the sandal and sportswear maker? That was his company. This summer, the surf industry's trade group SIMA -- which is more likely to honor the likes of a competitor like Kelly Slater -- is poised to give Aguerre its top prize, the Waterman of the Year Award.

The federation, incidentally, now counts 72 member federations. It includes world championships in a variety of categories. Further, ISA has launched a number of initiatives, including scholarship programs for young surfers in countries like Peru.

Aguerre said, looking at the sports in the Games program, "I believe restrictions on participation should exist. However, I think that in the best interest of the Olympic movement, the results should be applied to all sports -- those that are in the Games and those that are not in the Games. It should be a level playing field."

He added a moment later, "It's like I say about creating a menu for a party. It doesn't matter what food you serve in your house. You look at the best food, and then you create the menu. Then people are going to be happy."

Skateboarding

The IOC has done solid work in bringing snowboarding to the Winter Games. U.S. icon Shaun White is now a two-time Winter Games gold medalist.

White is also a skateboarding stud.

And yet he can't compete in skateboarding at the Summer Games?

This makes no sense, especially when you see skateboarders doing awesome tricks at the X Games.

The explanation is both simple and yet super-complex -- it's sports politics.

Without getting too deep, the IOC demands national federations and an international federation. And everyone understands that skateboarding could mean big money.

The snowboarding analogy: snowboarders got in through the skiing federation. Now it's all good. But at the time, in the late 1990s, it was far from easy.

The challenge for skateboarding is figuring out how to get in -- separately, or under the wing of another federation. The cycling federation, for instance, has often been mentioned. But that has never seemed like the right fit.

So, as IOC president Jacques Rogge said in a recent interview in Around the Rings, this is the impasse.

It needs to be worked out.

Again, see those skateboarders at the X Games?

DanceSport

When: Dec. 11, 2000.

Where: the Palace Hotel, Lausanne, Switzerland.

What: a standard and Latin DanceSport demonstration.

Who was there: then-IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch, the entire IOC executive board, the IOC program commission and others, among them me. I walked out thinking, no way.

More than a dozen years later, and all I can say is, I was flat-out wrong, and I am here now to say it's time to admit it.

One: it's ridiculous to say the IOC doesn't allow dancing in the Games. Look at ice dancing in the Winter Olympics.

Two: they're real athletes. Ask Apolo Ohno, the eight-time U.S. short-track speed skating medalist, about how physically taxing it is to dance on "Dancing with the Stars." Or Shawn Johnson, the U.S. gymnast who won gold on the balance beam in Beijing in 2008 and who, like Ohno, is a "Stars" winner.

Three: have you seen the ratings for "Dancing with the Stars"? Or the British version, "Strictly Come Dancing," which started the entire thing? Ladies and gentlemen, what we have here is not just a franchise but a worldwide phenomenon. And not just on TV. We're talking crazy on social media.

Tug of war

Is there a kid alive who has not played tug of war?

This is a sport that, with a little rock-and-roll music, some cheerleaders and a little sand, could become the next breakout hit -- again, the next beach volleyball.

What do you need to make tug of war happen? A rope. Where is there not a rope and some imagination?

A little-known fact is that tug of war was included in the Games from 1900 to 1912, and again in  1920. Time to bring it back!

As David Wallechinsky writes in his authoritative The Complete Book of the Olympics, a first-round pull resulted in one of the biggest controversies of the 1908 London Games: after the Liverpool Police pulled the U.S. team over the line in seconds, the Americans protesting that the Liverpudlians had used illegal boots spiked with steel cleats. The British maintained they were wearing standard police boots; the protest was disallowed and the Americans withdrew. After the tournament, the captain of the gold medal-winning London City Police challenged the Americans to a pull in their stockinged feet; there is no record of such a contest ever taking place, Wallechinsky writes.

Meanwhile, talk about universality. Imagine three-on-three teams from, say, American Samoa and Estonia. Why not?

Why not mixed teams? Men and women competing against each other? Maybe five-on-five?

All that would require some major rules changes, acknowledged Cathal McKeever, head of the sport's international federation, who said it is actively working to get back onto the program, perhaps by 2024.

"It's not like Michael Phelps," he said. "We don't have superstar individuals."

Not yet.

Mixed martial arts

Eight years ago, when I was still a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, I wrote a front-page story  about an up-and-coming sport, mixed martial arts, that U.S. Sen. John McCain, the Republican stalwart from Arizona, had once decried as "human cockfighting."

Since then, the UFC has gone on to become an enormous success story.

Mixed martial arts is already huge, it's still growing, young people can't get enough of it, and the time has come for the IOC to start coming to terms with it -- indeed, to get on board, because if you go to an MMA gym, the values that are preached there are thoroughly in line with the Olympic values: respect, excellence, friendship.

One of the primary ethos of an MMA fight is that it's OK to tap-out to live to fight again -- this shows respect not just for your opponent but for the sport itself.

Every excuse the IOC could come up with is just that -- an excuse.

For instance, there are those who don't like the fact that MMA is a "submission sport." But so is judo.

To be clear, this is a long-term proposition. The IOC and the international federation -- yes, there already is one, and it is not based in the United States -- would have to figure out how the basics of how to run a tournament. Could the athletes, for instance, reasonably be expected to fight three or four times over 16 days?

Here's the thing, though: where there's a will, there's a way. And when the IOC wants to get things done, it always does.

Oh, and to take this back to the beginning of this column, and wrestling, because wrestling has been around since the beginning of the modern Olympics in 1896 -- you know what was a major feature of the ancient Games, in Olympia itself? A discipline called pankration.

Today we would call that "mixed martial arts."

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.

Apolo Ohno: "Everything is great"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Keep this in mind:

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

Not to say he wouldn't come back.

With Apolo, never say never.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And now I have time for those things."

Rogge's IOC presidency 10 years in

DURBAN, South Africa -- The International Olympic Committee's 123rd session, or annual general assembly, closed here Saturday, the occasion marking 10 years of Jacques Rogge's presidency. By every objective measure, the IOC is in remarkably good shape.

History ultimately will judge whether Rogge proved a great president. It's too soon. In the moment it's clear that the president deserves, across the board, high marks.

No institution is immune from constructive criticism, and that includes the IOC. That's to be expected when dealing with multitudes of national Olympic committees, international sports federations and, of course, governments worldwide. To underscore the complexity of the IOC's task, meanwhile, a fair wrap-up of this 123rd session would have to note that while the Winter Games program is innovative and progressive, the Summer Games program -- bluntly -- needs help.

Rogge should give thanks each and every day that Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps are global icons. The Summer Games depends on the making of heroes; those heroes connect with young people; and those two are about it right now.

Pause for a moment now to try to think of others. Go ahead.

Still waiting.

That said, with only two years to go before he leaves office, and he underscored Saturday at his wrap-up news conference that he would indeed leave at the end of his second term in September, 2013, Rogge's record on most big-picture issues is incredibly positive.

His financial advisors, including IOC member Richard Carrion of Puerto Rico, a banker, have -- despite the worst financial conditions in decades -- managed to grow the IOC's financial reserve to $592 million at the end of 2010 from $105 million in 2001.

The reserve is designed to allow the IOC to continue to operate for a full four-year cycle in case an Olympics is canceled. Rogge made growing it a priority soon after he was elected president in 2001.

In other financial matters, NBC's $4.38 billion U.S. TV rights deal secures the IOC's financial base through 2020. The IOC's global sponsorship program has raised $957 million for the four-year run through the 2012 London Games; a 12th sponsor would take the number over $1 billion.

Already, the IOC has raised $921 million from global sponsors for Sochi 2014 and Rio 2016, and $632 million for 2018 and 2020.

The big news here, of course, was that Pyeongchang was elected to stage the 2018 Winter Games, Rogge saying at the ending news  conference, "The Koreans have been rewarded for their patience, their perseverance and maybe their program of 'new horizons.' "

The "new horizons" trend produced Sochi for 2014, Rio for 2016, Pyeongchang for 2018 and is now likely to see Istanbul enter the 2020 race. Rome is already a declared candidate. Madrid is likely to announce soon that it's in. Tokyo may, too, though why the IOC would go back to Asia in 2020 after 2018 remains uncertain.

Rogge said he would be "delighted" to see an American bid for 2020. Of course. It's in the IOC's interest to solicit as many bids as possible.

Is it in the U.S. Olympic Committee's?

USOC officials have said consistently that they first need to resolve a longstanding revenue dispute with the IOC -- a matter that historians may also come to see as one of the defining threads of Rogge's years.

A resolution may, or may not, happen before the Sept. 1 deadline for declaring for 2020.

Even if the financial dispute is resolved, the overarching question is whether, "new horizons" and all, a U.S. bid can win.

Also part of the calculus is whether 2022 might make for a smarter American play.

It used to be that the revenue disparity between a Summer and Winter Games could be pronounced -- that is, in favor a Summer Games. No more. Dmitry Chernyshenko, the head of those Sochi 2014  Games, told a small group of reporters here that his committee is on target right now to raise $1.3 billion in domestic sponsorships, in Russia; that's more than they did in China for the Summer Games in Beijing just three years ago.

Moreover, the United States has become a winter sports power, with a best-in-the-world 37 medals in 2010 in Vancouver that produced marketable American stars such as Lindsey Vonn, Apolo Ohno and Evan Lysacek.

And then there's the innovation issue -- the drawing power of the Winter Games for the demographically key youth market.

The Winter Games program has in recent years seen the addition of snowboarding, snowboard-cross and ski-cross. Earlier this year, the IOC added women's ski jumping. Here, it added slopestyle, among other disciplines.

Shaun White is now a two-time gold medalist. The double McTwist 1260 that he threw to win gold on his second run in Vancouver, a trick he did not have to do -- he had already won gold on his first run -- but did, anyway, is one of those moments that make kids everywhere want to soar like Shaun.

"I am so stoked that slopestyle will be included in the next Olympic Games," Jamie Anderson, a six-time X Games medalist (three gold), said in a statement released by the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Assn., about the Sochi program.

Now, the contrast.

The Summer Games program for 2020 -- the IOC is already planning that far ahead after including golf and rugby for Rio in 2016 -- will involve 25 so-called "core sports," down from 26. It's not clear what will be dropped. Also in the mix, the IOC announced here, are these eight:

Baseball, softball, rock climbing, wushu, roller sports, wakeboard, karate and squash.

To frame the matter simply: when was the last time you heard a wushu competitor say he or she was stoked about the possibility of competing at the Olympics?

The IOC insists it wants to attract young people. And then it goes and throws out a short-list that doesn't take into account the range of sports that gets kids where they live.

Anyone who knows the movement understands that there are political issues involving control of skateboarding as an Olympic sport.

Those need to be resolved. Shaun White is just as good on a skateboard as he is on a snowboard. How is it that he's not being given the chance to show that at the Summer Games?

How about surfing? Come on, IOC -- tap into the endless summer, dudes! A gracious Fernando Aguerre, president of the international surfing association, issued a statement that said, "We may have missed this big wave but like any good surfer we know there are more waves to come. We will therefore continue to develop the sport of surfing on a global level and explore the best way to contribute to the Olympic movement."

Why not, for that matter, cricket? One would think the IOC would jump at the chance to get a billion-plus crazed cricket fans connected to the Olympics.

Sure, it might be complicated. There might be turf wars. Last I looked, soccer was in the Games.

As a European journalist friend of mine likes to say -- we must always work toward a solution. And, yes, the IOC can be traditionally minded. But when it wants to move, it can do so.

In the meantime, there's this. The London Games start next July 27. The men's 100-meter track and field final goes down August 5. Organizers received more than one million requests for tickets to that race. Bolt is a phenomenon, and the Olympic movement needs more phenomenal stuff.