Tina Maze's GS poetry slam

KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia — Slovenia’s Tina Maze calls slalom her favorite discipline, which perhaps is a surprise given that it is, of the five alpine ski events, her weakest. It is giant slalom that brings out her soulful side. “GS,” she says, “is like poetry for me.”

In that spirit, after a wild and wet day Tuesday at Rosa Khutor that saw Maze fight through snow, rain, sleet and fog to win her second gold medal of the 2014 Winter Games and indisputably re-establish that she is, no question, the No. 1 female skier on Planet Earth, here is a haiku to commemorate not just the moment but the ski poetry Maze slammed down in winning the GS:

Tina Maze wins

One more Sochi gold medal

What now, Lindsey Vonn?

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Bode goes 'epic' in last training run

KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia — Bode Miller’s first thought in the start house Saturday was that he was going to take it easy on this, the final day of training before Sunday’s Olympic downhill. Then, being Bode, he thought, what the hell. He had an opportunity to express himself in the manner of a great artist at the top of his work.

Which is what he is, as we should all recognize.

Or, as Bode put it later, “It’s a pleasure for me to ski on this track. I would be angry with myself if I had wasted this opportunity to properly run on this track. It tests your ability to the maximum.”

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BCN 2013: life after Phelps

BARCELONA -- The world after Michael Phelps gets underway here shortly in sun-splashed Spain, or at least that part that everyone outside serious swim geeks would be inclined to pay attention to, the 2013 swimming world championships, and from all over the globe they sought Friday both to downplay expectations while asserting that quite naturally the point in racing is to win. "It's kind of a down year but everyone is getting ready to race," American Matt Grevers, the London Games 100 meters backstroke gold medalist, said, summing it up perfectly in just one short sentence.

This classic wanting-to-have-it-both-ways is the result of several factors:

It's the year after the Olympic year. Some people are in tip-top shape and others, well, maybe not so much. The thing about swimming is it has no pity. It reveals who has put in the work.

That's what Phelps understood during and after the world championships in Shanghai in 2011, and -- candidly -- what these championships are likely to show, indeed what the build-up to this meet already has made plain. American Allison Schmitt, who won five medals last summer in London, including gold in the 200 freestyle, her signature event, didn't make the 2013 team.

"She hasn't trained very much," her coach, Bob Bowman -- who is of course Phelps' longtime mentor as well and is the U.S. men's coach here -- told reporters at the time. He also tweeted a quote from the Chinese master Lao Tzu, "I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures."

As these Barcelona championships unfold, with the U.S. team's 31 medals from London now just numbers in the history books, with Russian sprinter Vlad Morozov throwing down times like 47.62 in the 100 free just a couple weeks ago at the University Games -- simplicity, patience and compassion might be the watchwords for many.

Then again, the U.S. might rise up as it usually does.

The 2013 U.S. world team is made up of veterans such as Ryan Lochte, Nathan Adrian, Natalie Coughlin and Dana Vollmer, breakout stars such as Missy Franklin and Katie Ledecky and a whole bunch of newcomers -- eight national team rookies on the 51-person roster.

Phelps -- he of the 22 Olympic medals, 18 gold -- is of course playing golf. He has said many times that he is doing so contentedly.

That Phelps is not churning down Lane 4 in the final 50 meters does not mean, as France's Fred Bousquet rightly put it Friday, that there aren't any more stars in the worldwide swim constellation. Phelps always said his primary goal was to grow the sport and, as the London Games underscored, his brilliance  has brought forth swimmers from all over the world -- South Africa's Chad le Clos, Lithuania's Ruta Meilutyte and others.

"We should not be different now," Bousquet said. "Just chasing the dream like every other swimmer."

Even so, the world championships in the year following an Olympics is always something of an odd affair. Everyone is acutely aware that the dream -- the real dream -- is three long years away.

"We want to peak in 2016, not 2013," Michael Scott, the Australian team's director of high performance, said at that team's news conference following the Americans -- the Aussies trying to effect a wholesale change in what an independent review called a "toxic" team culture following just 10 medals won in London, only one gold.

The new Aussie way, Scott said, is "by being professional in and out of the pool and doing that with team unity and enjoyment," the theory being medals will follow.

Ryan Lochte, meanwhile, sounded a lot like Michael Phelps circa 2011 -- Lochte also emphasizing that his main goal was Rio in 2016, not Barcelona 2013. "I knew I had to get back in the water eventually," Lochte said, meaning that if he was going to swim here he had to resume training after his reality-TV show and other out-of-the-pool adventures.

"Joan Rivers -- she's awesome. She's a character. Being on her show, it was a lot of fun. Before the show, they told me to wear a swimsuit and I was, like, all right. I put it on under my actual business suit. During the show, she told me to take it off and -- I did. I mean, what can I say? It was a lot of fun.

"You never know what to expect with her. One time I was sitting on a chair talking to her, next thing I knew I was in a fountain still talking to her. It was a lot of fun."

To be fair to Lochte, he didn't just volunteer this story. He was asked about hanging out with Joan Rivers. Then again, before this year, Lochte acknowledged, he had been a beast in training. This year, though, he said, "I took a long break. I don't know if it's going to help me," adding, "My body needed to re-charge. Now I am back in the water and I am excited to race."

Phelps said almost the same thing at the world championships in Shanghai in 2011 before Lochte drilled him in the 200 individual medley, setting a world record, 1:54 flat, Phelps finishing 16-hundredths of a second back.

That loss spurred Phelps to get back in the pool for hard training. In London, Phelps won the 200 IM, in 1:54.27; Lochte took silver, in 1:54.9.

"I mean, Phelps -- there is no doubt about it, he is going to go down in history as the best swimmer ever," Lochte said. "I was just happy I was part of it. He is the hardest racer I ever had to go up against."

Bowman, asked for probably the jillionth time whether Phelps is coming back, offered his practiced reply: "Well, my answer to that is always -- when I see it, I will believe it, and I have had no indication to this point … that's where I will leave that one."

Which is where this meet gets going. Racing starts Sunday, with the first big event the men's 4x100 freestyle relay.

Michael Scott, the Aussie team leader, was asked the key to the relay. In the way that Grevers succinctly summed up the meet, so did Scott: "Swim fast."

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."

Madrid: Games as hope to city, country that needs it

MADRID --- Despite the economic hammering this country has taken, an International Olympic Committee survey indicates 76 percent of local residents want the 2020 Summer Olympics and 81 percent throughout Spain, the Madrid 2020 bid team saying at a Tuesday evening news conference that such figures show the Games offer a measure of hope to a city and country that wants and needs it. The poll numbers stayed relatively even from from IOC survey results released last May, which showed 78 percent support for the Games in Madrid and the surrounding area. That polling remained consistent, even as the Spanish economy remains mired in recession, Spain's second in three years, with the nation's unemployment rate at one in four, is proof indeed of the power of the Olympic spirit, bid leaders asserted.

"During a crisis," said Alejandro Blanco, president of the Spanish Olympic Committee and Madrid 2020, as "everything is being questioned," when "you see a poll that says 81 percent of all citizens in Spain support this and 76 percent of Madrid residents support it, that's not to be laughed at."

The bid, he said, has three easy-to-understand big-picture non-sports goals:

One, to improve the image of Spain. Two, to attract foreign investment. Three, jobs. "Keeping that in mind," Blanco said, "looking at the support we are receiving -- it's major."

Madrid is competing against Tokyo and Istanbul in this 2020 race. The IOC will select the winner Sept. 7 at a vote in Buenos Aires.

Tokyo's poll showed 70 percent support, up 23 points from 47 percent last year, the evaluation commission said when it was there two weeks ago.

Current public support levels in Istanbul will be released next week when the IOC commission visits there. The IOC poll last year showed 73 percent support for the Games.

Margin of error, survey methodology and other data are due to be outlined when the evaluation commission report is made public in advance of the IOC's July all-members meeting on the 2020 race at its Lausanne, Switzerland, headquarters.

The release of the poll results came as Spain's IOC executive board member, Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr., walked the commission Tuesday through perhaps the key element in the Madrid bid, the financial details underpinning what they are calling here their "prudent" and "financially responsible" Games model.

Because this is Madrid's third straight bid, and because so much that would be needed to stage the Games has already been built, construction costs are -- by Olympic standards -- a relatively low $1.9 billion. Tokyo's estimated construction bill: $4.9 billion. Istanbul's: $19.2 billion, or a full 10 times Madrid's.

Over the course of those three bids, Samaranch said, Madrid has spent perhaps $100 million. Further, billions have been spent in infrastructure in and around the city. "Madrid's transformation has been considerable," Mayor Ana Botella echoed.

Of course, Samaranch said, everyone knows the Spanish economy is having it rough. But, Samaranch said in an interview with a small group of international journalists, "The truth of the matter is that ...  for Spain to continue bidding for the Games -- it is an act of responsibility.

"We have put in the money. It would be hugely and vastly irresponsible to walk out now and not wait there and get the financial and economic and social return of all the money we have invested and paid for already.

"Contrary to other bids, to other cities, like Rome that said we can't afford it," bowing out of the 2020 race last year, "in our case, we can not afford not to continue. You have invested all that money and you are ready to walk out and let go before trying to get what it brings, the windfall? We believe it's our perseverance, financially and from an economic point of view -- [to continue] is an act of responsibility."

Meanwhile, as a steady rain lashed the city Tuesday, the evaluation commission toured what would be Olympic Stadium, the aquatics center and several other sports pavilions.

The mayor said later, with a smile, "It's good news that it's raining. The level of the dams has risen. Therefore the visit of the evaluation commission has brought us the rain which is always good for our city."

Blanco, also smiling, said, "We scheduled the rain as of 6:30," meaning p.m. "It started as of 1:30. We got it slightly wrong."

Here is the what the inside of the stadium -- built in 1994, site of a Bruce Springsteen show in May, 2003 - looks like now:

The bill to re-do the stadium for Olympic purposes: $210 million.

And here is the aquatics center, just a few steps away:

The aquatics center up-do would cost about $70 million.

"We have done [the] investment [and now] we need to see if we can put into value -- know, it's billions of dollars. Building an airport, extending the subway system, building the stadiums, building the Magic Box [stadium] for tennis, all that investment that has been done," Samaranch said.

"Many candidates, they think that if I get the Games I will do the improvement. Madrid did it the other way around -- continue to improve the city in order to get the Games."

Madrid's prudent, fiscally responsible 2020 play

MADRID -- The rules of these Olympic bid contests do not allow the rival cities to compare and contrast each other's campaigns. At least in public. But, you know, facts are facts. So as the International Olympic Committee's evaluation commission tour got underway here Monday in the second of its three stops, here's what they don't dare say but is nonetheless obvious:

There is more of the infrastructure for the Games already built and ready to go in Madrid, 80 percent, than there is popular support, 70 percent, for the Games in Tokyo.

If these IOC campaigns were only, solely about such so-called "technical" merit, Madrid would be your slam-dunk winner. As they know full well here, though, this being Madrid's third straight bid for the Games, there's way more to it. The sports venues, hotels, roads, all of that -- there has to be a story beyond bricks and mortar to win IOC votes.

And that is the part of the game where an entirely different set of numbers comes into play. Here the challenge is the economic crisis that has beset Spain. The unemployment rate hovers at 26 percent.

Fundamentally, Madrid's bid presents the IOC with a fascinating proposition: can a prudent, indeed fiscally responsible, bid that comes along at an important time in the Olympic movement's history make its case?

"Madrid has already attempted to win the bid on two previous occasions and was not successful then," the prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, said Monday. "But now we are convinced it can -- so we are going to battle hard to win now."

Madrid, Tokyo and Istanbul are the three candidates in this 2020 race. The IOC will pick the winner Sept. 7 at a vote in Buenos Aires.

The evaluation commission visit to Tokyo ended March 7. Its tour of Istanbul begins March 24.

As in the other two cities, its stop here will take up four days.

Back once more to some numbers. Because, as the saying goes, numbers don't lie.

Despite the recession, Spain's second in three years, public support for the Olympics has trended remarkably high. An IOC poll conducted last year in Madrid and the surrounding area showed 78 percent support for the Games. Talk to the locals, mayor Ana Botella said Sunday in welcoming reporters to town: "They are the best asset."

Of 35 proposed venues here, 28 are already built. The budget to get the rest done: $1.9 billion.

Botella, again, now at a Monday evening news conference: "The funding of the infrastructure is fully guaranteed."

Spain's sports minister, Miguel Cardenal, sitting next to her: "OK, it's a large figure but in proportional terms it's almost insignificant, and the economic benefits that are referred to in the comprehensive forecasts are reasonable and encouraging, too."

In Olympic terms, $1.9 billion for all-in infrastructure needs to be appropriately understood. For comparison: the cost to re-build the stadium alone in Tokyo is $1.9 billion. Their infrastructure estimate runs to about $4.9 billion -- the Japanese stressing they have the money sitting in the bank.

Madrid's $1.9 billion, meanwhile, is one-tenth the size of Istanbul's $19.2 billion capital cost budget.

One-tenth.

Madrid's venues are indisputably world-class. On Monday afternoon, commission members kicked around soccer balls at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium, where Real Madrid plays. A novel turn to the 2020 bid would see the Las Ventas bullfighting ring, where the 2011 Davis Cup final was played, covered with a retractable roof, and turned into a 20,000-seat men's and women's basketball venue.

The IOC likes to talk a good game about asking host cities and countries not to spend egregiously. But in recent years it has all the same opted for major construction projects. See Beijing 2008, London 2012, Sochi 2014 and Rio 2016.

If you factor in the predilection to try new destinations, you would also include Pyeonchang 2018.

All this will have some inevitably suggesting it's Istanbul's time.

But there is only one hard and fast rule about trying to predict the IOC: it is entirely unpredictable.

And perhaps there are broader currents at work that indicate the time has come for the IOC to finally and fully pay attention to the Pound Report, the 2003 study it adopted wholly, that says prudence and fiscal accountability are actually sensible notions.

Rome, for instance, backed out of this very 2020 derby last year, saying it was too expensive. On March 3, voters in Switzerland turned down funding for a campaign for the 2022 Winter Games in St. Moritz and Davos; at issue was a study that said public money should cover $1.06 billion of the projected shortfall from staging the Games. Last Tuesday, in Vienna, voters said no to a referendum to the city's plans to bid for the 2028 Summer Games.

Another fact: within the IOC there will remain some measure of implacable opposition to Madrid's plans, simply and bluntly because of the economic crisis. How, some members will rationalize, can you come here when the place seems to be under siege?

There didn't seem to be any evidence Monday of a siege mentality in Retiro Park in central Madrid, where they would play beach volleyball in 2020. The sun was out. So were bunches of young families with their strollers. And skateboarders, too.

As Rajoy reminded the commission, 58 million tourists come to Spain annually. It's the world's third-leading tourist destination.

There must be a reason.

Super high-vision: a green bottle with a long neck

When high-definition television came along, it revolutionized the game. Watching sports got way better all over the world for literally millions, if not billions, of viewers. For fans of American football: think, for instance, of Mario Manningham's clutch 38-yard catch that sparked the New York Giants' winning drive in Super Bowl XLVI, and the sideline tap-dance that was part of it. High-def made it all so real.

Now comes super high-vision technology.

Watching SHV is what is like when you made that jump a few years back from your standard TV set to high-def, only way better. After seeing SHV, even high-def feels like watching Super Bowl clips from the 1970s or '80s.

You can hardly believe the level of detail that all of a sudden snaps into crystal-clear focus. It's that good. That amazing.

In a word, SHV is a game-changer.

And it's one the Olympic world has already begun to embrace.

In London, the Olympic Broadcasting Services helped the Japanese broadcaster NHK -- and the BBC -- put together substantial coverage, including the opening ceremony and the men's 100-meter final.

Developers at NHK recently showed off the technology to a small group of journalists. It was all part of the International Olympic Committee evaluation commission's assessment of Tokyo's 2020 Summer Games bid.

Of course the commission saw, too, what the technology could do. The members got to see some of the imagery -- "tape" seems such an outmoded word -- from the ceremony and Bolt's 9.63-second victory.

One of the highlights of the ceremony, of course, was when the five Olympic rings were moved into place atop Olympic Stadium. In SHV, the sparks from the molten medal appeared to literally leap off the screen. The sound from the 22.2-channel surround-sound speakers -- again, 22.2-channels -- provides a ridiculously immersive experience.

Bolt's victory was noteworthy not just because, as he proclaimed time and again, it set him toward becoming a "legend."  He would finish that off later in the Games by winning the 200 meters and then the Jamaican team would win the 4x100 relay in world-record time. Before the start of the 100, 34-year-old Ashley Gill-Webb, who somehow made his way into the stadium and into the seats near the start line without a ticket, threw a bottle at Bolt, hoping to disrupt him.

Gill-Webb, who suffered from bipolar disorder and was having a "manic episode," was found guilty in January in a British court of public disorder.

In SHV, you can see not only that Gill-Webb is wearing a blue-sleeved shirt in the middle of the crowd but that he is preparing to throw the bottle.

Too, that it's a green bottle and has a long neck.

That the bottle bounces in the middle of the track behind the runners.

That, as the field makes its way toward the finish line toward the cameras, American Ryan Bailey, in Lane 8, steps across Bolt's lane line, in Lane 7. There was no protest filed; indeed, there was no violation in this instance, as there would be in, say, a 200-meter race, because technically Bailey was running farther by stepping into Bolt's lane.

The level of granular detail makes it so evident, however, that Bailey steps across the line -- a fascinating aspect to add to the historic context of the race.

This kind of forensic clarity, moreover, would be invaluable in helping to analyze races such as the 110-meter hurdles final at the 2011 world championships in Daegu, South Korea, in which Cuba's Dayron Robles crossed the line first, only to be disqualified after tangling with China's Liu Xiang after the ninth hurdle between Lanes 5 and 6; Liu was declared the winner.

Another example: the now-infamous third-place tie at last summer's U.S. Trials between Allyson Felix and Jeneba Tarmoh in the women's 100-meter dash.

Would SHV have definitively resolved the tie? No one can say.

Would it provide more evidence? For sure.

Where 3D has tried -- and is still trying -- to make its way, SHV seems poised to be the next advance in broadcasting technology.

Even if it's maybe years away from being in your living room, maybe five or so if you live in Japan or South Korea, and though if you were an actor or actress of a certain age it might keep you awake at nights with the level of potentially frightening stuff it would enable audiences to see about you, it also just might mean -- eventually -- the end of bad refereeing.

It's that crystal clear.

At the Sochi 2014 Winter Games, OBS will again cover the opening ceremonies; this time the showcase sport will be figure skating.

NHK will be flying the recordings to Tokyo for later review. Yuna Kim dominated this week's world figure skating championships. In SHV, she figures to be, in a word, spectacular.

America's new teen sweetheart: Mikaela Shiffrin

Mikaela Shiffrin, who turned 18 this week, is going to be making the rounds this coming week in New York City. Tuesday night it's the David Letterman program. Wednesday morning it's the Today show. This is what happens when you have the sort of breakout season Shiffrin struck for herself on the alpine ski racing tour, the kind she cemented with a fantastic, come-from-behind victory Saturday to win the season-long slalom title at the World Cup finals in Lenzerheide, Switzerland.

Shiffrin was not only down by 1.17 seconds after the first run, which is a huge margin, she was behind Tina Maze of Slovenia, who has had the best season of any skier -- male or female -- in ski racing history.

Shiffrin then went out in her second run and simply scorched it in a 56.76-second run. No one was remotely close. Her winning time: 1:55.60.

Bernadette Schild of Austria took second, her first-ever World Cup podium finish, in 1:55.8; Maze dropped to third, in 1:55.95.

Her win came on the same day that Ted Ligety, also skiing in Lenzerheide, won his sixth giant slalom of the season. He and the legendary Ingemar Stenmark of Sweden are the only racers to have  won six or more World Cup giant slalom races in a single season.

Ligety locked down the season World Cup giant slalom title last weekend after winning in Kranjska Gora, Slovenia.

Maze, meanwhile, started Saturday with a seven-point lead in the season slalom standings. With Saturday's 1-3 finish, Shiffrin ends the season with 688 slalom points, Maze 655.

For the season, Maze has 2,314 points. And counting. There's a giant slalom scheduled for Sunday.

This was Maze's 23rd top-three finish of the year.

She said, in remarks published on the FIS website, "23 podiums in a season [is] of course positive. It has been an amazing season and it is not easy to keep up the pace that I had, standing on the podium week after week.

"As far as the season goes, I am really proud but of course on days like today, especially right after the race the disappointment is high. The sadness will go away but it's normal to feel disappointed when you have an opportunity like the one I had today. You have to learn from your mistakes. Mikaela has been dominating slalom the whole season and I don't think I lost the globe here today but somewhere else."

Shiffrin becomes the first U.S. slalom champ since Tamara McKinney in the 1984 season.

Shiffirin is the first non-European to win four World Cup slalom races in a season.

She also stands as the third non-European to win the slalom title. The others: McKinney, and Betsy Clifford in the 1971 season.

For emphasis, once more -- Mikaela Shiffrin is only 18.

After the race, she made three comments that speak to what a special talent she is.

Here is the first. It underscores characteristics alpine racers have to have: confidence, indeed fearlessness:

"After the first run, I went directly to our athlete tent and just tried to sit quietly and figure out what I needed to do to make it better. That's something that I've always done, is just analyze what I could do better and make it better. It's hard to do that between runs in a race But my mom helped. My coaches helped. My dad helped. Everybody.

"They all said the same thing: 'You have to let it go. You can not hold back. There is nothing to lose.' So I tried to do that."

The second shows off what a class act she is.

"I think half of this globe belongs to someone else. I want to thank Tina Maze. She has really helped inspire me. It felt good that second run but I was freaking out.

"She's my greatest idol this season and I respect her so much. Some part of me wanted her to win just to prove once again that she's the greatest skier in the world this season. But I wanted to win because it was my goal and I don't want to give up my goal. It happened that I won today and I'm really grateful for that."

The third is maybe the best. Mikaela Shiffrin, again, is just 18. The Sochi Olympics are coming straight up. Wait until she shows up on Letterman and the Today show and they see what she is about. Because she is -- genuine.

"Yeah, Letterman! I'm so excited about that. It's going to be really cool. Hopefully I don't trip when I'm gong on stage. If you knew me for longer than a day you would know that I spill things and I break things and I trip a lot. You would not think I'd be good at slalom. So we'll see how that goes."

Randall takes second straight sprint title

Twelve years ago, in Soldier Hollow, Utah, Kikkan Randall made her first World Cup cross-country skiing start. She finished 24th and, at the time, as she recalled Saturday, "That was so exciting." Times certainly have changed.

On Saturday, after qualifying 11th and powering through the heats, Randall skied past world champion Marit Bjoergen by a boot length to win a freestyle sprint in Lahti, Finland.

"My skis were awesome today and it's really cool to see what a well-oiled machine we have become," Randall said afterward, underscoring the emphatic reality: in the sprints, the U.S. cross-country program has emerged as a genuine threat to win.

The victory Saturday clinched Randall's second straight World Cup sprint championship.

Barring injury, Randall will start next season as one of the favorites for an Olympic medal next February in Sochi.

Maybe more than one.

A few weeks ago, Randall and Jessie Diggins won the team sprint title at the world championships.

An American has not won an Olympic medal in cross-country skiing since Bill Koch in 1976.

No American woman has ever won an Olympic medal in the sport.

The race Saturday marked Randall's 100th career World cup start. As she said, she was "really hoping to make it a special one."

It turned out to be her 11th career World Cup or World Cup Stage victory. For the season: her sixth World Cup or World Cup Stage win.

The win gives Randall 488 World Cup sprint points; Justyna Kowalcyzk of Poland has 280. That's a 208-point lead; there are two sprint races remaining, meaning the most anyone could make up is 150 points.

On the men's tour, Sweden's Emil Joensson wrapped up the men's sprint title by defeating Ola Vigen Hattestad of Norway; Joensson now has 466 points. Andy Newell of the United States is second, with 236.

Bjoergen was the only woman Randall had yet to face in a skate sprint all year; the Norwegian skier, long viewed by many as the best in the world, had missed every skate sprint before Lahti because of heart trouble in December.

The race Saturday -- on a short, twisty course -- came down to a photo finish.

Bjoergen didn't quite have the lunge, Randall did, Randall winning by seven-hundredths of a second.

After the finish, the two racers shared a hug.

Bjoergen understandably said later, "I have not raced that much so I feel like the World Cup season has just started for me."

As Randall told the website fasterskier.com, "We're good friends and we got to laugh about it. I asked her what World Cup start this was for her. I said, 'You're probably over 200 by now.' And she said, 'Yeah, probably.' "

Randall also said, thinking back to her first start 12 years ago: " … It's pretty funny that, 100 starts later, we're in the hunt for the win every time in the skate sprint now. I got to go up against one of the world's greatest athletes today and it was definitely close there at the end.

"She was coming on strong but it's just nice to know that … it's taken me a lot of races and a lot of time to get to this point but if you put in the work and stay dedicated then you can be the best in the world.

"And it's pretty fun."

Ligety reigns over giant slalom

It rained Saturday in Kranjska Gora, Slovenia. That's a crummy way to race a ski race like a World Cup giant slalom. To see out your goggles is kinda-sorta like seeing through the windshield of your car, and in the second of the two runs several racers had to made like windshield wipers, reaching up to wipe off their goggles. Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway wiped off his goggles. At least he finished, a more-than-respectable sixth. Fritz Dopfer of Germany wasn't so lucky. He hit a gate with his head; that knocked his goggles off; reaching for them, he appeared to get stuck in slushy snow and went flying off into the protective fencing.

These were the conditions Ted Ligety had to navigate to lock down his fifth giant slalom victory of the season and, in the process, his fourth World Cup giant slalom title.

Ligety led Austria's Marcel Hirscher by six-tenths of a second after the first run. In the second run's rain, Hirscher ended up finishing 45-hundredths back.

France's Alexis Pinturault took third, 77-hundredths behind.

Ligety's winning overall time: 2:35.43.

Ligety's lead in the giant slalom standings: an insurmountable 620-495.

In the World Cup overall standings, Hirscher leads Svindal by 69 points. Ligety stands (a distant) third.

Ligety's three prior giant slalom titles: 2008, 2010, 2011.

"It's a big weight off my back," Ligety said. "I had an awesome season in giant slalom but Hirscher was with me the whole season. It makes it tough going for the title. It was a head game when he was so close all along."

"For me this is a very successful day," Hirscher said. "In the second run I was faster than Ted Ligety and that makes for a fantastic day. Conditions were tough. It was raining pretty strong and it wasn't an easy run on the soft snow."

This was Ligety's 16th career victory, all in giant slalom, and his fifth win at Kranjska Gora (2008, 2009, 2010, 2012). As he said, "This hill is awesome. It has everything. I'm super-proud to win here again."

More history books: Ligety is now third all-time, behind Ingemar Stenmark (46) and Michael von Gruenigen (23) for World Cup giant slalom wins. He had been tied with Alberto Tomba.

For the season: this was Ligety's eighth win. He took three gold medals at the world championships.

As a measure of his consistency: Ligety recorded top-three finishes in all seven of the season's giant slalom races; there's one left to go. He is the first racer to do so since von Gruenigen, in 1996.

"Racing in the rain isn't my favorite thing," he said, but you do what you have to do. "I grew up in Park City, Utah, and only skied in 25 degrees and sunny."