"It's our time"

LOS ANGELES -- In Sydney 12 years ago, the U.S. women's water polo team took silver when the Aussies scored to win gold with 1.3 seconds remaining. In Athens in 2004, the Americans took bronze.

Four years ago in Beijing, the U.S. women again took second, this time when the Dutch scored the winning goal with 26 seconds to go.

These are the facts that everyone associated with the U.S. women's water polo knows by heart. This is why, when the 13-player U.S. team was announced Thursday at a ceremony at the LA 84 Foundation, the legacy building from the Summer Games here 28 years ago, the rah-rah video closed with this tag-line: "It's our time."

Time will tell, of course, whether this U.S. team will do what the three that came before it could not, whether it can meet the challenge coach Adam Krikorian has long set, which he reiterated Thursday in public, to rise to "competitive greatness."

He said, "It's about bringing your best when your best is needed."

What sets this team apart is that it is, truly, a team.

Under Krikorian, who took over after Beijing from Guy Baker, the players have come together to form a remarkably close bond.

Their unity could have come apart after the U.S. team got drilled at the 2011 world championships in Shanghai, the Americans ultimately finishing sixth.

Instead, they rebounded. At the Pan American Games a couple months later in Guadalajara, Mexico, they not only won to claim their Olympic qualifying spot, they did so in astonishing fashion, rallying from three goals down at halftime to knock off Canada for the gold medal in a penalty shootout. The final score: 27-26.

"We learned at the world championships how not to deal with adversity," Krikorian said, adding a moment later, "Two months later, we showed how to deal with adversity."

Goalie Betsey Armstrong may be the best in the world. She deflects such praise, saying Thursday: "I know these girls have my back. I have their back. It's a genuine relationship."

Heather Petri was one of the shooters in that Guadalajara penalty drama. "No nerves," she said. "It was awesome."

Petri and Brenda Villa will now be four-time Olympians. They will have been on all four U.S. water polo teams since 2000; that's when the International Olympic Committee opened the Games to women.

Villa, 32, was introduced Thursday as captain of the 2012 team. She has done it all with the exception of that gold medal. Indeed, she was named the FINA magazine female water polo player of decade for the years 2000-10.

Petri, who turns 34 in a month, said the medal can't become a grail unto itself. "It's attainable," she said but cautioning, "You stop making it about that." It's the journey, the practices, the time together, she said, calling the time between Beijing and London -- despite a serious injury -- "the lightest of my four years" and saying, "I find joy in the smallest little things."

Two sisters made the team: Jessica and Maggie Steffens. Jessica played on the 2008 team. Maggie turns 19 in two weeks. Jessica graduated from Stanford in 2009. Maggie starts there after the London Games.

There were no surprises in the roster unveiled Thursday. This was the team Krikorian has been going with for several months now.

It's a defensive-minded team.

It's a deep team.

It's a team that -- despite the presence of Villa -- doesn't rely on one outsized star to carry the load. On any given day, anybody on the U.S. team can beat you. That makes this team hard to scout, and difficult to prepare for.

NBC is prepared to show a lot of this team -- even before the Games, including a July 8 nationally televised game against Hungary to be played at Corona (Calif.) del Mar High School.

"We understand that on any given day," Krikorian said, "we can lose."

Then again, he said, and you know what he has to be thinking, "We can win."

Mrs. Obama shines at USOC conference

DALLAS -- When she's on a pool deck, Natalie Coughlin has no nerves. Or if she does, she hides them well. After all, competing in two Olympics, in 11 events, she has won 11 medals, three gold. On stage here Monday, flanked by other Olympic athletes and hopefuls, it was Coughlin's privilege to introduce the First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama. Wouldn't you know? Coughlin was not only nervous -- she was, as she acknowledged at the microphone, stumbling a bit over her lines, "so nervous right now."

It was fabulous. Natalie Coughlin, tough-as-nails Olympic medalist, "Dancing with the Stars" competitor, a regular person.

The First Lady, here to promote an initiative through her "Let's Move!" campaign, couldn't have been more gracious. "You have a lot of medals," she said with a smile. "No need to shake."

Mrs. Obama has a magnetism about her that is undeniable. She spoke from the stage about, among others, the gymnast John Orozco, who grew up in the Bronx, telling the story about how his parents used to drive him an hour or more out to gymnastics practice and then how he got a job at that same gym, giving his folks his first paycheck with instructions to apply it to the mortgage on the family home.

Before they had gone on stage, Orozco had met Mrs. Obama. "It was insane. Unreal," he said. "She gave me such a tight hug.

"Coming from where I came from, the Bronx. I used to play in the street. In the dirt. Now I'm meeting the First Lady!"

Among the athletes behind her on stage was the 400-meter sprinter LaShawn Merritt. Four years ago, he had been invited to the White House for a special dinner before the 2008 Games, where he got to meet President and Mrs. Bush. A few weeks later, he won gold in Beijing.

Then, though, Merritt tested positive for a male-enhancement product and served a 21-month doping suspension. After that, in the interests of harmonizing doping rules across the world, the USOC actively took up his case. He's now eligible to run in the U.S. Trials and, assuming he makes the 2012 team, in London.

LaShawn Merritt's redemption became that much more complete on Monday. He may or may not win gold again in London. But he was there on stage with the First Lady of the United States, head held high.

"It's been a road. My soul is light," he said afterwards. "To be there with the First Lady is amazing."

Mrs. Obama will lead the U.S. delegation to the 2012 Olympics. Any number of the athletes with whom she spoke Monday found it captivating just to be around her.

"Meeting the First Lady created extra buzz and extra motivation," said Nastia Liukin, the gold medal-winning gymnast from 2008 who is on the comeback trail for 2012. "It's go time from here on out."

"I just got my citizenship last year and today I met the First Lady," said badminton champion Tony Gunawan. "Now that's not normal!"

"Just another day at the office?" asked shooting star Kim Rhode. "No. Not at all. It's not every day that you get to meet the First Lady."

The trick, of course, is to translate that buzz into action. This is where things get far more problematic.

Mrs. Obama's intent is laudable. The idea, she said Monday, is to join with various national governing bodies to provide athletic programming to 1.7 million kids in 2012.

There's no doubt that something has to be done. American kids are fat.

Childhood obesity has more than tripled in the past 30 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. the percentage of children aged 6 to 11 in the United States who were obese went from 7 percent in 1980 to nearly 20 percent in 2008. Over the same time frame, the percentage of adolescents -- ages 12 to 19 -- categorized as obese jumped from 5 to 18 percent, according to the CDC.

The original idea, Mrs. Obama said, was to get 1 million young people involved. The NGBs stepped up and went beyond that, to 1.7 million.

USA Swimming, for instance, will enroll 530,000 new learn-to-swim kids in its "Make-a-Splash" program at more than 500 local pools.

As impressive as those numbers sound, the initiative Mrs. Obama announced Monday amounts only to the tip of the iceberg.

Here's the reality:

The federal inter-agency forum on child and family statistics, childstats.gov, reports there are 76.1 million children in the United States. Of those 76.1 million, 50.4 million are ages 6 to 17 -- essentially the target demographic for "Let's Move."

Doing the math: 1.7 million divided by 50.4 million equals 3.4 percent.

In plain English, that's the percentage of American kids this initiative would reach.

To be equally plain, Mrs. Obama, the USOC and the NGBs involved are to be congratulated for the effort. She, too, is right when she suggests that seeing Natalie Coughlin or John Orozco or whoever it might be this summer in London might well be the spark that sets a new generation of young people "to pursue whatever dreams they hold in their hearts."

But surely she knows, and everyone else in a position of authority does, too, that if we are going to be serious, really serious, about doing something genuinely meaningful about the obesity crisis confronting American kids, it's going to take an across-the-board effort that goes far beyond a well-intentioned initiative reaching  3.4 percent of our young people.

As Natalie Coughlin said, and this came out loud and clear when she said this, "America's youth are this country's greatest asset."

Phelps taking his last laps

DALLAS -- When he was just 16, Michael Phelps was so audacious he wanted to change the sport of swimming. With the London Olympics a mere 75 days away, Phelps, now 26, took to the stage Sunday at the U.S. Olympic Committee's media summit, and the main reason most of the reporters and camera crews who were here was -- Michael Phelps.

This comes as no disrespect to any of the other athletes who came before him Sunday or who will follow him over the next two days. Or, for that matter, any of the senior officials of the USOC.

Phelps, just as he was in Beijing four years ago, will be the star of the show in London in 2012.

He and Usain Bolt are the mega-stars of the Olympic firmament.

Indeed, Phelps has succeeded in making swimming -- a sport in which the athletes spend their time submerged in water, their faces hidden from television cameras -- marketable.

Last summer, at the world swimming championships in Shanghai, there was Phelps' picture -- promoting one of his sponsors -- across bus stops all over town.

The U.S. Trials, just as they were four years ago, will be in Omaha. Omaha! In a pool plunked down in the middle of a basketball arena. Just like four years ago, the place will be packed.

Eight years ago, the Trials were held in a pool that was specially built and plunked down in the parking lot in Long Beach. Those Trials were jammed, too.

This is pretty much all Phelps.

Assuming all goes as expected in Omaha, Phelps and Ryan Lochte, who bring out the best in each other, will be featured on NBC for pretty much every night of the first week of the Summer Games.

On Monday, Phelps and his longtime coach, Bob Bowman, will head to Colorado Springs and sequester themselves away until Omaha. This is a new tactic. They're going to stay up there, at altitude and away from all other distractions. Phelps needs to fine-tune.

Assuming all goes well there, Phelps will swim in Omaha and London the way he always has. Yes, there are others in the race and they spur him on. But he swims against himself and for times. He has goals that only he and Bowman know. Assuming he hits those goals -- well, usually he wins.

The only suspense in his program is how many races he's going to swim in London. Probably not eight. But maybe. Who knows?

Who really cares? This time, that's not the goal.

All along, really, Phelps' goal was to change the sport. The eight gold medals in Beijing -- in a way, they were a means to an end, a reminder that there is no goal that, truly, is too audacious. As Bowman said Sunday, in an echo of what Phelps has always said, "You can do anything you set your mind to if you have a dream and you're willing to work hard enough."

USOC's "major growth opportunity"

DALLAS -- Five years ago, the United States Olympic Committee raised less money in major gifts than the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, its sort-of neighbor in Colorado Springs, Colo. For fiscal year 2007, the USOC raised less than $1 million in major gifts. In a word: pathetic.

For fiscal 2011, under the direction of chief development officer Janine Alfano Musholt, the USOC raised a net total of $10 million in gifts of more than $1,000. In two words: major progress.

In a wide-ranging news conference here Sunday at the traditional media summit in advance of the Olympic Games, USOC leaders said that they hoped American athletes would win the medal count this summer in London and that progress is being made in their ongoing revenue dispute with the International Olympic Committee.

But the most intriguing thing that was said -- and which relates directly to the medal count at any Olympic Games and ultimately could prove the secret to any new Olympic revenue model in the United States -- relates to the USOC's development campaign.

It's a potential game-changer.

As USOC chief executive Scott Blackmun reminded everyone, the focus at the leadership level is "to generate resources." With that comes the ability to do all the other stuff the American public not only wants but expects -- like, for instance, win the medal count.

Of course, the ground rule, spelled out in a 1978 law enacted by Congress, is that the USOC must be privately funded.

This is what makes the USOC different from every other national Olympic committee in the world. In the rest of the world the Olympic committee is an arm of its government.

For emphasis: the USOC must raise every penny it spends.

To grossly simplify, the USOC largely depends on television and sponsor money.

The crux of the dispute with the IOC is that the USOC gets a special cut of the NBC and sponsor deals that no other NOC gets. The USOC gets 12.75 of the NBC money, $4.38 billion from 2014 through 2020, and 20 percent of the IOC's top-tier sponsor deals.

From the perspective of the rest of the world -- it makes sense that everyone else might be upset. Why should the USOC get special treatment?

From the USOC"s perspective -- it makes sense that the USOC is super-protective of its share. Everyone else is getting funds from their federal governments. The USOC isn't. What is the USOC supposed to do? Cut back? And let Russia and China roll over the American team?

It's not as if the USOC is in position to ask the federal government for money, either. For one, it's not the American way. For another, as Blackmun observed, "It's hard for us to make a case that we should receive government support when we have won the [overall] medal count at every Summer Olympic Games since Barcelona [in 1992] and won the medal count at Vancouver," a reference to the 2010 Winter Games.

As it is, it's something of a miracle that the U.S. teams do as well as they do. The USOC's annual budget is roughly $150 million, about the same as Ohio State spends on its athletic department.

Which is where the notion of an enhanced development campaign comes in.

Everyone knows football drives sports programs at Division I universities.

The amount of money that can get thrown around those programs is, in a word, obscene.

Just to take one example:

In 2003, Lewis Field at Oklahoma State was renamed Boone Pickens Stadium after alum and oilman T. Boone Pickens donated $70 million. That gift, $20 million of which was earmarked for stadium expansion, according to the OSU website, generated $100 million in gifts and pledges. In 2006, Pickens donated an astonishing $165 million more.

The stadium was re-dedicated in 2009. They set an attendance record there last fall. The OSU football team played in a BCS bowl game in January, the Fiesta Bowl, and won, beating Stanford and Andrew Luck, who would go on to be the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft.

That's called success breeding upon success.

Why can't the USOC replicate that kind of success?

If there are boosters willing to do that kind of thing for dear ol' alma mater -- why won't someone stand up and do that for the red, white and blue?

Because no one had ever really thought about it.

Which is crazy.

Why, in particular?

Because, as Musholt said, "We could change the way the movement is funded in the United States, in a good way."

About two or three weeks ago, about half the members of the USOC board of directors got together in Denver to talk about this very thing.

"When we talked longer-term, we talked orders of magnitude different than what we are talking now," USOC board chairman Larry Probst said.

Just to be imaginative, why couldn't 20 or 100 really rich people contribute fractional shares toward USOC financing?

Why couldn't life insurance policies or annuities be contributed? They do that in college development offices all the time.

This particular revenue stream is so obvious. It's just sitting there, practically begging to be tapped.

It is, as Blackmun called it, the USOC's "major growth opportunity."

Warrior Games: what brings us together

This is an election year, and we Americans will spend a great deal of the next few weeks and months enduring partisan rhetoric and sharp reminders about what divides us. The Warrior Games, which just wrapped up in Colorado Springs, Colo., offered a great lesson in what brings us together.

Any one of the some 220 stories in the Warrior Games would have given you pause. Some would have made you cry. The Games, underwritten in significant measure by Deloitte, are put on by the U.S. Olympic Commitee for wounded, injured and ill veterans and service members.

Steve Lipscomb, who is now 44, of Goldsboro, N.C., is a Navy petty officer specializing in logistical support.

Scratch that. Steve Lipscomb is an outstanding petty officer, so good that six years ago he was picked to work with the Blue Angels, the Navy's flight demonstration team. He served with the Blues from 2006-09.

Lipscomb and his wife, Sharon, are the parents of two little girls. He is a diehard Pittsburgh Steeler fan. He is also a big Duke basketball fan.

In August, 2010, Lipscomb was diagnosed with stage four gastric cancer.

It's terminal, he was told.

I'm going to beat this thing, he said.

Last year's were the second Warrior Games. Lipscomb was among those chosen to represent the Navy, despite the fact he was enduring a heavy chemotherapy regimen.

Many of his Navy teammates were 20 years younger. Some were confronting severe combat-related injuries.

Along with his wife and family, those 2011 Warrior Games gave Lipscomb motivation to carry on. Others on his team, he reasoned, needed help as much or maybe more than he did.

Judi Boyce, a 24-year-old Navy cook from Mt. Olive, N.J., underwent brain surgery on March 30, 2011. The Warrior Games were held in mid-May of last year.

"They didn't think I would make it," she said. "Steve hooked me up with a pair of sneakers and said knowing you're going to use these afterward will help you get through surgery. He sent me Girl Scout cookies and a key chain.

"… I came to the Games with a shaved head. He didn't care. For me, he was the one trying to help me look on the bright side. Not many people thought I was going to make it. Steve was there for me when I had my surgery. It shows you the power of sports and healing."

Lipscomb not only competed at the 2011 Warrior Games -- he was chosen the Navy and Coast Guard torchbearer at opening ceremony.

He said at one point during last year's Games, "We as a team push each other and came together like I've never experienced. I've been on many teams my whole life but one of them are like this one."

The Games, the teamwork, the camaraderie -- it all worked. Lipscomb returned to active duty, according to Georgia Monsom, herself an amazing woman, retired after 30 years in the Navy as a command master chief, now a non-medical care manager for the Navy's "Safe Harbor" organization, which coördinates aid for sailors, Coast Guardsmen and their families.

Georgia Monsom is Steve Lipscomb's care manager. If you were in any kind of trouble, you'd want Georgia Monsom looking after you.

When she first met Lipscomb, she said, he was in a really bad way. And then, she said, with pride, "He beat it. He went cancer-free for 10 months. It's just phenomenal."

"… Then he went into remission for 10 months. He returned to active duty. He was keeping it at bay. Unfortunately, on March 13," two months ago, "he went back into the hospital with what we thought were kidney stones.

"We almost lost him on April 19. They called the family in and said, 'He's not going to make it.'

But he did.

And why?

"He kept saying, 'I've got to make it to the Warrior Games. I've got to be there for the Warrior Games.'

"We kept saying, 'Your fight right now is cancer.' We'll make you honorary captain."

Which is what happened.

The Navy team that competed at the 2012 Warrior Games wore ribbons for Steve Lipscomb and dedicated those Games to him, while he fought it out in a hospital in Virginia.

"Whether you are first or last, this is a united group of people," said Navy Lt. (retired) John Edmonston, 32, of Bremerton, Wash., along with Boyce one of those who took part in the 2012 Games.

He added, "I'd do anything for Steve."

Everyone knows the Army and Navy have a healthy rivalry. The Army competitors at the Warrior Games signed a get-well-Steve card.

"For sure," Edmonston said, "Steve is a big bringer-together."

Georgia Monsom said she has herself a new mission. Assuming Lipscomb gets himself out of the hospital and gets strong enough over the summer, it's time for some football. Some Pittsburgh Steelers football.

"You know a guy has got to be pretty awesome," she said, "when the Army team wants to do a shout-out for someone from the Navy, right?"

First Lady opens Warrior Games

Army Staff Sgt. Krisell Creager-Lumpkins suffered a brain injury in 2010. She'll be competing in five events at this week's Warrior Games in Colorado Springs, Colo., and says, "I want to show other wounded, ill and injured soldiers that your injuries don't define you. They amplify you." Navy Lt. Brad Snyder, blinded in September in an explosion in Afghanistan, is a swimmer and a runner. He says, "I'm not going to let blindness build a brick wall around me. I'd give my eyes 100 times again to have the chance to do what I have done, and what I can still do."

Marine Capt. John Disbro was wounded in Iraq in 2004. After 18 surgeries on his foot and ankle, his leg and ankle were amputated below the knee. He is now the reigning Warrior Games "ultimate champion" for his performance in swimming, shooting, sprinting, hiking and the shot-put.

"Whew," the First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, standing at the lectern on another beautiful sunny day in Colorado Springs, Colo., said with her usual radiant smile. "I'm tired just mentioning all that."

The First Lady traveled Monday to the Springs to kick off the third edition of the Warrior Games, an event that this year will attract more than 200 wounded, ill and injured service members and veterans. Competition runs through May 5.

This year's Games, underwritten in significant part by Deloitte, is the third. It is growing into a progressively bigger and bigger deal. The Brits are even sending a team this year, 20 strong, to compete in five events -- archery, cycling, swimming, track and field and sitting volleyball.

As Scott Blackmun, the chief executive of the U.S. Olympic Committee, pointed out to the roughly 1,600 people in the crowd, "We're proud to be here from the inspiration that will flow."

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, was among those joining Mrs. Obama, and Blackmun, on stage.

Clearly, the chairman has plenty of things on his plate. But there he was -- and he made a point of saying that he was "thrilled" to be there, that the Games served multiple, and powerful, purposes.

They proved the power of ability over disability, a "collective and personal revival through sports," he said. Moreover, an event like the Warrior Games also serves as a "military family reunion," and the import of that is not to be discounted.

Mrs. Obama, wearing a spectacular patterned sleeveless dress, spoke for 10 minutes.

"Every competitor here has faced adversity that most of us can never imagine," she said, adding a moment later, "You are inspiring all of us to dig just a little deeper, to work just a little harder, to strive for something that seems maybe just too far out of reach."

The First Lady then switched gears ever so slightly and all but announced the points she hopes to make while leading the delegation in just under three months to London, to the 2012 Olympics.

Mrs. Obama has of course -- through her "Let's Move!" initiative -- sought to get American kids off the couch.

"You can inspire these kids to get active," she said Monday. "You can inspire them to overcome obstacles. You can inspire them to achieve things they never dreamed of. And that's going to be my message as I head to London this summer, to lead the presidential delegation to the opening ceremony to the Olympic Games.

"It's really going to be a focus on our kids. I'm going to emphasize that competitions like the Olympics, the Paralympics and the Warrior Games aren't just about who wins the gold or who sets a new record. They're about getting involved and working together. They're about competing fairly. And triumphing over adversity. They're also about how service and patriotism aren't simply words or symbols -- they're the choices you make and the way you live your lives."

All you have is love

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

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

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

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

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

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

All you have, she said, is love.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who looks after them? Sherry and Flower.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's really the other way around.

The BOA's slam-dunk loser of a case

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here, that's easy:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meanwhile, the potential big-time loser:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why did it so rule?

Because the WADA code is the controlling policy.

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

Same goes here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

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

Adam Nelson champions hope

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

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

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

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

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

Two things:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some numbers, according to RARE:

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

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

Approximately 75 percent of those affected are children.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New USATF CEO: Max Siegel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time, as ever, will tell.