Marco Sullivan's "awesome" podium finish

Alpine racing is a hard game. The snow is really ice, and it's often ferociously cold and treacherous out there. The potential for injury is significant. There's enormous pressure to produce, and if you don't, you run the risk of having your sponsors tell you thanks but, you know, we're moving on. Marco Sullivan has been there and done that.

All of that.

It's why finishing third, like he did Saturday in the World Cup downhill in Lake Louise, Canada, is all the sweeter.

"When I saw third place," he said, "it was kind of surreal," adding, "I don't remember the next couple of minutes."

Norway's Aksel Lund Svindal won the race, in 1:48.31. It was his 17th World Cup victory.

Austria's Max Franz, who had crossed first in Wednesday's training run, took second, 64-hundredths behind, for his first World Cup podium finish.

Sullivan and Austria's Klaus Kroell tied for third, just two-hundredths behind Franz.

Even the U.S. coach, Sasha Rearick, was, well, surprised.

"He's got the right direction," Rearick said of Sullivan, adding, "A bigger step than I expected today. But he has been doing the right things."

Sullivan, who is from the Lake Tahoe area, is one of a number of good guys on the U.S. team. He skied in the 2002 and 2010 Olympics.

That said, he's now 31 and has been one of the guys for 13 years now.

It was no lock he was going to make this season lucky 13.

Sullivan acknowledges now that his place on the team had seemed in "a little bit of jeopardy."

He had, he said, been battling herniated discs in his back from a 2009 crash.

Two seasons ago, there was a nasty concussion.

This past spring -- after two seasons with not even one finish in single digits -- he got dropped by his sponsors.

The ski maker Atomic, though, saw enough to pick him up. That was step one in the comeback.

Step two was time off, and getting as healthy as possible: "It's still there," he said of his back troubles. "I have learned to deal with it a lot better. A lot of stretching. A lot of core exercises. Just, I guess, a little maturity as well."

The summer brought a six-week block on skis in Chile. This fall: more training at the U.S. team's Copper Mountain speed center.

Sullivan said he never really gave in to concern he might lose his spot on the team.

"If I was healthy and I was on the right equipment," he said, "I still had the resolve and the drive to still be back on top. It was just a matter of working out the details."

Before this weekend, Sullivan had three times over his career notched top-three tour finishes, all downhills. He won in Chamonix, France, in 2008. In Wengen, Switzerland, in 2009, he took third. And in Lake Louise, in 2007, he got second -- his first World Cup podium.

This, then, was a course he knew well.

Running all week here from starting spot No. 42, he was 25th in training on Wednesday. Then 15th in the second training run, on Thursday.

Then, when it counted, third.

Just before it was Sullivan's turn to ski Saturday, proceedings were put on hold for about 20 minutes; Italian racer Mattia Casse slid into the nets on the side of the course. He was taken to a local hospital with what was initially described as a shoulder injury.

"Marco did an unbelievable job of executing what he has been working on in his skiing, and the game plan, at the right time," Rearick said.

"I came up to Lake Louise knowing I could do something good," Sullivan said. "My goal today was top 10. And to exceed that -- it's awesome."

U.S. cross-country skiing breakthrough

It's only one race. And most of America won't pay it much notice -- not on a day when USC and Notre Dame were playing football.

But for Kikkan Randall to finish third, and fellow American Holly Brooks fifth, in the women's 10-kilometer freestyle event on Saturday in Gallivare, Sweden, 62 miles north of the Arctic Circle, the opening cross-country World Cup meet of the season -- that is big stuff looking toward the Sochi Olympics, now just a little bit over 14 months away.

The Norwegians, as usual, dominated both the women's and men's events. Marit Bjoergen captured her 56th individual victory, winning in 22:31.8. Another Norwegian, Therese Johaug, took second, 12.6 seconds behind. Randall crossed 25.9 seconds behind, with Charlotte Kalla of Sweden fourth, 15.92 back.

Bjoergen has seven Olympic medals, three gold. Johaug won gold in Vancouver in 2010 in the women's 4 x 5k relay. Kalla is the Vancouver 10k gold medalist.

Martin Johnsrud Sundby won the men's 15k -- his first World Cup win and just second individual win overall -- in 30.37. Alexey Poltoranin of Kazakhstan took second, 8.9 seconds behind; Sweden's Marcus Hellner took third.

The United States has not earned an Olympic medal in cross-country skiing since Bill Koch's silver in Innsbruck in 1976 in the 30k.

But like the U.S. Nordic combined team, which broke through to win four medals in Vancouver in 2010, the trajectory of the U.S. cross-country team -- as Sochi draws into view -- would seem to be pointing in the right direction .

Randall, already a three-time Olympian, is last season's World Cup sprint champion.

Brooks skied on the Vancouver Olympic team.

Both are based in Alaska.

Brooks turned 30 earlier this year. Randall will turn 30 at the end of December.

"I like to say cross-country skiers are like fine wine," Randall said Saturday after the race, adding, "We get better with age. It just takes a lot of years to train the systems for endurance sports. You see it in triathlon, you see it in marathon … it takes maturity and experience."

It takes mental strength.

Brooks said she has with her now a "vivid memory" of a blog post written by Kris Freeman, a top U.S. male cross-country skier, in which he said, paraphrasing, enough with the hero worship. Freeman was the top U.S.men's finisher Saturday, in 32nd, in the 15k.

For far too long, she explained, "American skiers have looked at Scandinavians and automatically put them on a pedestal. We have thought they are better than we are. That they are superstars. That they grow up on skis, have skiers on cereal boxes and we are just not as good."

Um, why?

Since it was football rivalry weekend back home in the States, why not break out a variation on the football cliché -- everybody puts their skis on one at a time, right?

Out of 77 racers -- one more did not start -- Brooks drew the number six start slot Saturday.  She posted sweet splits but thought little about it, knowing the seeded group of racers, those expected to break through to the podium, were coming much later in the day. She crossed in 23:00.3.

When she finished, as the race leader, Brooks was led to the reindeer-skin leader's chair. And there she sat -- for a very long time.

Through the racers who drew start slots in the teens, 20s, 30s, 40s, even into the 50s.

"They kept telling me, 'You can get up and do something. I was not to get up and leave. As far as I was concerned, that was the best seat in the house.' "

Randall drew start slot 56. She had intended for the race Saturday to be nothing more than a hard workout. Still recovering from a stress fracture in her right foot at the end of the summer, she spent September -- when she typically is ramping up for the season ahead -- on a doctor's-orders 50-percent reduction in her training that included running not on dry land but in a pool.

Upon arrival in Europe, last week, she still had not done any demanding intervals. Then, on Friday, the U.S. team did a workout and, she said, it felt "surprisingly good."

The real surprise, though, was Saturday's third-place. It marked Randall's first-ever non-sprint podium finish.

"The joke on the World Cup circuit now is that everyone needs to do intervals in a swimming pool," Brooks said, laughing.

Seriously, though -- two Americans in the top five. This is how Olympic medals -- plural -- become real possibilities. Another American with experience in the Vancouver Olympics, Liz Stephen of East Montpelier, Vt., who turns 25 in about a month, was skiing in the top five before crashing and breaking a pole; she finished 21st.

The U.S. women are expected to be contenders in Sunday's 4 x 5k team event.

"It's breaking down the barriers and doing this once and making sure you don't underestimate yourself," Brooks said. "If I can do this once, I can do it again. If I can do it. my teammates can do it."

Before Saturday, the refrain had always been, as Brooks noted, "Oh, you're just an American and an American has never been on a distance podium before." She paused. "There's no way. Having these results," she said, "is contagious."

USA Swimming's night to celebrate

NEW YORK -- Bob Bowman, Michael Phelps' coach, came first. At a filled-to-the-max ballroom here at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Times Square, Bowman won USA Swimming's "coach of the year" award at its annual gala, called the "Golden Goggles," and when he took to the stage he had this to say: "Michael, it has been a privilege to be your coach. It has been even better to be your friend."

A few moments later came Phelps, introduced by the strange-but-awesome pairing of Donald Trump and Gary Hall Jr., the former sprint champion -- on a night when the invite said, "Black Tie" -- wearing, indeed, a funky black-and-white tie draped over a black T-shirt that blared out in pink letters, "Barbie," the ensemble dressed up with a black jacket.

Phelps, Trump allowed, was "a friend of mine." He riffed a little bit more, "You think he's going to win?

Of course he was going to win for "male athlete of the year," and when Phelps got to the stage, he said, referring to London 2012, his fourth Games, "This Olympics was the best Olympics I have ever been a part of."

No one in the American Olympic scene -- arguably not even the U.S. Olympic Committee -- puts on a show like USA Swimming. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was also among the celebrity presenters. The comic Jim Gaffigan came out for a 20-minute riff that only marginally touched on swimming but did include references to Phelps and Subway sandwiches as well as Gaffigan's much-applauded routine on Hot Pockets, the microwaveable turnover.

Out in the hall there was a silent auction with all manner of stuff for sale -- including a framed picture, signed by both Phelps and Serbia's Milorad Cavic, of the 2008 Beijing 100-meter butterfly, which Phelps famously won by one-hundredth of a second.

It's not simply that American swimmers are so good.

It's that the culture of the U.S. swim team creates success.

That is what was fully and richly on display Monday night at the Marriott Marquis ballroom: a program that dares to dream big and that celebrates the role everyone plays in achieving those dreams, from support staff to coaches to athletes.

Indeed, when the night began with introductions across the stage, it wasn't the athletes or the coaches who came first. It was the support staff. And they got just as loud a round of applause from those on hand.

There are other well-run national governing bodies -- the ski and snowboard team, for instance, which claimed 21 of the world-best 37 medals the U.S. team won in Vancouver in 2010.

That said, virtually every other U.S. Olympic federation could learn a little something, or maybe a lot, from how the swim team gets things done. In London, the swim team won 31 medals -- 16 gold, nine silver, six bronze.

As good as the U.S. track team was -- it won 29 medals -- the numbers don't lie. The No. 1 performance in London came in the water.

It was observed by NBC's Bob Costas, the night's emcee, that if the American swim team had been a stand-alone country it would have finished ninth in the overall medals table -- and fifth in the gold-medal count.

When the 49 athletes on the London 2012 team were introduced, two by two, they showed just how much they genuinely liked each other -- the fun that was so vividly on display in the "Call Me Maybe" video they had produced before the Games, which became a viral internet sensation.

Ricky Berens and Elizabeth Beisel didn't just shake hands when they met at center stage; they executed a chest-bump. Missy Franklin did a twirl, courtesy of Jimmy Feigin. Cullen Jones and Kara Lynn Joyce struck "007" poses.

Time and again, the winners Monday took time to say thank you to their families, coaches, staff and teammates.

"It's just -- just amazing to be here," said Katie Ledecky, the Maryland high school sensation who took home two awards, "breakout performer" and "female race of the year," for her dominating 800 freestyle victory in London. She said of the London Games, "I just had a blast … I got to be inspired by all of you."

Nathan Adrian, the "male race of the year winner" for his one-hundredth of a second victory in the 100-meter freestyle, said, "One last note. Thank you to my mom. I know you're watching online. I love you."

"I've never been on a team that was a close as this one," Dana Vollmer, the 100 fly winner who swam in the world record-breaking, gold medal-winning 4 x 100 women's medley relay, along with Franklin, Rebecca Soni and Allison Schmitt, said.

Of the relay team, she said, "We were called the 'Smiley Club.' "

Echoed Franklin, "My teammates are the best people you would ever meet in your entire life." She also said, "With Thanksgiving coming up, I realized I don't have a single thing in my life not to be thankful for."

Phelps provided the valedictory. He was up for "male athlete of the year" against Ryan Lochte (five medals, two gold), Adrian (three medals, two gold) and Matt Grevers (three medals, two gold).

Phelps followed up his eight-for-eight in Beijing with six medals in London, four gold. He became the first male swimmer to execute the Olympic three-peat, and he did it in not just one event but two, the 200 IM and the 100 fly. His 22 Olympic medals stand as the most-ever. Eighteen of those 22 are gold.

Trump, ever the sage, opined, "No athlete has ever come close," a reference to the arc of Phelps' dominating career, adding, "I don't think they ever will."

All of that is why Phelps, who has repeatedly announced that London marked his last Games as a competitive swimmer, had to be the slam-dunk winner. And if it felt Monday like USA Swimming was maybe -- if reluctantly -- turning the page from the Phelps years, there was that, too.

In London, Phelps embraced his role as veteran team leader. He showed anew Monday how much that meant to him.

The others in the "male athlete" category? "We were all in the same apartment in the [Olympic] village," Phelps said, making it clear that while they might sometimes be rivals in the pool, they were, beyond that, teammates, now and forever.

And, he said, as for that "Call Me Maybe" video: "At first I didn't want to do it. And now I'm really glad I did it because," like the swim team's Olympic year and the celebration Monday of that season, "it turned out to be something really special."

Slow, steady and big-picture right-on

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. -- On the calendar of big happenings, the International Olympic Committee's sixth Athlete Career Program is not strike-up-the-band sort of stuff. And yet -- that it got underway here Thursday is, in its way, noteworthy indeed.

For it's the big picture that counts.

It marked the first time this forum had ever been held outside the IOC's Lausanne, Switzerland, base. And in concert with other recent conferences, it underscored the U.S. Olympic Committee's slow but steady effort at relationship building -- the strategy its senior leadership has for nearly three years now not just talked but walked to make plain that the USOC is, indeed and in deed, a good partner for the IOC and, beyond, the wider Olympic movement.

Ultimately, of course, the USOC would intend to leverage that goodwill in bidding again for the Games -- most probably for the 2024 Summer Games. It has appointed a committee to study whether to bid for the 2024 or 2026 Winter Games; an initial report is forthcoming next month.

A bid, though, and all it entails, is yet a long way off. The IOC would not select the 2024 Summer Games, for instance, until 2017.

For now, the work is in lower-key efforts such as the program here -- a forum aimed at answering the question that seems obvious but too often isn't until it abruptly dawns on an athlete at the end of his or her competitive career: now what am I going to do?

If, the IOC reasons, a structure is in place so that athletes can be thinking about that question in advance, and HR officers at major employers have it in mind that athletes are way more than dumb jocks and can bring something extra to the corporate arena, then that's worth promoting -- which it has been doing through Adecco, the Zurich-based concern, since 2005.

Through the end of 2011, according to the IOC and Adecco, the program had reached out to 8,000 athletes on five continents with training opportunities and job placements.

On hand in Lake Placid were some two dozen Adecco managers from around the world. The conference coincided with the first World Cup stop of the bobsled, skeleton and luge season --  a potential recruit base, of course.

"We can learn, we can share and we can also feel the Olympic spirit in what we are doing," said Patrick Glennon, Adecco's senior vice president for the IOC program.

Also on hand: at least five members of the IOC's athlete commission, including Claudia Bokel of Germany, considered by many a rising IOC star.

"It's the first time we have gone outside Lausanne," she said, a reference to the five prior career programs. "If we want to do outreach activities, we want to see different places in the world."

That sort of outreach has been a USOC hallmark since the start of 2010 -- when Larry Probst, the USOC chairman, and Scott Blackmun, the chief executive, started up as a team.

Three months before, Chicago had gotten thumped in the race for the 2016 Summer Games, Rio de Janeiro winning big. Thereupon the Americans realized they had to reframe their approach, concentrating first on relationship-building and then on resolving a longstanding revenue dispute with the IOC.

The revenue dispute -- which, understandably, drew big headlines -- got solved earlier this year.

In the meantime, quietly, the USOC has also been trying to play host to IOC and related conferences in a way that almost never happened in the years before.

Even before the 2010 change, the IOC came to Denver for an executive board meeting -- albeit in conjunction with the 2009 SportAccord conference, which was highlighted by politicking aimed at the 2016 Summer Games vote then just seven months away.

Since then, meanwhile, in October, 2011, the IOC's fifth "International Athletes' Forum" came to Colorado Springs. This past February, Los Angeles was the site of the IOC's "Women and Sport" conference.

Now this Lake Placid session.

Later this month, in Miami, there will be a best practices symposium for north and south American national Olympic Committees, along with a Pan-American Sports Organization executive committee meeting. Some 125 people are expected to attend.

In the same way that the USOC is not running the meeting here, it's not going to run the meeting in Miami. When you're genuinely part of a community -- in this case, the so-called "Olympic family" -- sometimes you simply open the door to the house and have a meeting, even if someone else is running it at your dining-room table. It's that elemental.

"It's just a mindset that we are one of 205 NOCs," Chris Sullivan, a senior USOC official, said here. "We are here to do our part."

Ted Ligety's "once-in-a-career" giant slalom victory

Alpine ski race wins usually come by the hundredths of a second. Ted Ligety won the opening World Cup race of the 2012-13 season Sunday on the famous Rettenbach Glacier in Sölden, Austria, by a crazy 2.75 seconds.

It was, as he put it afterward, a "once-in-a-career margin."

It was also a demonstration of, as U.S. head coach Sasha Rearick put it, Ligety's "complete ability and confidence in himself."

Even on the best days, there is nothing inherently fair about alpine racing. And conditions Sunday were, in a word, godawful. "It was a tough day for everybody," Ligety said, adding, "I just fought and maybe took more risk than it was worth - than was maybe smart."

That's just modesty talking -- the guy from Park City, Utah, who posed for photos after the race with his parents.

Ligety is the 2006 Olympic gold medalist in the combined. He is a three-time World Cup season giant slalom champion.

He won in Sölden last year. Indeed, his most recent finishes there had read like this: 2-3-2-1.

But this was not only a new season. Everyone had to ski on new -- different -- skis. Rules changes mandated skis that were, to reduce a complex situation to its basics, a little bit longer but narrower skis designed to slow racers down.

Ligety was originally one of the most vocal opponents of the rules change.

Indeed, a blog he wrote last November decrying the change was entitled "Tyranny of FIS," the acronym a reference to skiing's international governing body. He remains a vocal proponent of athlete input into rules changes.

FIS officials have said many times they believe the rules changes will make the skiing safer.

By last February, meanwhile, after testing the new skis, Ligety discovered he was actually faster on them than the old ones. He called a blog he wrote then, in a reference to the new skis' minimum radius, "35 meters of irony."

Shortly before racing got underway at Sölden, in a video blog posted by American teammate Warner Nickerson, Ligety confirmed that, yes, he was in fact faster on the new skis in most GS conditions.

No one, however, counted on a set of variables like what race day Sunday brought: soft snow, variable light and a blizzard.

The GS consists of two runs. The winner is the guy with the day's lowest combined time.

Ligety ran his first run in near-darkness. He crossed four-hundredths of a second behind France's Thomas Fanara.

That, Ligety said afterward, "just fired me up," adding, "I knew I should have been in the lead."

He skied his second run in a virtual whiteout, the blizzard raging. He said, "I was just taking a ton of risk," adding, "It really paid out," the biggest margin of victory in a World Cup GS in 34 years. Manfred Moelgg of Italy took second; Austria's Marcel Hirscher, last season's overall and GS tour champion, third. Fanara came in fourth.

FIS records show that the time difference between the winner and second place in a World Cup GS has only been bigger six times before -- and all those in the 1970s. The biggest margin: 4.06 seconds, set by Sweden's Ingemar Stenmark in the 1978-79 season.

"I'm psyched," Ligety said after the second run. "I didn't want to leave anything out there. I was hammering!"

It's only one race in a long season.

But it went a long way toward re-establishing Ligety as the best GS skier in the world. Because it's not just that Ligety won, and by such a commanding margin. It's that he did it in such absurd conditions, and that he created that margin almost entirely in a single run.

"Ted's arguments he had on the skis were his own opinions but a lot of people agreed," Rearick said. "He's a vocal person and that showed in his arguments against the skis. But once he figured out this is what it is, he put all that energy, all that focus into making sure he was going to be the fastest and that he wasn't going to lose."

Hirscher asked rhetorically, "What can I say about the incredible Ted Ligety?

"Right now," Hirscher -- a local hero in Sölden -- said in quotes posted on the fisalpine.com website, "he is far away from me … he is in outer space. He skied awesome. He skied every gate perfect."

USADA's 'overwhelming' case against Lance Armstrong

On Wednesday, at my kids' school, at the outdoor amphitheater with the sun shining bright in the brilliant blue of an October California morning sky, I had the privilege of moderating a panel at which four U.S. Olympians spoke about dreams, goals, hard work and effort. Steve Lewis, the 1988 gold medalist in the 400 meters, delighted everyone with the tale of how he won when nobody thought he could. Courtney Mathewson talked about how the 2012 U.S. women's water polo team came together to win gold for the very first time. Nicole Davis, the U.S. women's volleyball libero, spoke about how persistence and effort had driven her and the team to silver in 2008 and 2012.

And Alexi Lalas, who played on the 1992 and 1996 soccer teams and is now an ESPN analyst, reminded everyone that winning isn't everything. It's the taking part. It's the struggle, the journey. It's -- the dream.

At the end of the program, we allotted 20 minutes for photos and autographs. You should have seen the kids, and even the grown-ups, rush down with their iPhones, their cameras and their pens and paper.

It's important to put all of that front and center on a day like Wednesday, when the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency set forth in black and white the details of the "overwhelming" case against Lance Armstrong.

It's far too easy to make the case against Armstrong what, on one level, it is: a simple legal matter.

But that's not what it's about.

It's about something much, much bigger.

It's about changing the culture of sport.

That change has to happen so that we can all get back to what really matters: dreams, and goals, and autographs and pictures.

Doping is cheating. Cheating is wrong. There's no grey there.

Only by breaking through the code of silence in cycling, the "omertà,"  and getting those who had made bad choices to acknowledge them -- that, from the start, has always been USADA's ambition.

The document made public Wednesday marks a major step forward.

To be clear, none of the evidence detailed by USADA was obtained by the U.S. grand jury inquiry in Los Angeles involving Armstrong that was closed in February without the filing of any charges. Again -- none. USADA said Wednesday it had asked for copies of non-grand jury evidence but has gotten nothing.

Instead, it said, after that inquiry closed it launched its own and came to an unequivocal conclusion:

"… Lance Armstrong and his handlers engaged in a massive and long running scheme to use drugs, cover their tracks, intimidate witnesses, tarnish reputations, lie to hearing panels and the press and do whatever was necessary to conceal the truth."

The evidence against Armstrong, USADA emphasized, is "beyond strong; it is as strong as, or stronger than, that presented in any case" in USADA's 12-year existence.

USADA got to that point by offering everyone the same proposition:

Cycling has a doping problem. Meet with us. Change the culture. Be part of the solution.

Others took them up on that offer: Frankie Andreu, Michael Barry, Tom Danielson, Tyler Hamilton, George Hincapie, Floyd Landis, Levi Leipheimer, Stephen Swart, Christian Vande Velde, Jonathan Vaughters, David Zabriskie.

Armstrong did not.

The level of detail in the USADA document can be astonishing.

In 1999, Hamilton told USADA, Armstrong won the Tour by using the banned blood-booster EPO "every third or fourth day."

In 2000, with rumors of a new test for EPO abounding, Hamilton said that 500 cc's of blood taken out earlier that year at a hotel in Valencia, Spain, went back in on the evening of Tuesday, July 11, in the Hôtel l’Esplan in Saint-Paul-Trois- Châteaux near Mount Ventoux; Hamilton said that he, Kevin Livingston and Armstrong -- the three best hill-climbers on the team and thus the three who were getting the transfusions -- "joked about whose body was absorbing the blood the fastest.”

Hincapie, meanwhile, is a five-time Olympian, long considered Armstrong's most trusted lieutenant, the only rider with Armstrong on all seven of Armstrong's winning Tour teams from 1999-2005.

USADA said Hincapie testified that he was aware of Armstrong's use of the blood-booster EPO and blood transfusions; that Armstrong provided EPO to him, Hincapie, for his own use; that Hincapie, like Armstrong, was a client of the Italian Dr. Michele Ferrari, who incorporated EPO and blood-doping into Hincapie's training program.

On his own website, Hincapie issued a statement that said he had doped but been clean since 2006. Two years ago, he said, he had been approached by U.S. federal investigators; more recently, by USADA. He said he "understood that I was obligated to tell the truth about everything that I knew. So that is what I did."

Ferrari is blandly described in the document as a "consultant" to pro cyclists.

The evidence, according to USADA, further includes banking and accounting records from a Swiss company controlled by Ferrari reflecting more than $1 million in payments by Armstrong; extensive e-mails back and forth between Ferrari and his son and Armstrong during a time period when Armstrong claimed not to be in touch; and a "vast amount of additional data," including lab test results and expert analysis of Armstrong's blood work.

Vande Velde, in a statement on his website posted Wednesday, said, "Ironically, I never won while doping. I was more or less treading water. This does not make it OK. I saw the line and I crossed it, myself. I am deeply sorry for the decisions I made in the past -- to my family, my fans, my peers, to the sport that I love and those in and out of it -- I'm sorry. I always will be."

Barry, in a statement posted Wednesday on his site, said, "As a boy, my dream was to become a professional cyclist who raced at the highest level in Europe." He signed his first contract with the U.S. Postal team in 2002: "Soon after I realized reality was not what I had dreamed. Doping had become an epidemic problem in professional cycling."

He went on to say that he doped, that he regretted it and that in 2006 he became a "proponent of clean cycling," adding, "I apologize to those I deceived … I will work hard to regain people's trust."

It would have been unthinkable to see such confessions made public even just weeks ago -- before USADA's case against Armstrong.

The USADA document released Wednesday, formally called a "reasoned decision," runs to more than 200 pages. It will be further dissected, and appropriately, in the days and weeks to come.

What matters most is that it's out there. As it says on page five: "It is important that facts relating to doping not be hidden from public view so that there is confidence in case outcomes and sport can learn from each case."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reedie to lead IOC 2020 evaluation

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

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

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

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

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

He has been an IOC executive board member since 2009.

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

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

The eight others on the evaluation commission:

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

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

All of this is normal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brad Snyder sees what is possible

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

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

Lance Armstrong drops this fight

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But this is not about cancer.

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

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

But just pause for a moment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Would there have been FedEx tracking numbers?

Pharmaceutical trial medicines?

Swiss bank account receipts?

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

This is the gut question, really.

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

Not just PR-wise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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