ESPN Olympic Sports

In the early 1990s, snowboarder Chris Klug was diagnosed with primary sclerosing cholangitis, a life-threatening disease that led to the death of his boyhood hero, Walter Payton. But it took years for Klug to finally receive the liver transplant that saved his life.

"I was on a waiting list six years, and in critical stage for three months," Klug recalled. "It was the most difficult part of my life -- being on a waiting list, hoping and praying and not knowing what would happen.

"I was just hanging on. It was such a tough place to be. Each week and month that passes, you're weaker and weaker. I hadn't given up hope, but I was thinking, 'Will I die on this waiting list?'"

Klug did not die. He received a transplant in July of 2000 and recovered so quickly he was back on a bike within a week. Even more impressively, he won a bronze medal in snowboarding less than two years later at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Today, he says, he is healthier and stronger than he ever was.

Unfortunately, not everyone who needs an organ transplant is so fortunate. There are more than 115,000 people currently awaiting transplants in the United States, according to David Fleming, the CEO of Donate Life America. And approximately 6,500 will die each year while waiting for the transplant that will never come.

"We just don't have organs available,'' Fleming said.

Klug wants to help change that, so he's working to get the word out. April was national organ donor awareness month, and Klug and Fleming want to get more people on the donor list. The more on the list, the more organs that will become available and the more people who will live. Fleming says the majority of Americans support organ donation but that not all of them take the necessary step of signing themselves up as potential donors.

"Support is very high -- the challenge is that a lot of people postpone their decision to donate an organ,'' he said. "A lot of people think you need a driver's license. You don't. Just go to donatelife.net.''

Klug competed in three Olympics -- 1998 in Nagano, 2002 in Salt Lake and 2010 in Vancouver, where he finished seventh. He retired after the 2010 Games.

"My story speaks to the fact that transplants are mainstream,'' Klug said. "I had a pretty speedy recovery. Obviously, I'm alive today because of an organ donor that said yes. They're the real heroes of my progress.''

Veteran Christian Vande Velde is one of three Garmin-Sharp riders who will start this week's Tour of Catalunya in Spain, their first race since serving doping suspensions that were reduced in exchange for cooperation with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency's case against Lance Armstrong. Vande Velde, 36, of Lemont, Ill., signed with the U.S. Postal Service team before the 1998 season and rode in support of Armstrong at the Tour de France in 1999 and 2001. He subsequently competed for two European-based teams before joining the Garmin organization in 2008, and finished fourth at that year's Tour.

In 2010, Vande Velde was among numerous witnesses interviewed by federal investigators then gathering evidence in a criminal investigation of organized doping on the Postal team. Last year, he and 10 other former Postal riders gave sworn testimony, including their own admissions to performance-enhancing drug use, that collectively formed a crucial and compelling part of USADA's case.

The five riders who were active at the time received six-month suspensions and had some past results nullified. Armstrong's longtime teammate George Hincapie has retired. Levi Leipheimer was fired by his Omega-Pharma-Quick Step team and remains unsigned. Vande Velde, David Zabriskie and Tom Danielson, whose suspensions ended March 1, will compete at Cataluyna this week. It marks the beginning of what Vande Velde says will be his final professional season. His tentative schedule includes the Giro d'Italia, the Tour de France and the USA Pro Cycling Challenge in Colorado, a race he won last year in dramatic fashion in a time trial on the last day.

Vande Velde spent much of his suspension in suburban Chicago with wife Leah and daughters Uma, 5, and Madeline, 4. He also trained by himself (and occasionally with Zabriskie) in Southern California, where he struggled emotionally. "It finally dawned on me that I really enjoy this, and I'm really thankful I have my health and have the opportunity to race at the highest level cycling has to offer,'" he told ESPN.com in a telephone interview Saturday from Girona, Spain.

"I don't want pity from anyone. That's my biggest fear of saying these kinds of things, and that is the farthest thing from the truth. I'm just saying what I was going through. There were plenty of times when I questioned what I was doing at this stage of my career and why I was doing this. I definitely stumbled for a while there."

The following are excerpts from Vande Velde's conversation with ESPN.com.

What have the last six months been like?

It's been hard. I'm not going to lie. And I didn't foresee a lot of the things that would be hard. Like, for example, a training camp in November-December that a lot of times I didn't want to go to. I've been at a training camp at that point in time for the last 20 years of my life. Having that gaping hole there and not being retired, it blindsided me. I know I'm going to race this year, that'll come, and I wasn't freaking out about that. But it was definitely being away from the team, having that communication like I always have, that was hard, much more than I thought it would be.

I put myself out there and did quite a few public speaking [engagements] and it was all met really well. I was happy to do it, too, because there aren't too many questions I get asked now that I can't answer honestly. [Editor's note: USADA still has pending cases against former Postal director Johan Bruyneel and other staff members that could involve evidence from riders.] I enjoyed it, and I think most of the people I spoke to enjoyed it too. That was a different side that I didn't foresee being so positive.

I spoke to the Challenged Athletes Foundation [charity ride] three or four days after [USADA's evidence] was announced. That was one that I was pretty scared about, in all honesty. Of course people threw some hard questions out there and I addressed them. I definitely made it so that I wasn't that elephant in the room: "Come up and ask me, I don't want you to be avoiding me.'"

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LONDON, Ontario -- American pairs skaters are surely tired of being asked when U.S. pairs are going to pull out of their long tailspin on the international scene -- a slide at least partly attributable to the musical-chairs transiency among teams in recent years.

Friday, after making a notably strong statement for a new tandem at the world championships, Alexa Scimeca had an equally strong answer about the staying power she expects of herself and partner Chris Knierim.

"We're in it forever," said Scimeca. "You can quote me on that."

Scimeca and Knierim, together for less than a year, earned a personal best score of 117.78 points for their free skate, set to music from the soundtrack of "Life is Beautiful." Their total score of 173.51 placed them ninth, and that finish, combined with a 13th place from Boston-based Marissa Castelli and Simon Shnapir, guaranteed the United States two entries in the discipline at next year's Olympic Games. (Combined placement of 28 or better was required.)

Scimeca two-footed her landing on an early throw triple-flip jump, but the pair received high marks for their opening triple-twist lift and other elements, including the dramatic death spiral.

"We got everything we went for," Knierim said. "We felt really good out there -- calm, relaxed, another day at the office."

Scimeca and Knierim are both skilled skaters who are well-matched physically on the ice and exude chemistry that appears to be nourished by their romantic relationship outside the rink. He gently kissed her forehead before releasing her from their program-ending clutch, and she made sure she'd wiped the last trace of lipstick from his cheek before they faced reporters and cameras in the bowels of the Budweiser Gardens arena.

Knierim said they haven't had any problems making sure what happens at home stays at home, and Scimeca added that their open channel of communication complements their training. "We can say to each other, 'I'm not feeling good today, don't take it personally.'"

Their coach Dalilah Sappenfield also works with U.S. pair Caydee Denney and John Coughlin, who are in their second season together and opted out of worlds as Coughlin continues to recover from hip surgery.

"Teams want quick success without [putting in] the time behind it," said Sappenfield, whose training group works in Colorado Springs. "It takes a good team three or four years to jell, and my teams are finally understanding that concept."

Castelli and Shnapir, skating first out of 16 pairs Friday, weren't crazy about their free skate score of 108.32, well under their season's best of 117.04. But they, too, said they're committed to the long haul after nearly breaking up a year ago. Their coach Bobby Martin told icenetwork.com earlier this month it was only the latest of "at least nine times, and maybe more, that one or the other was standing on a cliff, ready to jump."

Shnapir said longevity is going to be the key to any eventual U.S. renaissance in pairs -- "Decades [together], not single digits."

Kyoko Ina and John Zimmerman's bronze medal in 2002 was the last podium appearance for a U.S. team at the world championships. Jenni Meno and Todd Sand won a world silver and two bronze medals in the mid-to-late '90s, and Americans have been shut out of Olympic medals in the discipline since 1988, when Jill Watson and Peter Oppegard finished third.

LONDON, Ontario -- The gap that opened up between the world's top two ice dancing teams Thursday night is more like an abyss. Credit near-flawless execution by the U.S. team of Meryl Davis and Charlie White on a night when Canada's favorite son and daughter Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue were not completely in synch.

The Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Davis and White whirled through a precise, dynamic short dance that White called "one of those dream skates." They earned a whopping 77.12 points, tops in the short three-year history of the short dance, an amalgam of the former compulsory dance and original dance competitions.

Canada's defending Olympic and world champions Moir and Virtue, performing not only in their home country but also their hometown, were undone by a botched twizzle (side by side traveling spins) and a couple of other missteps and will be 3.25 points behind going into Saturday's free dance -- a margin that is fair to call insurmountable unless something strange happens.

"That was not only our season's best result, we felt it was our season's best skate," said a clearly elated White, half of the tandem paired in childhood that won the 2010 Olympic silver medal and 2011 world title. "We feel different than we did two years ago, in a good way. Our confidence is as high as it's ever been."

Excellence has become routine for both of these teams, so it was interesting to see Davis and White exceed their own high standard and jarring to watch Virtue go badly off course during the twizzle -- prompting an audible gasp from the section of seats where teams from several countries were watching following their own programs. (All of the teams competed to some combination of polka and waltz music, with some, including Davis and White, adding a march segment.)

Moir and Virtue wore brave faces afterwards, but it would have been hard for them to convince anyone they were in the vicinity of satisfied. "We find ourselves in a little bit of a hole, but hopefully it's not over yet," said Moir, who was quick to shoulder some of the responsibility for their score of 73.87. "It wasn't just the twizzle, although that's the easiest thing to point to. The way we do our twizzle, it's tricky. We cover a lot of ice. It takes a millisecond to get out of control."

The Canadians certainly are accustomed to home pressure, having endured the highest form of it at the 2010 Vancouver Games. But the intimate confines of Budweiser Gardens presented a different kind of stress. Both Moir and Virtue were born in London and first trained together in nearby Ilderton. Asked if they could recognize faces in the seats, Moir said, "We try not to. We could recognize a face in every row if we wanted to."

LONDON, Ontario -- Dizzying best describes the past year for U.S. pair Alexa Scimeca and Chris Knierim, whose impressive unison spins helped them keep their equilibrium in the short program at the world figure skating championships Wednesday. They finished 12th out of 18 pairs in their worlds debut with a score of 55.73 points. Fellow Americans Marissa Castelli and Simon Shnapir are just behind them with 55.68 points.

Scimeca, 21, of Addison, Ill., and Knierim, 25, who grew up in San Diego, are an upstart team who began working together just 11 months ago, matched up by coach Dalilah Sappenfield at the Colorado Springs World Arena. The athletic partnership quickly blossomed into a romantic one, as well.

"I don't really recommend it, but they are [an off-ice couple]," Sappenfield told reporters, laughing. "They're adults, they're not little kids, so I have no problem with it ... what happens in the rink, they don't take it home. They're very good about that."

Their bond may have worked to their advantage in the intense environment of a world championships -- a trip that was far from a sure thing after their second-place finish at nationals in January. "I told them to stay focused and connected with each other, because they find comfort in each other," Sappenfield said.

Boston-based Castelli, 22, and Shnapir, 25 won in Omaha to secure a spot on the world team. 2012 U.S. champions Caydee Denney and John Coughlin, who are also part of Sappenfield's Colorado Springs group, did not compete at nationals as Coughlin was still recovering from hip surgery, but successfully petitioned to be named to the world team based on past results.

However, in mid-February, Denney and Coughlin elected not to go to worlds so Coughlin can "heal correctly," in Sappenfield's words, and focus on an Olympic bid in 2014.

Scimeca and Knierim said they trained all along as if they were sure things rather than first alternates. They've drilled spin technique, a previous weak link, in four sessions with specialty coach Janet Champion over the past few weeks.

"It's paying off really well," Scimeca said. "She's given us both different things that we've never really looked at before. We try really hard to match each other's fly and sit positions. We were both shocked by how different things were."

Scimeca said she has had to "train smart" because of a bone bruise and tendonitis in her right foot that forced the pair to withdraw from last month's Four Continents event, but the condition has largely cleared up in the past two weeks.

Castelli and Shnapir recovered well from Shnapir's fall on side-by-side triple Salchows when he launched her into a huge throw triple Salchow.

"It wasn't our best. I definitely think we can do better and we will do better," Castelli said of the program, also their first at a world championships.

Both stressed they're competing here for experience and trying not to dwell too much on placement. "We know it's worlds, but we do our best to ignore the signs," Shnapir said, gesturing toward the hard-to-miss championship logo-laden backdrop behind him.

The months since the London Olympics have been an endurance event in and of themselves for triathlete Sarah Groff, the 2011 world championships series bronze medalist who just missed placing in the top three at the Summer Games.

She struggled for equilibrium after finishing an achingly close fourth and decided to make some changes for this season, and beyond, to try to put herself in podium contention for Rio 2016. Groff, a 31-year-old native of Cooperstown, N.Y. and graduate of Middlebury (Vt.) College, is currently training with an international group under the aegis of Canadian coach Joel Filliol.

She opened 2013 by entering a race she had always yearned to do -- the punishing Escape From Alcatraz triathlon, rescheduled this year from June back to March to accommodate the upcoming America's Cup sailing competition. Fighting through a self-inflicted head injury and the aftereffects of food poisoning, Groff was overtaken by eventual winner Heather Jackson in the late going and finished second.

Groff is based outside Hanover, N.H., with her boyfriend, distance runner Ben True, but spoke to ESPN.com by telephone this week from Clermont, Fla., where she is getting in some warm-weather training. These are excerpts from that conversation:

Question from Bonnie D. Ford: How did you go about processing that fourth-place finish at the Olympics and structuring the rest of your season?

Answer from Groff: What I didn't expect -- other athletes always talk about how amazing the experience of going to the Olympics is, the whole village experience and the cool swag and meeting all the other athletes, but they don't really warn you about what happens after the Games. There's this tremendous buildup where for years we're focused on one thing, and then I finished fourth, which adds a whole other level to it. It's probably pretty common; I got pretty severely depressed for a while. I went through the motions, did a couple more races. I would say I'm just starting to gain momentum back. But, for whatever reason, athletes just don't talk about it.

I did [turn to] a fellow triathlete, Greg Bennett, who was on the Australian Olympic team in 2004, and his wife Laura was on the U.S. team in 2008, and they both finished fourth. So if anybody's going to know what it's like after that, it's going to be them. Greg told me pretty much right after the race, "Listen, Sarah, even now to this day, I'll be lying in bed, replaying the race, thinking about what I could have done differently."

He's absolutely right. It's going to stay with me for a while. It's both the best achievement of my life and also one of those moments where you can't help but wonder what could have been if you'd approached things differently, and I think it has the potential to make me a better athlete. There's so much that can go wrong at the Games, and I've just been trying to turn it around and think about everything I did right to finish fourth, because obviously it's a great result.

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Sounds counterintuitive, but Emily Brunemann had to move back to a cold-weather climate to regain her confidence in open water swimming.

Brunemann, 26, won 10-kilometer races in Brazil and Argentina in late January and early February to open up the 2013 season and rebound from a subpar year that cost her U.S. national team status.

She chalks up her recent success to a homecoming. Last fall, Brunemann left southern California and returned to Ann Arbor, where she'd been a five-time All-American at the University of Michigan. There, she joined the Club Wolverine elite training group that includes Olympic 200-meter backstroke gold medalist Tyler Clary and butterfly specialist Wu Peng of China.

Brunemann slipped back into workouts run by Michigan associate coach and distance guru Josh White and is also putting in volunteer coaching time with the Michigan women's team. She feels like part of a community again, a welcome change from what was mostly solo training under the aegis of the now-disbanded elite FAST program in Fullerton, Calif.

"I'm a big fan of having balance in my life, and not having something else to offset swimming was more stressful than I anticipated," said Brunemann, a Kentucky native.

In the Jan. 27 10K race in Santos, Brazil, Brunemann pushed the pace and finished a comfortable 30 seconds ahead of fellow American Eva Fabian. She stayed with the pack and outsprinted Ana Marcela Cunha of Brazil a week later down the stretch in Viedma, Argentina to win by four seconds.

As is typical of the open water circuit, the two races, both established World Cup events, featured very different conditions. Santos was held in a bay within sight of a working harbor, while the course in Viedma was on a river with considerable current. White said the fact that Brunemann won two races that required such different tactics is very encouraging. The 10K is increasingly becoming the province of fast "milers" who transition from the pool rather than grinders, and White said Brunemann is poised to excel both because of her athletic ability and her maturity.

"She's really grown a lot in terms of her perspective, how the sport fits into her life," the coach said. "She's allowed herself not to live and die by the sport."

Water temperature, which has preoccupied swimmers and coaches since Fran Crippen drowned in sweltering conditions at a race in the United Arab Emirates in October 2010, wasn't an issue on the South American swing thanks to temperate weather. Brunemann said the number of safety craft on the courses appears to have been ramped up since the tragedy.

But she, like many other open water swimmers, still feels athletes will need to stay vigilant and keep pressure on officials. The current international ceiling of 31 degrees Celsius (87.8 Fahrenheit) is considered too high by many swimmers.

"I do see more boats and kayaks on the courses," Brunemann said. "But I still don't know if they take water temperature seriously."

The fallout after Crippen's death also prompted international officials to mandate that each open water swimmer is accompanied by a coach at elite events. Previously, it was not unusual for one coach to be responsible for "feeding" multiple swimmers, extending cups or squeeze bottles with liquid nourishment from floating docks on the course. The rule is meant to help ensure that heads are counted on each lap and swimmers have ample opportunity to hydrate.

The U.S. national team provides staff support for swimmers on the roster, but athletes like Brunemann who are trying to work their way back have to pay for their own travel and coaching.

"I'm figuring it out," said Brunemann, who brought her father along to serve as coach in one race and had former Michigan swimmer San Wensman with her for the other. "I'm fortunate that my parents believe in what I'm doing, and they're giving me financial help. It's not easy." Brunemann is hoping to regain her national team status by finishing in the top six at the U.S. championships in May at Castaic Lake north of Los Angeles.

Brunemann is no stranger to the podium at 10K races. She won two events in Asia in 2011. And she's also familiar with setbacks. She served a six-month suspension in 2008-09 after her out-of-competition urine sample tested positive for a banned diuretic. The arbitration panel that heard her case stated in a strongly-worded ruling that Brunemann had no intention to cheat, but had to be sanctioned under the rules for the "unfortunate mistake" of taking one of her mother's prescription pills she thought was a laxative. Brunemann missed an entire NCAA season as a result.

She had a lot of time to think about how to use her talent during the imposed layoff, and began competing in open water events shortly after her return. She's not about to call the whole interlude a blessing, but it "opened my eyes... I don't know that I would have gotten into open water when I did if it hadn't happened. It made me realize how easily a career can be taken away."

Mike Krzyzewski talks about why he will not coach Team USA for the world championships:

USA Hockey on Monday released the names of the 28 players who were invited to next month's U.S. women's national team training camp.

The camp, which will take place March 25-31 at the Olympic Center in Lake Placid, N.Y., will help determine the final U.S. roster for the IIHF Women's World Championship (April 2-9 in Ottawa).

Here is complete training camp roster, which includes 12 Olympians:

Forwards

Kelly Babstock
Alex Carpenter
Julie Chu
Kendall Coyne
Brianna Decker
Meghan Duggan
Sarah Erickson
Lyndsey Fry
Amanda Kessel
Hilary Knight
Jocelyne Lamoureux
Monique Lamoureux
Jen Schoullis
Haley Skarupa
Kelley Steadman

Defensemen

Kacey Bellamy
Megan Bozek
Caitlin Cahow
Lisa Chesson
Jincy Dunne
Alyssa Gagliardi
Gigi Marvin
Michelle Picard
Anne Schleper
Lee Stecklein

Goaltenders

Brianne McLaughlin
Alex Rigsby
Jessie Vetter

Vonetta Flowers became the first African-American bobsledder from any country to win a gold medal in the Winter Olympics when she and Jill Bakken topped the podium at the 2002 Salt Lake Games. And the current U.S. women's bobsled team diversity reflects her legacy.

"It's pretty cool we're talking about how diverse the team is," 2010 Olympic bronze medalist Elana Meyers said recently while training at the test event for the 2014 Games outside Sochi. "We all started from Flowers. That's when most women started hearing about it, from Vonetta, with all the hype centered around her incredible accomplishment. Starting out there and following in her footsteps is pretty cool."

The 2012-13 World Cup team has seven black athletes: drivers Meyers and Jazmine Fenlator, plus brakemen Tianna Madison Bartoletta (a London 2012 gold medalist in the 4x100), Lolo Jones (a two-time Olympic hurdler), Aja Evans, Cherrelle Garrett and Maureen Ajoku. Driver Jamie Greubel and brakemen Katie Eberling and Emily Azevedo are white. (There are also two African-Americans on the men's bobsled team.)

"It really was just a matter of looking for the best athletes," Meyers said. "It wasn't something we really even thought about until the media started asking about us about it. As a driver, I'm just trying to get the fastest pusher possible because I know that's going to put me in the best possible position to get a medal.

"It doesn't matter where you come from; there's no concern whether we're diverse or not -- we're just going for the fastest pushers possible."

Meyers played a big part in the recruiting process. She suggested that Jones give bobsled a try several years ago and said she recruited others by sending out Facebook messages to as many athletes as she could find on the National Strength and Conditioning Association's list of All-Americans.

One of those who responded to the Facebook message was Eberling, a former volleyball player who was student-teaching. "It was an unusual way to get into a sport," Eberling said. "The first time I read it, I thought, 'This has got to be a joke.' Then I called my mom and read it to her and we laughed about it, but the more I read through it, and then actually talked to Elana, that's when I took it more seriously and realized this was a huge opportunity."

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UFC light heavyweight and former Olympic wrestler Dan Henderson talks about the impact the loss of Olympic wrestling will have on MMA, and beyond.

I am still wrestling with the IOC's shocking and inexplicable decision to drop wrestling from the Summer Olympics while preserving the modern pentathlon (which was expected to get the boot). Wrestling is a sport that is popular worldwide. It goes all the way back to the ancient Games and is even mentioned in the book of Genesis (Jacob wrestles all night with the angel of the Lord).

The modern pentathlon, meanwhile, consists of five events that most people could not name even if Regis gave them a lifeline and a smartphone.

Dropping an inexpensive, global sport that has always been in the Olympics is more of an inexcusable travesty than the London mascots. Here are five obscure/ridiculous sports the IOC should drop instead to get wrestling back on the Olympic roster:

Equestrian: This is an elite sport that requires the backing of such enormous private wealth that I don't think they can afford it even at "Downton Abbey." Despite the presence of Bruce Springsteen's daughter, this is truly the sport of kings. And queens (Queen Elizabeth's granddaughter Zara Phillips competed in London and won a silver medal). Maybe equestrian might hold some appeal to the 99 percenters if we could bet a $2 trifecta on the medal winners, but, until then, I would much rather see the likes of Rulon Gardner and Alexander Karelin battling it out on the mats.

Synchronized swimming: Look, I respect synchronized swimmers. I've even tried the sport. It's hard. It's athletic. But I'm sorry, no one can take this sport seriously after this "Saturday Night Live" parody. It has been 25 years since that spoof aired and it's still the first thing people think of when they hear the words "synchronized swimming."

Trampoline: I've covered 10 Olympics on four continents. I've written on just about every medal event there is. And this is still easily the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen at the Games, with the possible exception of letting George Michael sing two songs at the 2012 London closing ceremonies. When I saw trampoline for the first time, I kept expecting to see an angry father rush in and yell at the kids to stop jumping up and down or they'll break the mattress. Which, frankly, would have improved this event considerably.

Pingpong: Yeah, I know it's called table tennis. But anything you play in your parents' basement can hardly be considered a sport more worthy of the Olympics than wrestling.

Modern pentathlon: The only reason this event exists is that Olympic founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin created it. For the record, the events in the modern pentathlon are laser-pistol shooting, fencing, show-jumping, a 3-kilometer cross country run and a 200-meter swim. In other words, it combines arcade games, very expensive horse riding, a run too short to adequately test endurance and a swimming event that does not include Michael Phelps. Not only does no one want to watch this, but no one wants to compete in it, either. I mean, have you ever met a modern pentathlete? Have you ever gone to a modern pentathlon? Does your high school or college offer modern pentathlon? Of course not. Which is why the modern pentathlon should be dropped and wrestling reinstated.

This whole matter could be solved to everyone's satisfaction by simply replacing the modern pentathlon with the ancient pentathlon that was in the original Olympics B.C. That's because the ancient pentathlon consisted of the long jump, javelin, discus, a foot race and, yes, wrestling.

While Sochi organizers have promised snow will be on the ground despite warn temps in the coastal town (on Thursday, it was 66 degrees there and 59 in the mountains), one thing we can say for sure: The venues for the 2014 Winter Olympics will be there.

Here's a look at some of the locales you'll see next year:

Shayba Arena

The Shayba Arena will host ice hockey games and is in close proximity to other ice skating venues. Capacity: 7,000.

Fisht Olympic Stadium

The Olympic Stadium will host the opening and closing ceremonies, and most medal ceremonies. Capacity: 40,000.

'Ice Cube' Curling Center

You guessed it -- curling competitions will be held here. The venue is in the center of the "Coastal Cluster," where all of the ice-based venues are located. Capacity: 3,000.

Bolshoy Ice Dome

The ice hockey venue is said to be modeled after a "frozen water drop," but spectators may think it resembles a disco dance floor when they see the roof light up in multiple colors at night. Capacity: 12,000.

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Lindsey Vonn made her first comments today since suffering a season-ending knee injury Tuesday at the World Championships:

"First off, I want to say thank you to the amazing medical staff that cared for me," Vonn said in a statement released Wednesday by the U.S. Ski Team. "I plan on returning to Vail as soon as I can to have the necessary surgeries. I am also grateful to my fans for the outpouring of support, which has really helped me stay positive. I can assure you that I will work as hard as humanly possible to be ready to represent my country next year in Sochi."

Vonn was also released today from the hospital in Schladming, Austria, where she was treated and evaluated immediately after Tuesday's crash.

ESPN's Stephania Bell discusses Vonn's knee injury and her chances of recovering in time for the 2014 Winter Olympics here:

Gold medalist Dan O'Brien is competing in the decathlon again.

Well, not the decathlon. He won Olympic gold in that event at the 1996 Atlanta Games, and at age 46, he is now a little past his prime. But he will compete in a decathlon. To be specific, he's competing in this summer's RBC Decathlon, the annual charity competition among Wall Street employees that benefits the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

So how does an Olympic gold medalist feel about competing against stock advisors, hedge fund managers and other Wall Street employees?

"I'm sure that once I get close to the competition, I'll feel nervous because you're pushing yourself," O'Brien said. "That's what I like about the event. It's the challenge. It gives everyone a long-term goal. When you train for the Olympics, that's all you can do. You can't go to work, you can't have a part-time job. But these guys are doing it on the side. ...

"I don't take anything lightly. If I'm going to compete, I'm going to take it seriously. As an athlete, you don't want to underperform."

Donations are raised through CharityBets, a performance-based fundraising program developed by RBC Decathlon organizers Dave Maloney and Marc Hodulich. The concept is simple. You can either make a simple set donation or make a sliding donation based on the performance of the competitor on whom you bet. The good thing is, regardless of how your bets goes, charity always wins.

"I've been known to gamble a bit from time to time," O'Brien said of the event's appeal. "The program he's developed makes sense to me. It's a good fit for these guys. They are guys with disposable income, they're mature and well-muscled. They're doing it for the fun of it, but they're also doing it for the charity. I'm honored that Dave would want me to be the face of the decathlon."

"Dan's participation opens up a world of charity-betting possibilities and will dramatically increase spectators who take a keen interest in his performance," Maloney said. "He's also still a role model to much of the financial services community, so Dan's presence will certainly stoke the competitive spirit among participants."

The Olympic decathlon takes place over two days, while the RBC Decathlon is a one-day competition at Wien Field on the Columbia University campus July 27. The RBC Decathlon is a combination of an actual decathlon and a football combine. The 10 events are the 400-meter run, football throw, dips, 40-yard dash, 500-meter stationary row, five-cone drill, pull-ups, vertical jump, bench press and 800-meter run.

O'Brien said he is confident he can hold his own in the pull-up and vertical jump competitions, but he expressed concern about the 400 and 800 runs. One, some back pain issues have restricted his running in recent years, and two, everyone hates the 400- and 800-meter lengths.

"Even as a former athlete, those are two events you don't want to do," he said. "Put me in a 5K or let me run a 40, but don't put me in the middle-distance races. To run a good 400 or a good 800, you have to train."

Not that O'Brien ever minds that; in fact, he said he preferred training to competing.

"Ultimately, what it came down to was that I loved my job," he said. "I liked getting up every day and working toward my goal."

For more information about the RBC Decathlon and this year's inaugural Wall Street mile run, go to thedecathlon.org.