ESPN Olympic Sports

Some of the most striking images from the 2012 Summer Games are sure to come from the beach volleyball venue at Horse Guards Parade in central London. The sand-spikers will take over a patch of earth surrounded by grand government buildings best known for the annual Trooping of the Colour, where soldiers mark the Queen's birthday.

Defending Olympic gold medalists Phil Dalhausser and Todd Rogers plan to warm up by playing at a world-famous horse track.

Dalhausser and Rogers are part of a 16-team men's field in the season-opening event for the National Volleyball League on Friday and Saturday. Men's and women's teams competed Friday at Baltimore Beach on the Inner Harbor. Teams that advanced to the semifinals will be part of the infield festival at Pimlico Race Course on Saturday as the day's card builds to the second jewel of the Triple Crown, the Preakness Stakes.

The juxtaposition may seem odd, but in a phone interview Thursday, Rogers said playing at Pimlico "ranks highly on the scale of coolness." That needs to be taken seriously, since the 38-year-old has played on some of the most picturesque beaches on the planet.

Dalhausser said Pimlico will definitely rate as one of his top five venues.

"Obviously, we're kind of a sideshow, but it'll expose some people to the sport," he said -- and he expects London to take over at No. 1. "The women had a test event there last year, and the American team could not stop talking about what a cool spot it was."

Rogers and Dalhausser, 32, will defend their title in London in what is almost certainly their last Olympics together. They've been the best team in the world since joining forces in 2007, but Rogers, married with two young daughters, said it's time for him to get off the road. He is leaning toward playing the 2013 season and then pursuing his interest in coaching, tournament promotion or perhaps a business outside the sport, although he said he "can't imagine being totally out of it."

Dalhausser said he'll stick with Rogers until his partner retires. "Dumping him at this point would be a heartless thing to do, and he's still a great player, so it would be a stupid thing to do on the court as well," he said.

Both expect this Olympics to be easier to navigate. From the moment Dalhausser and Rogers lined up for the Opening Ceremony in hot, humid Beijing, they found the tournament draining physically and emotionally in a way they couldn't have expected. They were upset by Latvia in their first match.

"Latvia said they played the best they'd ever played -- thanks for having it against us," Rogers said. "Having the experience of having been there will be key."

Dalhausser said the rhythm of the Olympic tournament, with off-days between matches, "messed with me," giving him too much time to stew about what had happened and what was to come. (In league play, teams generally play every day for four straight days if they keep winning.)

"I'm going to be a bit more relaxed this year," he said. "Whatever we do will be the cherry on top, because we've already accomplished our ultimate career goal."

LOS ANGELES -- Twelve years ago, Heather Petri heard her name announced as a member of the inaugural U.S. women's Olympic water polo team. On Thursday afternoon at the Los Angeles headquarters of the LA84 Foundation, Petri, now 33, heard her name announced for the fourth consecutive time, making her one of two women on the 2012 squad who is heading to London to compete in her fourth-straight Olympic Games.

"The excitement of finding out hasn't worn off," Petri said. "I still get butterflies. I still felt giddy when Coach [Adam Krikorian] told me I'd made the team. I don't ever want to lose that feeling."

Before the Olympic team announcement, LA84 Foundation President and IOC member Anita DeFrantz spoke about her own experience finding out she made the 1976 Olympic rowing team.

"It was so barbaric back then," she said. "They wrote our names on a piece of paper that was tacked to the boathouse. Then we had to select someone willing to go and read the names. This is way cool. It's an honor to look in the eyes of the members of the water polo team as you wear your uniforms for the first time. That's a big deal."

DeFrantz then introduced head coach Krikorian, who took over the program in 2009, less than a year after the team's silver-medal performance in Beijing. He spoke about the emotional week that preceded the announcement and how hard it was to cut the team from 17 to 13. Then he announced each team member's name and asked the women to join him on stage. On the team are eight returning Olympians and three current college students. Petri is the oldest member of the team, while 18-year-old defender Maggie Steffens, sister of defender Jessica Steffens, is the youngest.

"We have such a good blend of young energy and experienced team members who know what the next two months will bring," said Petri, who plans to retire from competitive water polo, along with four-time Olympian Brenda Villa, after London. "In 2000, I didn't understand what I was getting into and the year just flew by me. Now I can soak it all in, take joy in the smallest things and pass along my knowledge to the younger members of the team."

Over the past three years, the U.S. women's team competed in seven major international tournaments and won six of them. The one blemish on its otherwise perfect recent résumé is a sixth-place finish at the 2011 FINA World Championships in Shanghai, which accounts for its current ranking of sixth in the world. "Realistically, I'd say we're more like second or third in the world," Krikorian said. "Australia has proven to have the best competitive record, but Russia and Italy are up there, too."

This year, international competition is so stiff that neither the Netherlands (the 2008 Olympic gold medalists) nor Greece (the team currently ranked No. 1 in the world) qualified for London.

"In the past, it would be easy to target one or two teams as our biggest competition," Krikorian said. "But this year, any one of those eight teams could win. We are the best defensive team in the world. And when we're in sync, we're very tough to beat."

The U.S. team also has as much depth at each position as it ever has.

"With most teams, it's easy to pick out the few superstars and prepare for them," Krikorian said. "You can't do that with us. We are very hard to prepare for because we have 13 women they need to prepare for, every game."

And now, their country knows their names.

DALLAS -- Win an Olympic gold medal and lose once in 59 games, and no one pays attention. Lose a World Cup in the middle of a slow sports summer, and marketers and media knock down the doors.

That's been the upended world of the U.S. women's soccer team in the past four years. The sports world hardly noted the squad that stormed back from an opening-game loss to top the podium in Beijing. "In 2008, we won a gold medal, and there was really no talk about us," midfielder Carli Lloyd said. "It was crazy."

Nor did people pay much attention as Pia Sundhage's team continued an unbeaten streak that lasted until a shocking World Cup qualifier loss to Mexico in November 2010.

Now, though, the U.S. team is in high demand; and thanks to the male under-23 side's failure to qualify for London, it will have the American Olympic soccer stage to itself. Keeper Hope Solo famously competed on "Dancing with the Stars," newcomer Alex Morgan famously donned body paint in Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue, and Abby Wambach belatedly garnered the media recognition that her Hall of Fame career merits.

It all stems from one moment in the World Cup quarterfinal against Brazil last July in Germany, when Wambach's dying-moment goal sent the match to penalty kicks, enabling the U.S. to advance.

"What sold everything was the Brazil game; that was the endorsement game," Lloyd said Tuesday at the Olympic media summit. "That did it for everybody. To have such a dramatic game like that drew so many fans, fans who don't even watch soccer. It's been great."

The thriller commenced a summer soap opera in which the Americans slipped past France in a tight semifinal game and lost a heartbreaker on penalty kicks against Japan in the final, a drama that kept fans glued to the tube and Twitter.

The long-ignored squad was full of overnight celebrities, and they've had staying power.

"We have superstars now," midfielder Lauren Cheney said. "Hope's a superstar. Alex is a superstar. Abby's a superstar. The outside stuff, Vogue magazine, 'Dancing with the Stars,' all of that is awesome."

A year and a half ago, Morgan was a college kid in a dorm room at Cal. Now, she's a marketing machine and an Internet phenomenon. "I have gotten overwhelmed at times," she said. "I've tried to stay level-headed, I've tried to still look to my family and my friends for support. I've really tried to balance my schedule right."

She seems to be handling it. The youngest member of the team has become a regular starter at forward for Sundhage, and her goals have come even more frequently than her endorsement opportunities. (She has 11 goals in eight games.)

"Leading up to the Olympics, I want soccer to be a priority," she said. "I just need to take a step back when I get overwhelmed."

The players say the added attention hasn't created any rifts in the locker room. Quite the contrary.

"Everyone's down-to-earth on our team. No one's got a huge head from what they've done, and it's perfect," Lloyd said. "When we're together, half the time we're not even talking about that stuff. It's been great for our team, great for women and great for women's soccer."

DALLAS -- The United States women's basketball team has won the gold medal in the past four Olympics and six of the past seven. So what would be a bigger shock, for the women or the men to come home without a gold medal from London?

"I'm hoping that enough people are watching what we're doing that if we don't win, they'll be absolutely shocked," U.S. women's coach Geno Auriemma said. "Because you know the majority of the entire world will be watching our men. And I would also venture to say that the majority of the world hopes our men lose. They won't be shocked, they'll be happy. For us, I think the perception is there is no way we can lose and they'll be very, very surprised if we don't win the gold medal."

"I can't necessarily speak for the world," U.S. and former Connecticut forward Maya Moore said, "but I will be shocked if anything less than the gold comes back."

Auriemma said Baylor star Brittney Griner had a good chance of being selected for the final spot on the Olympic squad before she took herself out of the running. Griner announced in a press release that she could not play due to an unspecified family illness and issues with her summer school schedule.

"It is unusual," Auriemma said. "It's hard to put yourself in their shoes, but people have to make a decision based on what is best for them at that point in time. Maybe they come to regret that decision, maybe not. Maybe they get another two, three or four opportunities down the road, maybe not. But for some of these players, this is once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

"For the non-basketball players -- they don't get selected, they have to earn their opportunity. They have to win sprints or win swim meets -- it's not like being a basketball player where you get a phone call, 'Would you like to be on the Olympic team?' You have to commit your whole life and it comes down to one-tenth of a second. Where you've been preparing your whole life for that one moment and it's gone. I think basketball players take it for granted that, 'Oh yeah, as long as I keep playing well, I'll always have a chance to play in the Olympics.' And that's not always the case."

Auriemma will have a very familiar roster given that exactly half of the 12-player roster played for him at UConn: Moore, Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird, Asjha Jones, Swin Cash and Tina Charles.

"With the limited amount of time that we have to prepare, there is a familiarity that has carried over throughout the years," Auriemma said. "More importantly, having 10 of the 12 players from the 2010 world championship team come back and play in the Olympics is more significant than having the six UConn players. Obviously, I have a connection and relationship with the six players from UConn, but getting those 10 players to come back, that's what gives us the edge over some of the other teams."

Auriemma said the top challengers to the U.S. for gold are Australia (which has won the past three silver medals) and Russia, but neither team medaled at the 2010 world championships and Auriemma said that's evidence of how the women's game has grown worldwide. Not that everyone necessarily buys that. One reporter asked Auriemma if the women's game would grow faster if the U.S. wasn't so dominant.

"I get asked that question all the time at UConn," Auriemma said. "I get it a million times. 'Wouldn't it be better if someone other than UConn won the national championship?' Well, we've tried to accommodate that the last few years. We're doing our part to grow the game.

"But when you set a certain standard for excellence and how the game should be played, you are growing the game. You are challenging people to reach that standard, that level. If someone does come along and beats the U.S. in the gold-medal game or any Olympic game, then we will have had a big part in why that happened, in growing the game to that level. That's why we have to get better."

Auriemma stressed that the world is changing rapidly and the days of one country dominating in one sport are either over or close to over. "But we're going to hang on as long as we can, right Maya?"

DALLAS -- Submitted for your approval: a couple of pieces of evidence that the world has changed, just a little, in the past 40 years, on a stage in a hotel ballroom in Dallas.

In the middle of the afternoon, First Lady Michelle Obama championed the cause of a broad-based national fitness initiative in front of a multi-hued contingent of male and female athletes, including Paralympians. That sentence alone says quite a bit about change.

An hour or so later, the coach of the U.S. women's basketball team and a star player compared notes on what the world was like at the inception of Title IX, and how it is now.

Maya Moore, who plays a sport that wasn't in the Olympics 40 years ago and in a professional league that wasn't conceivable back then, dutifully and honestly paid tribute to the law.

"I can't really imagine growing up in a world where someone said, 'No, you can't play basketball because you're female,'" said Moore, the Connecticut alum who followed up her WNBA title season with Minnesota by winning the Spanish and European championships this spring with Ros Casares Valencia.

But coach Geno Auriemma, the much-decorated UConn coach, painted the best picture of progress looks like, or rather, what it sounds like. When Title IX was first implemented, he said, "I was a senior in high school, and my idea of women actually being athletes, female athletes -- that wasn't a word you'd have used back then."

His boys basketball team had to share court time with girls at his suburban Philly Catholic school. "We were just horrified that we had to give up the gym to those girls," he said. "The prevailing thought back then was, 'They're wearing skirts. They're wearing these little pennies,' you know? They're not even athletes. They had their fingernails polished in all different colors, and the idea that people would even think of them as athletes was so foreign, it's incredible."

Now?

"Fast forward to Maya Moore, and the idea that you would think of Maya Moore as anything other than a great athlete is just absurd," he said.

Auriemma offered his son Michael as an example. "Today, my son's 23 and just finished playing in college. If you ever told him that women didn't play basketball and weren't great athletes, as many practices as he went to growing up, he'd say, 'What world do you live in?'"

Auriemma's point is that, for most people under 30, acceptance of Title IX comes as naturally as breathing.

"My perspective on Title IX is, hopefully soon, there comes a time when you stop talking about it," he said. "Because it's ancient history now. We shouldn't forget that history, but we've moved so far. I'm sure there are still fights that have to be fought, but it's time to celebrate the achievements these women make as athletes, not as female athletes. We play basketball, we don't play women's basketball. That's my proudest contribution, I think."

Want to be an Olympic triathlete? All you have to do is follow four-time Olympian Hunter Kemper's daily routine. Warning: Just reading it may require a performance-enhancer. Or some quality time on the couch afterward.

"A typical training day for me is swim practice from 7 to 9," he said. "I swim 5,000 meters or about three miles of swimming."

Swim three miles before breakfast? That can't be easy, but at least his training is over early, right?

"I'll take a little break, eat a big breakfast and go for a run around noon, and run about nine or 10 miles, about an hour of running."

Wait, there's more.

"I'll finish off with a bike ride in the 3-5 o'clock time frame, and that's about 40 miles or two hours of cycling."

Tired yet?

"I'm looking at about a 32-hour work week," Kemper said. "That's 28 hours of pure training, four hours of rehab and core stuff, so a 32-hour work week with about 25,000-30,000 meters of swimming, about 250 miles of cycling and about 60 miles of running a week. And it's usually all three disciplines a day. It's not like I do one sport a day and another sport the next -- it's usually all three, every day. And in that week, I'll do three hard run sessions, three difficult bike sessions and three difficult swim sessions, all staggered on different days."

Freeman qualified for his fourth Olympics by finishing as the top American in the World Triathlon Championships in San Diego on Saturday. He has improved his finish in each Olympics, finishing 17th in 2000, ninth in 2004 and seventh in 2008, when he was dealing with a sports hernia.

DALLAS -- On the topics of the best song to warm up to (Eminem's "Lose Yourself" for 2008 Olympic all-around gold medalist Nastia Liukin; "Boyfriend" by Justin Bieber for 17-year-old Aly Raisman), what college to attend (NYU for Nastia; Stanford or Vanderbilt for 2008 all-around silver medalist Shawn Johnson) or what they're most looking forward to in London, the women vying for a spot on the 2012 U.S. Olympics gymnastics team didn't agree on much. But there was one topic that brought them to a consensus: naming the Olympics team at the end of trials is a good thing.

"It's easier on our bodies to not have the selection camps," said 2011 world champion Jordyn Wieber, who is making her first run at the Olympics. "Doing routines for such a long time can be tough on your body. We'll be able to go to camp and train instead of going to camp to compete. There's a difference. And it will be nice to get it done at trials and know who's on the team."

Unlike in recent years, the five-woman team -- down from six in 2008 and 2004 -- will be named on the final day of trials, which will be held June 28-July 1 in San Jose, Calif., instead of after a post-trials, two-week selection camp held at the Karolyi ranch outside Houston. In 2008, Johnson and Liukin finished 1-2 at trials, were invited to the selection camp and named to the Olympic team with the disclaimer that they still had to prove their readiness during the camps. Instead of spending the weeks between trials and the Olympics tweaking routines, resting, rehabbing injuries and tapering training, the 12 women invited to the selection camp competed for those six spots.

"The selection process in 2008 was the longest, most stressful process of my life, and I felt like I was run into the ground," Johnson said. "After trials, I was like, 'Ahh, I made the team. Oh wait, no I didn't. I still have to compete.' This way, it will preserve me more and hopefully do the same for the entire team. It's one less meet you have to be on your A-game for. If you look back at 2008, our entire team was at its strongest at trials and then we slowly started to break down. I think they learned from 2008, and this time, I think we will peak at the right time."

At the 2008 Games, Chellsie Memmel broke her ankle during training in Beijing. A few days later, Samantha Peszek injured her ankle minutes before the women's qualifier and was able to compete only on the uneven bars. The team was highly favored for the team all-around but finished second to China. The additional mental and physical stress of those selection camps was often cited as a reason for the team's struggles in Beijing.

"This way is better for us for being in our top shape," said Rebecca Bross, who will be competing 10 months after dislocating her kneecap at the Visa Championships in August. "More importance will be placed on trials. I like going out to competitions better than selection camps. At selection camps, it's only us in the gym, but at a meet, you have the whole crowd there and people cheering you on. It's what we're used to doing."

Although the team will be named earlier, the selection process will still be based on subjective measures. The selection committee will choose the team based on a combination of competitive performance, team needs, medal potential, the composite strength of all team members, individual start values, consistency, attitude and competitive readiness.

"They're not just taking the top five in the all-around," Liukin said. "It really is a puzzle, and hopefully they'll pick the best team to win a gold medal. With my two strongest events, bars and beam, I hope I can play a role to help the team, but besides my gymnastics, I have a few things going for me -- but I can't rely on them. That is no way to make an Olympic team. Living in Dallas, everywhere I go, people are like, 'You won the gold medal. You have to make this team.' But that's not how it works. Your past accomplishments don't matter. All that matters is how you perform today."

DALLAS -- At a time when comebacks appear to be all the rage in swimming and the likes of Janet Evans and Brendan Hansen have returned to the pool in the hopes of returning to Olympic glory, there's one man who has decided to stay home. And there's nothing Hansen or anyone else can do about it.

Five-time Olympic gold medalist Aaron Peirsol, widely considered one of the greatest American backstrokers, retired after the 2010 Pan-Pacific Championships in Irvine, Calif. Last year, when the 30-year-old Hansen, a two-time Olympian, decided to return to competition, he called the 28-year-old Peirsol and begged him to come along for the ride. The answer was no.

"I tried," Hansen said Monday at the U.S. Olympic Media Summit. "I told him, 'I've been doing breaststroke off of you in medley relays for the last 10 years. I'd reaaaaaaaaaally like to do it one more time.' But he felt really comfortable with how he left the sport. To say, 'Hey dude, let's go win some medals,' it wasn't a great fit."

If there's anyone who understood, it was Hansen. He left the sport burnt out after Beijing in 2008, convinced he would not swim competitively again. But he rediscovered his passion for the sport by racing in triathlons and last year was convinced by coach Eddie Reese to return to the pool. He's one of the favorites to make the U.S. team in the 100-meter and 200 breaststroke. If he does make the team, Hansen said it will be different without Peirsol there.

"I don't want to say anything about the backstrokers now, but he's a big part of the team," Hansen said. "He'll be missed, but I understand why he left. The sport of swimming is tough on people."

Hansen said he has leaned on two other swimmers in the midst of comebacks, 45-year-old Dara Torres and 36-year-old Jason Lezak, for advice on how to go about competing after the age of 30. It was Torres who insisted the key is being proactive with medical issues and not waiting until a problem arises.

"She told me, 'Don't be like, my shoulder hurts and now I need to go see the doctor,'" Hansen said. "Be proactive. It's a lot more work and you need to take care of yourself, but it's worth it because I've been injury-free going into these Games."

DALLAS -- Four months before trials, Holley Mangold's mother knew her daughter would be heading to London this summer for the Olympics. It had nothing to do with her belief in her daughter's abilities as a competitive weightlifter in the superheavyweight division, but rather her competitiveness in a game of Skee-Ball.

Therese Mangold was floored one night last November when her and Holley butted heads over a friendly Skee-Ball match at an Ohio Dave n' Busters. After mother and daughter tied, Holley snapped, insisting they play again. In that second match, Holley doubled her mom's score.

"My mom was like, 'I can't believe you just did that to your mother," Holley said. "And I'm like, 'Mom, I'm not going to lose to you. And that day she said, 'I knew trials would be fine.' She would say that to me every night. 'Skee-ball -- I know you're going to be great.'"

Originally a prospect for the 2016 Games, Mangold improved her lift totals by more than 70 pounds in the last year and qualified for the U.S. team by finishing second at the trials with a clean-and-jerk lift of 145 kg and a snatch lift of 110 kg. Her performance would have placed her ninth at last year's world championships.

The Skee-Ball tale was just one of many entertaining stories and one-liners that Mangold, the younger sister of Jets center Nick Mangold, shared during the Olympic Media Summit here Sunday. If Mangold finds success in London, she has the personality to become a 5-foot-8, 357-pound media darling at the Games.

She talked about everything from her nightly order at Chipotle (a burrito bowl with a tortilla on the bottom, double rice, double beans and double fajitas, but regular meat because she doesn't want to pay extra), to how cool it was that her brother got to play with Brett Favre. "I really liked telling people that Brett Favre keeps his hands under my brother's butt," she said.

She discussed how she's always been comfortable with her oversized frame and never struggled with issues of body image. And she confessed that every minute of her free time is spent playing Mario Kart.

"Real Mario Kart," she said. "Nintendo 64. Not that new stuff."

Even when the topic was serious, Mangold was entertaining. She admitted she is lifting with a torn meniscus in each knee and torn labrum in her right shoulder. And then she laughed about it.

"I have a beautiful cyst growing out of my torn meniscus," she said. "It looks pretty creepy. There's this giant bump coming out of the side of my knee. But luckily you don't really need a meniscus. You do need a labrum, but it only hurts when I do the lift wrong. So as long as I don't do it wrong, well, I'm good."

DALLAS -- Archery has never been exactly what you would call a big spectator sport in America, but it might get a little more attention at the Olympics thanks to two recent Hollywood blockbusters. First, there was "The Hunger Games," in which young heroine Katniss Everdeen relies on her skills with the bow and arrow. Then, there was "The Avengers," with the archer Hawkeye on the team of superheroes.

"It's been huge for archery," Olympic gold-medal hopeful Brady Ellison said. "I know archery shops across the U.S. are sold out in everything. A lot of my friends who run archery shops say they have to turn people away. It has been huge for us in just the exposure of people wanting to try it. I just hope and pray those people won't just try it and leave. Hopefully we'll get a little percentage of those people shooting competitions with us."

"It's having a dramatic effect on our sport," U.S. archer Jennifer Nichols said. "We've had such an increase in interest as well as spectator base. We're really excited going into the Olympic Games having such an explosion not only in focus on our sport but in effect."

Ellison said he hasn't seen either movie but has viewed clips and Internet postings. "I really want to see 'The Avengers,'" he said. "There's been this post on my Facebook and on different websites comparing my form to Hawkeye's form and the differences. And one of the quotes is, 'Does Hawkeye have the worst archery form in history?'

"Any movie that portrays archery is a good thing, and your average person who doesn't watch archery won't notice the difference, but to every archer who shoots? Movies drive us nuts. 'Robin Hood' with Russell Crowe, he shoots OK. 'The Hunger Games' girl, she looks like a target archer, so that's good. Hawkeye? He's portraying archery, and that's good, but as far as you want to go technically and critique his form? Maybe not the best."

There is a reason Jennifer Lawrence shows good form as Everdeen in "The Hunger Games." She was trained by Olympic medalist Khatuna Lorig. "The form is incredibly similar to the way I shoot," Nichols said.

So could Nichols shoot an apple out of the mouth of a roasted pig amid a crowded dining room? "It would depend on the distance, but I think I could handle that," she said. -- Jim Caple

Steven Lopez and his "Choice"

For all that Steven Lopez has accomplished in taekwondo, winning two Olympic gold medals and five world championships, his younger sister Diana describes his approach to women with one word: "shy." So perhaps that's why it was such a surprise he agreed to participate in the upcoming Fox reality dating show, "The Choice."

The show, which will air this summer, features Lopez, Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski, Rob Kardashian and actor/comedian Finesse Mitchell listening to a group of women who hope to persuade the bachelors to choose them for a date.

"They tell you what you want to hear, and if you like what you hear, you turn the chair around and pick the girl," said Lopez, whom People Magazine dubbed one of America's 50 hottest bachelors in 2004.

Lopez said he was pleased with his choice when he turned around and went on a date with the woman, but nothing materialized. "She lives in New York," the Houston resident said.

All in all, Lopez said it was an entertaining experience that again reminded him how unusual it is to be recognized for his looks as much as his talent.

"It's strange," he said. "I've put my blood, sweat and tears and sacrificed so much to get on top the podium and it's like, 'You're on People's 50 most beautiful bachelors, how does that feel?'"

Added Diana: "He gets mothers who come up to him and they're like, 'Oh, you'd be perfect for my daughter. Can you sign this for me?' It's hilarious." -- Wayne Drehs

DALLAS -- For the better part of 90 minutes here Sunday, Kayla Harrison sat on a podium in front of a group of strangers and tried to keep her composure and control her emotions. But it wasn't easy.

"I have a little bit of adrenaline in me right now," she said. "It's nerve-racking."

In a perfect world, coming to the U.S. Olympic Media Summit would have been no big deal for the promising 21-year-old judo practitioner. She would have talked about becoming the first U.S. woman to win a judo world championship in 26 years and what that means for her chances in London this summer.

But that wasn't what most people wanted to talk about Sunday. Instead, the questions surrounded her decision last November go public with her story of sexual abuse by her former coach. Daniel Doyle is currently serving a 10-year federal prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2007 to engaging in illicit sexual conduct in a foreign place.

"It's something I have to deal with," Harrison said. "This happened to me. It's part of my story, but there's also this big thing called the Olympics that I really want to win."

Harrison decided to come forward and share her story out of a desire to help others who have dealt with sexual abuse. Her story appeared the same week that the Jerry Sandusky scandal broke at Penn State University, which prompted a wide range of emotions. "It lit a fire in me," she said. She admitted Sunday she argued with friends who defended Joe Paterno and found herself sickened by Penn State students who protested Paterno's dismissal.

"Who cares if he loses his job? That's not what this is about," she said. "This is about multiple people losing their lives forever. Seeing kids my age riot and think that's OK ... I just felt like they didn't deserve a college education. What is wrong with you?"

Harrison then took a deep breath. "I'm sorry," she said.

If Harrison has her way, her performance in London will overshadow her emotional personal story. No American has ever won Olympic gold in judo. Harrison is optimistic her work with coaches Jimmy and Big Jim Pedro can help her become the first. She knows accomplishing such a feat would give her an even greater platform to help victims of sexual abuse.

"I want to be able to change someone else's life," she said. "I want to do what the Pedros did for me. I want to be that person. Even if it's only one person."

DALLAS -- Mother's Day carried added meaning on the first morning of the U.S. Olympic Media Summit, thanks to U.S. track stars Lashinda Demus and Sanya Richards-Ross. Demus just missed qualifying for Beijing in 2008 in her specialty, the 400-meter hurdles, a year after giving birth to twin boys, Dontay and Duaine, after what she described as "a horrible pregnancy." Now, she's in top form and on top of the world, having won the world title last year in Daegu, South Korea.

"It's a big difference from 2008," Demus said. "My whole body is different. Now, this is my normal body. I'm in better shape than I was then; I'm running faster; my [sons] are bigger."

Another major difference? In 2009, Demus hired a new coach -- her mother, Yolanda Demus -- who first put Lashinda on the track when she was 2 years old.

"Everything has changed," Demus said. "My training has changed, especially with my mom as my coach. Everything is looking pretty good and on schedule as far as the Olympic Games."

Demus also changed agents, hiring her husband, Jamel Mayrant, but said it took some effort to persuade her mother to take over the stopwatch.

"My mom didn't come that easily," Demus said, "but I knew that she was a very hard coach, and I knew that if I wanted to get where I wanted to be, which I'm on my way to now, she was the best person for it. I wanted to keep everything in the family."

Richards-Ross knows what that's like. She lets her mother, Sharon, manage her career. They work well together now, but when Sanya was learning to run, they were competitors. Sharon Richards, on hand here Sunday, recalled family track meets at the beach, where her husband, a former Jamaican national soccer player, she and her daughters would race. Pops would win, and "I would be second," Sharon said.

"And then, as time progressed, it was Daddy, then Sanya." She paused for a beat. "Then Mommy retired, because I was having no part of that. I'm OK with my husband running first, me second and the girls after, but when she took over, that was it. She retired me."

Now, Sharon's in management, but she has a hard time keeping distance from her main client.

"I'm much more nervous than Sanya is," she said. Before races, "I'm teary-eyed, I get weak in the knees, I get weak in the stomach, I don't want anybody to talk to me, I need to go drink some water; it's a total emotional roller coaster for me. And one would think that since she's been doing it since she was 7 that it would get better, but it totally gets worse."

Yet she's also a cagey enough observer of the sport, having grown up in Jamaica, to know which meets to worry about and which not to. Richards-Ross was run down in the home stretch and finished second to Novlene Williams-Mills in a meet eight days ago in Kingston, Jamaica, but Sharon thinks everything is copacetic.

"Immediately after the race, [Richards-Ross] knew what happened," Sharon said. "She's been doing a little bit of speed work and she got out like a bat out of hell and wasn't able to hold on all the way to the finish line. But after having assessed the race with Coach [Clyde] Hart, he was pretty impressed that, having gotten out a second and a half faster than she should have, she was able to hold on as long as she did. So it was a learning curve for her. I think she's good from here on [out]."

Mom knows best.

DALLAS -- Allyson Felix's appearance at the U.S. Olympic Media Summit was the last leg of an around-the-world sprint of a road trip -- a very successful one.

Felix won a pair of 100-meter races in Kawasaki, Japan, and Doha, Qatar, within a week's time, the latter in a career-best time of 10.92 seconds over a strong Diamond League field that included reigning Olympic champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce of Jamaica. That triggered renewed curiosity about whether Felix might attempt to qualify for the Olympics in track's most glamorous individual event along with her personal favorite, the 200, where she is a three-time world champion and two-time Olympic silver medalist.

She was ready for the question. "I'm just going to start saying, 'Ask Bobby,'" Felix said, referring to her coach, Bobby Kersee. "I will run another event, and Bobby will make that decision closer to [U.S. Olympic] trials."

Last season, Felix focused on a 200-400 double and upped the amount of endurance training in her regime. She raced both events at the world championships and ran a personal best in the 400, which comes first in the event schedule, good enough for a silver medal. But she felt spent in the 200 and lost her title to her Olympic nemesis, Jamaica's Veronica Campbell-Brown. She has refocused her training on more speed work this season and attributed her recent showing to improved technique in the blocks.

"I was surprised I put it together," Felix, 26, said of Friday's Doha race, where she also defeated Campbell-Brown. "For me, the speed has always been there. It's been my start; I've always put myself at a huge deficit from the beginning. So I think I was just more shocked that, finally, I'm strong enough to compete with these women and I can actually put my speed on display. I was happy. I've worked a lot on that portion of the race and to finally see it paying off is a cool thing."

Felix won't rule out running the 400 this summer, but has spoken of the 100-200 as a more natural dovetail. Running the 100 is not exactly a new concept for her -- she raced that distance in high school and was the 2010 national champion in the event. Regardless of what she and Kersee settle on, she said the 200 is her priority. "I've had almost eight years to think about being a silver medalist," she said, putting a slight emphasis on the color.

She's also familiar with the argument that she should just focus on what is most dear to her: winning Olympic gold in the 200.

"Sometimes you do spread yourself too thin," she said. "It's hard, but I think it also makes it difficult when you know you have potential at something and you want to fulfill that. For me this year, I said, 'OK, the 200 is my main focus.' If I do another event, it's going to come second to that."

Felix, looking fresh despite a 16-hour flight from Qatar, fielded a variety of other questions, including one from a British reporter who asked if she lamented track and field's low profile in this country.

"If you were in Britain, you'd be an absolute superstar," he said. "Here I sense that you're in the second tier," at which point Felix laughed ruefully.

"Second?" she joked, then got serious.

"We're definitely not one of the premier sports [in the United States]," she said. "It's very clear. We barely race on U.S. soil. It's sad. It's such a great sport. I have such a passion for it, I want other people to."

There is a "disconnect," Felix added, between the number of talented young people who run in high school and college but take the sport no further.

"I don't necessarily feel undervalued," she said. "Because that's not, for me, what it's about. I didn't come into the sport saying I want to be famous or I want to get a lot of money. I truly love track and field and I think that's what it has to be about to continue on."

Felix also said she hopes that having high-level competition in the Middle East is making a difference in the lives of women who face cultural obstacles in participating in athletics there.

"I've been going to Doha since I was 19 years old and I've seen a big change," she said. "Of course, it's not, I think, anywhere near where it needs to be, but I think it's progressing. It's just really cool to go there and see them excited about it and see the girls excited about competing. Even the lifestyle portion, even if they just pick up on that, you don't have to be this elite athlete, but just adopting that type of lifestyle, making it part of your daily routine, being active."

DALLAS -- Lashinda Demus, the world champion in the 400 hurdles, said that every time she competes at a track and field meet, "We know we're in a dying sport."

"People are making $15,000 a year and calling themselves a professional athlete. To me that's not a good job," she said Sunday at the U.S. Olympic media summit in Dallas. "We don't have anyone pulling in [viewers] on TV. Our races aren't on TV like in other professional sports. It's just less and less. They're trying to do better than that -- you can see that with the Diamond League meets, where you can see on who knows what channel. We're in the back somewhere."

So why is track's popularity down? Demus says it's a mixture of things.

"They say the drug thing hurts it and I think that does affect it, but you see people caught doing drugs in baseball and that doesn't really hurt them that much," Demus said. "I honestly think our track meets aren't shown, and one of the reasons they don't show them is because they're so long. If we can keep the meets down to a certain number of events to keep the viewership to stayed tune for 35-40 minutes, it might be better. ...

"That's why we need a great marketing team. I don't have the answers, but more media time would help, more sponsors would all help."

Depending on your time zone, the torch-lighting ceremony for the London Olympics was very early this morning/late last night in Olympia, Greece. That was the birthplace of the ancient Olympics, as well as the greatest Turn Back the Clock Day in sports history when the shot put was held there at the 2004 Olympics.

If you missed the moment, don't worry -- you can watch a recording of it here via Ustream. There were some outstanding visuals of Olympia that will stir your heart, complete with ancient columns and young men and women dressed in white. There are also some speeches and flute playing if you're into that sort of thing. The actual lighting is a little after the one-hour, 30-minute mark.

The torch is currently being relayed through Greece and will wind up at Athens' Panathinaiko Stadium next week, the site of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896. From there, the torch will be sent to England, where it will go on a lengthy relay through more than 1,000 towns in the United Kingdom before arriving in London to light the Olympic cauldron during the Opening Ceremonies July 27.