ESPN Olympic Sports

The organizers for the 2014 Sochi Winter Games unveiled their Olympic torch on Monday, with a futuristic feel.

"The Olympic torch is one of the key symbols of the Games," 2014 Sochi Olympics Organizing Committee president and chief executive Dmitry Chernyshenko said at a news conference. "In our case, it symbolizes the beauty and diversity of Russia."

Last week, the committee released the torch relay, which is said to be the longest in the history of the Winter Games. The flame will be held by some 14,000 torchbearers over four months and travel through 2,900 towns and settlements, starting Oct. 7, 2013.

Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Zhukov said in July that the relay planned to take a trip to the International Space Station, but no details were announced Sunday.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

Two-time track cycling Olympian Bobby Lea of Topton, Pa., recommitted to a third bid in his mind before he even got home from the London Games, where he finished 12th in the demanding two-day, six-event omnium. The 29-year-old trains with Philadelphia-based coach Brian Walton, a 1996 Olympic track cycling silver medalist for Canada. Lea looked ahead in a recent chat with ESPN.com:

Question from Ford: What was the biggest contrast between your experiences in London and Beijing [in 2008]?

Answer from Lea: The single biggest thing was just knowing what I was in for. I knew the details would be different, but the bigger picture was the same, and I was much more prepared to handle it. In the run-up to the actual event, it was much more calm and quiet and easier to focus on the task at hand than it was for Beijing. As far as the performance was concerned, I really wanted to get inside that top 10. But when I take a step back and look at the event as it unfolded, five of the six events were the best I'd ever done, so it was hard to argue with that. Two-tenths of a second in one event [the kilo, or 1-kilometer time trial] would have made the difference.

That's bike racing, that's track racing. I went to London thinking if I turned in a performance I was satisfied with, I could walk away from track racing in the Olympics and say it's been a good run and made up for a performance I wasn't really happy with in Beijing [Editor's note: He finished 16th in the Madison]. But by the time I touched down in Newark, I was already thinking about Rio [in 2016]. I wasn't anticipating that, but that's kind of how it unfolded. The placing was nothing to write home about, but the finer details showed a pretty significant jump in performance from where I was in the two years leading up to the Olympics. My takeaway from that is if I can do that in three months, if I can take the next four years and really dial in my support structure and work even harder, then I can go to Rio and actually be a contender instead of someone just shooting for a top 10.

Q: If you were king and had control over the Olympic program, what would you create?

A: I've made my peace with the omnium. I certainly struggle to deal with all the different elements, learning how to prepare and how to handle myself in the midst of the event. But if the omnium remains unchanged in Rio and that's the event, I know what I'm dealing with and I know how to work for it. I'm not too fussed about what the event's going to be. If I can make it four more years and I can set up that support structure, then I'm ready to take a run for Rio. Part of the question I've been dealing with since I got home is, what does that mean? It's easy to answer that question if you're part of a big national federation that has an endless budget, but as basically a privateer trying to put together a program, it's an entirely different question. I've got a year or two to sort that out.

Q: How does this affect your road racing aspirations? That was at the top of your future agenda when we last talked.

A: At this point, I'm still treating the rest of my career like an open book and it's day to day, month to month, year to year. I've got a job riding with SmartStop-Mountain Khakis next year on the road, so between that and a couple of winter sixes (six-day races) with my Madison partner [Jackie Simes], we'll see what happens. We're hoping to get a start in Rotterdam in January. It's been a long time since there were Americans racing on the six-day circuit. That would be a really neat thing to do that doesn't conflict with road racing.

My team for next year is really supportive of my extracurricular activities on the track. It's a good place for me to race the road and have a lot of fun and get back into domestic road racing and [Simes] is going to be joining me on that team. Where it goes, who knows, but I'm not writing anything off. 2010 was my last full season on the road. I'm ready to jump back in, I miss it.

Q: Do you feel like you're in a situation where you can compete clean at the Continental level in this country?

A: Absolutely. It's not something I would be doing if I thought I was trying to swim upstream.

Five years ago, bobsled driver Steven Holcomb was deeply depressed. His U.S. four-man bobsled team was peaking and had a strong chance to win the first American gold medal in the event since 1948 at the 2010 Olympics. But despite devoting a decade of his life to that goal, Holcomb could not focus on it. He held a dark secret not even his teammates or coach knew.

He was going blind.

"I was losing my vision quite rapidly," Holcomb recalled in a phone interview. "I was realizing what my life was about to become. I was at the peak of my career and it was all about to come crashing down. My vision became so bad it was a safety issue. I was withdrawn, I wouldn't come out of my room.

"My coach [Brian Shimer] said, 'These guys are working their butts off for you, and you're just going through the motions.' I told him, 'I'm going blind, I'm going to have to quit.'"

Holcomb had keratoconus, a disease that leaves one out of every four victims blind without a cornea transplant. Holcomb's vision had already declined to 20-600 -- without the strongest corrective lenses, he could not recognize a person sitting across the table. He could get the transplant, but that would end his career due to the constant jarring that comes with driving a bobsled.

But as Holcomb writes in his new book, "But Now I See," he was able to continue his career. After a dozen eye specialists told Holcomb that a cornea transplant was his only hope, Dr. Boxer Wachler provided hope in a revolutionary treatment called C3-R that did not require invasive procedure. The treatment worked so well that not only did Holcomb continue his bobsledding career and win a gold medal at the 2010 Olympics, but the procedure is now known as the Holcomb C3-R, just as ulnar collateral ligament replacement is known as Tommy John surgery.

"Keratoconus is a lot more common than I ever realized going in," Holcomb said. "I thought I had some crazy rare disease. ... I've met so many people who have it. Two other people on the team have it and one had the same procedure. It's very common and this procedure stops it and is a cure.

"It's kind of one of the reasons for putting the book out. I wanted people to know there is a solution. It's not covered by insurance so people don't know about it -- it's not as widespread as it should be."

Blindness wasn't the only issue for Holcomb. He also suffered from depression, but was able to overcome that, as well. It wasn't easy, but he did it.

"There is always hope. Do not give up," he said. "There is always hope and always help. I kept everything a secret. I had depression and I kept it a secret and never let anyone know. When I did, that was when my life changed and it took off from there."

Holcomb is looking for more gold in Sochi at the 2014 Olympics, and he has a good chance. His team recently returned to Whistler, site of their 2010 gold, and won a World Cup race there.

"I would say that's a pretty decent place to hang out," Holcomb said of Whistler. "I love that track for obvious reasons. Winning a gold medal there brings up its value, and there is just a lot of beautiful scenery there."

And now he can see it all.

With every sunrise and sunset, with the change of another season, the moments from the greatest two weeks in Maggie Steffens' young athletic life drift further and further away. Four months after carrying the U.S. women's water polo team to its first gold medal, the 19-year-old is adjusting to life as a college freshman and Olympic champion.

There are days like the one not too long ago, when Steffens shared her gold medal with a mother who immediately wanted to take a picture biting the hardware.

"I was like, 'Uh, no,'" Steffens said. "I brushed it off as no big deal, but inside I was cringing. I mean, really? This isn't some chocolate bar."

And on the day she moved into her Stanford dorm this fall, there were the whispers. She heard them. "There goes the Olympic girl."

"I told them, 'Nope. My name is Maggie,'" she said. "I'm the same Maggie I was before all of this."

She may be the same person, but the way strangers view her is infinitely different. Four years ago in Beijing, the feisty 15-year-old watched from the stands as her older sister, Jessica, and other members of the U.S. team lost in the gold-medal match for the second time in three Olympics. She insisted it wouldn't happen again.

Then in London this past summer, as the youngest member of the U.S. team, Maggie scored an unfathomable 21 goals on 27 shots -- including a 5-for-5 showing in the 8-5 gold-medal victory over Spain -- to win the Olympic crown and make "The Star-Spangled Banner" the song of choice at the tournament's conclusion.

When her world stopped spinning, when Steffens finally returned home to California and had a second to hop in her bed, close her eyes, take a deep breath and try to absorb what had just happened, the memories that most prominently flooded the 19-year-old's head weren't the images everyone would have expected.

Sure, she thought about the goals she scored and the plays she made. Of course she reflected on the moment her gold medal was hung around her neck and the night her and Jessica paraded around the pool deck with the American flag draped behind them. The gut-wrenching semifinal win over Australia is there, too, a night when the Aussies forced overtime with one second left. But the memories that make her smile most are the ones no one knows about.

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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- Olympic gold medalist Evan Lysacek still hopes to compete at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships after having surgery to repair a sports hernia.

Lysacek will be off the ice for about six weeks following Tuesday's surgery in Los Angeles. Once he returns, he'll be evaluated on a week-to-week basis. Nationals are nine weeks away, with the men's short program on Jan. 25 in Omaha, Neb.

Lysacek has been struggling with a groin injury since this summer, and the injury forced him out of last month's Skate America, which would have been his first competition since winning gold at the Vancouver Olympics. A recent exam found he'd actually torn an abdominal muscle.

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. -- USA Water Polo has made Jovan Vavic the interim national team head coach.

CEO Christopher Ramsey made the announcement Tuesday that Vavic would take over, while still handling his regular duties as head coach at Southern California. The plan is for Vavic to lead the team through qualification for next summer's world championships in Barcelona, Spain, then the position will be re-evaluated.

The American men finished a disappointing eighth at the London Olympics in August, closing play with five straight losses after going into the Olympics with hopes of gold after winning silver in Beijing.

Vavic has led the Trojans to 10 NCAA water polo championships, including four consecutive men's titles. A ten-time national coach of the year, Vavic has compiled a career .859 winning percentage coaching the USC men.

Unlike most of the distance runners who traveled to New York last week, marathoner Desiree Davila arrived knowing she wouldn't be hitting the famous 26.2-mile course.

Davila has been off her feet almost entirely since Aug. 5, when a mysterious and painful hip injury forced her out of the Olympic marathon in London after just one 2.2-mile lap. Composed but obviously devastated, she told reporters she had done everything possible to get to the start, including training on a special high-tech treadmill that minimizes impact and taking a cortisone shot. She hoped for a miracle, but it wasn't to be, so she crossed the finish line on The Mall 24 miles early and walked away from the race she'd spent four years visualizing.

Back home, a detailed MRI showed what had been missed in an initial diagnosis -- Davila had a stress fracture at the top of her right femoral shaft. She rested completely for eight weeks, then began some stationary bike work and only started running again about two weeks ago, for 10 minutes at a time. That puts her, in her words, at the bottom of the family mileage board below her fiancé Ryan Linden and their two dogs.

It's by far the longest layoff of a goal-oriented life, so how is Davila dealing with the unaccustomed inactivity? "You can ask the people around me," she said with a throaty laugh over the phone from New York City, where she was fulfilling sponsor obligations. "I think I needed it. I was so frustrated and beaten down by trying to get through the whole process. Now I'm itching to go."

Davila doesn't regret her decision to give London a try; she said she acted based on the best information she had at the time. "If it had been diagnosed right, I wouldn't have been there, and I wouldn't have tried to train to get there," she said. She's still unsure about when she'll race again. The imbalances created by months of favoring her right hip need to be addressed with soft tissue work and physical therapy.

For now, the Boston Marathon -- where she set an American course record in 2011 -- remains on her schedule (the race is on April 15), "and we'll keep it on until we know it can't work," said Davila, who trains in suburban Detroit with the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project. "Things would have to be pretty perfect in January for that to happen."

Lindsey Vonn learned to ski on a 300-foot slope steps from Interstate 35 in Minnesota and turned herself into the most accomplished American skier in history.

She crashed in a training run at the 2006 Winter Olympics and had to be air-lifted to the hospital, yet came back to compete in the race two days later (she finished eighth). She severely bruised her knee in a training run before the 2010 Olympics but overcame the injury to become the first American woman to win gold in the downhill. She won the World Cup overall title three consecutive years (2008 to 2010) and four times total, and has World Cup victories in all five events.

She posed for Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue and even won a cow in a race.

Vonn has done virtually everything a skier can do in her sport except compete in a World Cup race against men. And that will still be the case Thanksgiving weekend.

Over the weekend, the International Ski Federation (FIS) rejected Vonn’s request to compete against men at the World Cup race at Lake Louise in Alberta, Canada, the final weekend of November. In a statement, the FIS said: "One gender is not entitled to participate in races of the other and exceptions will not be made to the FIS Rules."

Vonn did not have a public comment. Bill Marolt, president of U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, said Vonn "has achieved greatness from her tenacity in seeking new challenges. We’re disappointed that the FIS Council did not support the proposal but also respect its direction."

As I wrote when Vonn first made her request, watching her race against Bode Miller, Ted Ligety and Marcel Hirscher would have been great fun. But it also would have taken away from her fellow skiers that same weekend when they compete in Aspen, Colo., at the only women’s World Cup race held in the United States this season.

I respect Vonn's desire to challenge herself, and I wish her another superb season. But there is a reason the genders compete separately in sports. In addition to allowing opportunities for women, it provides them with important attention and financial possibilities. If a woman feels she has the skill to compete against men, by all means she should be allowed to do so. But only if she is willing to truly compete, which means competing throughout an entire season, not just when it would be fun or challenging or convenient.

After all, as good as she is, Diana Taurasi won’t get to play in one select NBA game just to challenge herself.

New York Road Runners president & CEO Mary Wittenberg talks to ESPN's Bob Ley on "Outside The Lines" about the NYC Marathon being held as the city still recovers from Superstorm Sandy:

Fran Crippen drowned two years ago today in a 10-kilometer open water race in the United Arab Emirates, and it's still a searingly sad day for his multitude of friends both inside and outside the swimming community.

Dozens of them posted their thoughts on Twitter, including University of Virginia teammate and 2012 Olympian Matt McLean, who wrote, "We miss you and think of you everyday. You're an inspiration to us all and we try and be a little more like you every day. A true hero ... Really can't think of a better possible friend, role model, and mentor than Fran."

Those sentiments are still a comfort to Crippen's family -- his parents, Pete and Pat, and talented swimming sisters Maddy, Claire and Teresa -- on this anniversary. Pete and Pat have always had an open door policy for all their kids' friends, and they'll have lots of company today in their home in suburban Philadelphia.

The Crippens are not the kind of people who stop living. But their son's death feels raw and fresh every time they hear of a safety lapse in an open water race or a fatality in the sport of triathlon. When it looked, briefly, as if elite open water swimmers in the United States might have their funding and coaching support cut, Pete Crippen didn't mince words in an e-mail to the USA Swimming leadership.

"Where is the commitment to open water swimming? Where are the safety concerns for the athletes? Do we have to sacrifice another athlete because USA Swimming does not want to spend the money which is readily available?" Pete Crippen wrote. The issue was ultimately resolved in the swimmers' favor.

In short, the Crippens won't rest until they believe they've done everything they can to ensure no other parents lose a child the way they did. The foundation they set up after Fran's death is devoted to promoting safety and supporting athletes in open water swimming, an extreme sport that masquerades as an adjunct to the pool but couldn't be more different.

The senior Crippens are weighing legal action against both the national and international federations and filed technical paperwork in Philadelphia earlier this month to preserve their right to file a wrongful death lawsuit at a later date. They will not comment on that process, but there is no doubt it would be a painful path for a family that has been steeped in swimming for more than 20 years.

Three-time Olympic gold medalist Kerri Walsh Jennings stopped by SportsCenter on Wednesday to discuss the road ahead:

 

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Welcoming sporting champions to the White House is a ritual that goes on no matter what -- a rare, unequivocally happy moment in the life of both athletes and the president who serves at the time of their success.

Friday, it was a brief respite from world events, in this case the tragic deaths of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans working at the consulate in Libya that lowered flags around the country to half-staff and made one of President Barack Obama's later appointments a somber one. Just two hours after Obama stayed past the allotted time to shake the hands of as many Olympians and Paralympians as possible, he departed by helicopter for Andrews Air Force Base to be present when the diplomats' remains arrived.

But for one sunny hour on the South Lawn, close to 400 athletes basked in the afterglow of their achievements this summer in London. The president called himself the "Fan-in-Chief" who taped events so he could watch them at the end of his long workdays; first lady Michelle Obama, who led the U.S. delegation in London, singled out double Paralympic swimming gold medalist Brad Snyder, a Navy lieutenant blinded while on duty in Afghanistan last year.

Then, for once, the tables were turned. Rather than being swarmed by fans, it was the athletes who came down off the risers and lined up for photo ops and hugs from Mr. and Mrs. Obama, who were joined by Vice President Joe Biden.

Gold medalist Aries Merritt maintained his Olympic peak and set a world record in his specialty, the 110-meter hurdles, in Belgium last week. He was pleasantly surprised when the president recognized and greeted him as "the hurdle guy," and decided to share a personal story: His grandmother, Louise Hubbard, who died shortly before the 2008 election, predicted Obama would win, he told the president.

Sprinter Sanya Richards-Ross, who doubled up on gold in the 400 meters and 4x400 relay, initially found herself tongue-tied and couldn't muster the thanks she'd planned to express for support from the top. "Michelle Obama embodies, to me, a woman who supports her husband and is a great role model," Richards-Ross said. She did eventually find her voice to ask Mrs. Obama if she could be a part of the "Let's Move" youth fitness initiative -- a request the first lady obliged by putting her in touch with an assistant.

For Richards-Ross, who is committed to competing in the 2016 Rio Games, the White House visit represented the end of a four-year cycle but not a career. The day was slightly more poignant for 2008 fencing silver medalist Tim Morehouse, who was attending his third White House team gathering but is retiring from competition.

"I'm a fencer for life," said Morehouse, who once fenced the president at a White House event. "It doesn't mean I'll never pick up my sabre again." In fact, he is finalizing the details of a New York-based pilot program to train physical education teachers to teach fencing. "I want to get a million kids fencing," he said.

President Obama singled out several athletes in attendance, including swimmer Michael Phelps, who now holds the all-time medal haul record of 22; sprinter Tyson Gay; weightlifter Holley Mangold; discus thrower Lance Brooks; Paralympic volleyball player Kari Miller; and 15-year-old 800-meter swimming gold medalist Katie Ledecky, whom Obama praised for finishing her summer high school reading assignments amid all the excitement.

He also called Manteo Mitchell, who finished his leg of a 4x400 preliminary heat with a broken shin bone, "one of my favorite stories of the whole Olympics."

Open water safety issues that emerged in the aftermath of Fran Crippen's drowning death almost two years ago are still on the front burner for top U.S. swimmers, and many were angry when they were informed last week they would have to foot at least part of the bill to bring their own coaches to international events.

USA Swimming executive director Chuck Wielgus told ESPN.com on Tuesday that the memo sent by the national team staff was premature and the federation's board of directors, which is meeting in Greensboro, N.C. this week, voted Tuesday to allocate sufficient funds to pay for coaches' travel. FINA, the sport's international governing body, has instituted a one-coach-per-athlete requirement at international events of 5 kilometers (3 miles) or longer to help track and feed athletes during races.

"People were understandably upset," Wielgus said. "Things got ahead of themselves, and that memo shouldn't have gone out."

Among those most upset was Crippen's father Pete, who sent a strongly worded email to Wielgus and USA Swimming president Bruce Stratton when he learned what the swimmers had been told.

"Do we have to sacrifice another athlete because USA Swimming does not want to spend the money which is readily available?" Pete Crippen wrote in a letter he forwarded to ESPN.com.

Despite the work of two different commissions charged with investigating Fran Crippen's death and making recommendations to prevent another tragedy, it's fair to say that open water safety reform is still a work in progress.

Water and air temperatures in the 90s on the course in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, contributed to Crippen's death in October 2010. FINA is still awaiting the results of a scientific study to determine how to set a maximum water temperature for open water races. Swimmers from around the world have lobbied for a maximum in the low-to-mid 80s. USA Swimming-sanctioned races now abide by a maximum of 29.45 degrees Celsius, or 85 degrees Fahrenheit, and a heat index maximum of 177.4 degrees that factors in the ambient air temperature. (A minimum temperature of just under 61 degrees was already in place prior to Crippen's death.)

FINA's recommended maximum is 31 degrees Celsius, or 87.8 degrees Fahrenheit, a recommendation numerous swimmers and observers said was blatantly violated at the 2011 world championships in Shanghai in the 25-kilometer race. The measurement is taken before the start, and in a warm-weather climate would naturally rise as the race goes on. Several top athletes, including 2009 25K world champion and 2012 Olympian Alex Meyer, refused to compete in the longer event.

U.S. swimmers were under the impression that the USA Swimming board of directors was prepared to endorse the FINA maximum for international events, but Wielgus said he doesn't expect any formal action this week and added that the federation wants to see the results of the scientific study.

The coaching issue is not a simple one either. The one-coach/one-athlete rule is a good concept, but college jobs are the backbone of U.S. elite programs, and in practice, many coaches could be hard-pressed to travel to far-flung World Cup and Grand Prix races in South America, Europe and Asia during the NCAA season. That experience is crucial to success at world championships and the Olympics, swimmers and coaches say.

USA Swimming open water program manager Bryce Elser, who comes from a pool swimming and ocean lifeguarding background, travels with the team, but federation
officials have told open water team members that the coach assigned part time to the program, Paul Asmuth, is being let go.

The 10K event was added to the Olympic program in 2008. This summer, USC swimmer Haley Anderson won a silver medal in the women's race, while Meyer finished 10th in the men's race.

Good! The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency finally got that bad, bad Lance Armstrong. Now, I hope they’ll finally go after Babe Ruth for all those beers he drank during Prohibition.

I am no Lance apologist, but I am an avid cyclist and cycling fan, and frankly, I wonder what good can result from USADA’s decision Thursday night to strip him of his seven yellow jerseys. Three of those Tour de France victories came a decade or more ago, while the most recent was seven years ago. That's so long ago it would have been considered ancient history even in the pre-Twitter world.

It’s not like taking away Lance’s victories will correct a past injustice. With the rampant use of performance-enhancers, we cannot automatically say the second-place finisher each year rode clean (yes, Jan Ullrich, I’m talking about you). In fact, combine this latest decision with all the Floyd Landis, Alberto Contador, Ullrich, Bjarne Riis, Operation Puerto scandals/mia culpas, and as far as I can tell, no one actually won the Tour de France from 1996 to 2007. The cyclists rode 20,000 miles and climbed countless mountains to exhaustion for no reason whatsoever. Tour de France announcers Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen should have spent those 12 Julys at the beach instead.

There are two reasons why cyclists are busted so often for performance-enhancers: One, they obviously use them to excel in a sport that demands they race more than 100 miles a day for three weeks during the biggest stage races. The other reason is that, like track and field, cycling actually tries hard to catch the cheaters by testing them repeatedly. You can even be banned just for not letting people know where you are on a given day (2007 Tour de France leader Michael Rasmussen was dropped by his team for that very reason). Get caught doping and you can be banned anywhere from several years to life.

This is unlike American team sports, especially football, where the players grow ever bigger, faster and stronger despite assurances that they are regularly tested. And even if they are caught, the players miss as little as four games. And fans prefer it that way. They don’t want a sport’s biggest names regularly banned -- particularly if they have them on their fantasy teams.

That’s what concerns me most about the fallout from this latest Lance decision. I don’t worry about the sport, but I worry for the fans, specifically the potential fans that will be lost.

Lance’s Tour success inspired many Americans, myself included, to get on their bikes and ride. Forget about his considerable work in raising funds for cancer research (I think we still will all treat cancer as a serious issue regardless of what happens to a bicyclist), Lance also turned many of us onto cycling and got us hooked on a healthier lifestyle. Thursday night’s news will not stop us from riding or from following races. But what about those potential fans who will be turned away from cycling and never get on a bike to experience the joys and health rewards of the sport (not to mention the gas-saving benefits)?

On the one hand, these intense testing programs are necessary to keep the competitive playing field at least semi-level. On the other hand, the sport eventually winds up eating itself, turning every single one of its athletes into a suspect, making all top performances suspicious and driving away potential fans to other sports.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that we should not test. I applaud baseball for cracking down -- the recent Melky Cabrera and Bartolo Colon bans are proof the sport takes testing seriously -- and appreciate that home run and other batting statistics have returned to the norm.

We must test. But we also must draw a line somewhere. And going after athletes for something they might have done seven to 13 years ago clearly crosses that line. Stripping Lance of his titles does far more harm than good. USADA should have let this one go. The agency exists to police sports, not destroy them.

Rather than investing so much money and effort chasing an athlete from the previous decade, perhaps we should be more focused on catching the current cheats.

LONDON -- Who's up for one last installment of Team USA by the numbers?

• By winning Sunday's gold-medal game against Spain, Team USA has automatically qualified for the 2014 World Cup of Basketball in Spain, formerly known as FIBA's quadrennial world championship.

The Americans will take a 50-game winning streak into that competition, dating to a semifinal loss to Greece at the 2006 world championship in Japan. Coach Mike Krzyzewski leaves the bench with an overall record of 62-1 and a 17-game winning streak in the Olympics.

• Kevin Durant's 156 points trumped Argentina's Manu Ginobili for the highest total of the tournament ... by a single point. Australia's Patty Mills of the San Antonio Spurs had the Olympics' highest scoring average at 21.2 points per game, followed by Durant's 19.5 ppg.

Durant is the fifth player in U.S. history to score 30-plus points in an Olympic game, but the first to do so in the final.


• Durant's 34 3-pointers doubled the U.S. record of 17, set by Reggie Miller in 1996 and matched by Kobe Bryant in 2008. In London, Carmelo Anthony (23) and Bryant (17) combined with Durant to approach the team record of 77 in 2008 in Beijing.

• For those of you who simply can't bear to go on without one last Dream Team comparison, here are the statistical basics of what the teams achieved: