ESPN Olympic Sports

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:

ESPN's T.J. Quinn and Julie Foudy on Team USA's win over Spain, the men's marathon and their overall impressions of the 2012 Olympic Games:

LONDON -- I came to England almost three weeks ago to tell the stories of some of the greatest Olympic athletes in the world. Michael Phelps. Missy Franklin. Jordan Burroughs. But along the way, I fell in love. Not with a woman, an ideal, a plate of fish and chips or a frosty cold pint of London Pride.

No, I fell in love with a sport that I had somehow spent my previous 35 years ignoring. Team handball. With a free night on Wednesday, I curiously stumbled into the Copper Box to check out the game I vaguely remembered from high school gym class.

What I found was an athletic, fast-paced, up-and-down, in-your-face sport that had me jumping out of my seat and screaming in delight, much to the confusion of everyone else in my section. They had all seen this before. Me? Not so much. On at least three occasions I literally came out of my seat after watching someone jump in the air and then single- double- and triple-pump fake his way to a goal. And each time I was met with a look like, "What's wrong with him?"

So on Sunday, as the 2012 London Games came to a close, there was but one place I told my editor I wanted to be: In the basketball arena for the team handball final between Sweden and France. Here were two different countries I had never been to, speaking languages I didn't understand, playing a game I struggled to comprehend, and I ate it up. My version of culture, I suppose.

The match itself did not disappoint. I'll spare many of the details because, really, you don't care. I'll just tell you that France was forced to play the last minute and a half a man down due to a penalty but still held on to win 22-21. It was awesome.

So what exactly is it that I love about the game? Everything. It's water polo without water. Lacrosse without sticks. Soccer using your hands. Basketball with a 3-by-2-meter goal instead of a 10-foot-high hoop. The game moves fast, there's lots of scoring and getting shots off takes an incredible amount of size, skill and athletic coordination.

That's because the goal area extends in a D-like shape 6 meters out from the actual goal. It looks like a 3-point line. And the only person allowed in the area with the ball is the goalkeeper. No offensive player can shoot within this darkened zone. So what the offense does is pass back and forth and shuffle men in a pattern similar to a three-man weave, hoping to create a gap in the defense. When a shooter sees a gap, he charges to the line and right before he gets there he jumps, elevates and throws the ball often in excess of 100 miles an hour at the goalkeeper.

But while in the air, players will almost always pump fake and alter their shots to confuse the goalie. You think Michael Jordan's jump-one-way-and-shoot-the-other layup in the '91 NBA Finals was impressive? That happened like five times here Sunday. There was a French triple-pump. A Sweden player jumping straight into a French defender, maintaining his composure and unleashing a goal-scoring laser into the back of the net.

And the best part is that after almost every goal, there's a collision. Sometimes it's with another player. Other times it's with the ground.

And of course, this begs the question: What about the U.S.? Well, the U.S. didn't even qualify for London and hasn't competed in the Olympics since 1996 in Atlanta, where it qualified automatically. There, the men finished ninth out of 12 teams. The women eighth out of eight.

Why are we so terrible? Part of it is a lack of interest. Part of it is the USOC's reducing its funding for the U.S. team by 20 percent last year. And part of it is the fact that our country focuses on a different indoor court sport: basketball.

But I'm not sure I buy that popular last argument. I get it, we play baseball instead of cricket. We're more interested in American football than the world's game. And so it would make sense that we play basketball instead of handball. One or the other.

But what about the French? They won the gold medal here on Sunday in handball and had a 4-1 record during prelims in the men's basketball tournament before losing to Spain in the quarterfinals. Why can't we do both?

Because four years from now in Rio, I want to be in some rocking Brazilian arena, the crowd screaming at a deafening pitch, with the red, white and blue flying up and down the court trying to outmaneuver some Croatian goalie in my new favorite sport.

I know, I know.

Keep dreaming.

Some at-the-buzzer instant analysis from press row in London of Team USA's 107-100 win over Spain in Sunday's Olympic gold-medal game:

How it happened: Warning signs were there for the United States from Spain's very first possession, when Juan Carlos Navarro, someone Team USA has struggled to contain in the past, absorbed a foul from Kobe Bryant after draining a 3-pointer to start the afternoon with a four-point play.

A tone was quickly established.

Plagued by plantar fasciitis throughout the tournament, Navarro wound up scoring 19 of his 21 points by halftime, benefiting most from some classic Spanish offensive execution that had the underdogs within a point at intermission at 59-58. Making a high percentage of shots, finding holes in the U.S. defense with its ball and player movement and keeping turnovers down so the NBA All-Stars couldn't run, Spain seemed to have found a formula to shock the world.

And not even Marc Gasol's astonishing four fouls in the first quarter and a half would slow the Spaniards down. With Pau Gasol absolutely taking over in the third, looking every bit like the "beast" he proclaimed himself to be before the tournament started with 15 of 24 points, Spain stayed right there with its heavily favored foes well into the fourth.

Eventually, though, Team USA just had too much Kevin Durant, along with just enough from a foul-plagued LeBron James (including a big dunk and an equally huge 3 late) and some big fourth-quarter contributions from Chris Paul and Kobe Bryant, to grab the gold.

It was even closer than it was in Beijing in 2008, when Spain lost by just 11 points in the final, but the United States ultimately snagged its 14th Olympic gold medal in men's basketball.

How close? It's the second-closest Olympic final ever, second only to the USSR's infamous one-point defeat of the United States in the highly controversial gold-medal game in 1972.

What it means: If he really can't be talked into staying on as Team USA head coach, as it appears, Mike Krzyzewski will be leaving international coaching with a record of 62-1 ... and a tidy 50-game winning streak.

Since a semifinal loss to Greece at the 2006 Worlds in Japan, Team USA has indeed reeled off 50 consecutive W's in full senior national-team games, with 17 of those coming in the Olympics since a semifinal loss to Argentina in Athens in 2004 before the Krzyzewski Era began.

Player of the game: Durant had to be good to bump Pau Gasol (24 points, eight rebounds and seven assists) out of this spot.

And he was sensational.

Scoring a game-high 30 points even without his 3-ball going down as early and often as usual, Durant carried the Americans' offense like he did at the 2010 FIBA World Championship in Turkey, combining with Paul in the fourth quarter to help the Americans weather the long stretch of crunch time it had to survive without James.

Play of the game: Two biggies from Paul, actually, helped saved Team USA in this one.

With James forced to the bench after picking up his fourth foul with 7:23 to go and Spain switching to a box-and-one to try to corral Durant, Paul produced a 3-pointer and a slick drive for a layup in succession, beating Sergio Rodriguez badly on the baseline on the latter scorer with a clever head fake at a time when the Americans were struggling for offense.

Paul delivered another driving layup late to beat the shot clock and Kobe Bryant finished with 17 points in support of Durant and James to help the Americans finally seal it and spark a flurry of joyous (and relieved) hugs in the final minute.

By the numbers: Team USA averaged 106 points per game in its eight victories, winning by an average margin of 32.1 points per game.

It was the third gold-medal meeting between the United States and Spain ... and the Spanish keep getting closer. The Yanks won by 11 points (118-107) in 2008 in Beijing and by 31 (96-65) in 1984 in Los Angeles.

No American had ever drained more than 17 3-pointers in an Olympic run before London 2012. But in these Olympics, Durant finished with 34 3s in eight games, with Carmelo Anthony (23) not far behind. So much for the fears that even USAB officials had during training camp in early July that this team might not have enough shooting on the roster.

LONDON -- The trademark bright yellow silk flower tucked into Alysia Montano’s hair was at odds with the tears welling in her eyes as she stood, hands on hips, describing her disappointment.

Montano said allowing herself to be boxed around the last curve of the women’s 800-meter final Saturday evening probably cost her a shot at a medal. Instead, she finished fifth in 1:57.93, more than a half-second off her personal best. Russia's Mariya Savinova won gold in 1:56.19.

“It’s been such a long road to get here,’’ said Montano, a four-time national champion in the event who competed for the University of California at Berkeley. “It feels like it took forever and now it’s here and gone.’’

The 26-year-old said she thinks she has a lot of growing to do as a runner and intends to get to work on that right away: “There’s no giving up. That’s not part of my DNA.

“Racing in the U.S., our women aren’t as aggressive. I love the opportunity to be able to race and get gritty with the best 800-meter runners in the world, but I still see myself making little errors, and in the last 200, I got stuck.

“I have some things to tie up. Fortunately, I’m going to have the time to do that.’’

Montano said she feels as if she has “been knocking on the American record (1:56.40) door for a while.’’ A foot injury forced her to withdraw after the first round of the 800 at the 2008 Olympic trials, but she came back to become national champion in the event in 2010 and 2011 and finished fourth at the world championships in the 800 last year.

ESPN's George Smith previews Sunday's men's basketball gold-medal game between the United States and Spain: