ESPN Olympic Sports

I'll admit, when I was a kid, I didn't have my sights set on becoming an Olympian. This was mostly due to the fact that the obscure sport I grew up with and loved didn't become an Olympic sport until 1998 -- about 11 years after I threw my first rock and two years after I first represented my state at the national level. Olympians were the best of the best. They were the athletes I saw only on television, in commercials, in magazines and on billboards. They were superheroes. I was a curler. It didn't really cross my mind that curling might be an Olympic sport and I would someday have that opportunity. I loved to curl and I was pretty good at it. So I curled a lot. I thought that was that.

My teams came close to winning nationals. I began to collect a lot of silver medals. Seriously, second place is tough. But we would pick ourselves up and try again the next year. Then something clicked. My team won junior nationals in 2002 and went on to win junior worlds. It was the first gold medal for a women's team in any division in the U.S.

Ten years after I began curling competitively, my team -- nearly fresh out of the junior category -- won the U.S. Olympic curling trials after an impressive week and went on to represent the U.S. in the Torino Winter Olympics in 2006. That was our goal, our dream. I was a curler, and now I'm an Olympian.

To sum up our Olympics run, we had a great world championship immediately after the Olympic trials -- winning another silver medal. I'm very proud of that silver medal. It was recognition of our hard work and gave us confidence leading into the Olympics. But we didn't fare as well in Torino. We ended up eighth out of 10 teams. The week didn't go as we had hoped. The precision wasn't there. We had some bad luck on key shots.

We didn't have any regrets. We played our best in those moments, and the other teams played better. Now I want to go back and be that better team.

Maybe you're wondering how I got into curling. I was introduced to it because it was like a tradition in my family. My parents curled, their parents curled, and so on. In the very early years, my Sunday nights were spent at the local curling club arena, where my sister and I gathered with other rosy-cheeked kiddies roughly the same age whose parents, like ours, volunteered to teach us how to throw rocks at houses.

Now, if you haven't heard of curling before, that last statement sounds like we were on the path to becoming experts at vandalism, but that's not what curling is. Imagine pushing a polished chunk of solid granite down a sheet of ice toward a target painted just under the surface. Yeah, it's like bowling. And shuffleboard. Even similar to golf in some ways. But it's also much more than that. You might be asking, "Is that where you have the sweepers? And they go back and forth and stuff?" You got it. That is what I do. Well, if you ask my teammates, they would say I don't do much of the sweeping part. Skips tend not to get much credit in that department. We each have our own job out on the ice, much like each player on a football team has their job. But I'll expand on that another time.

For now, I want to introduce myself.

Hi there. I'm Cassie and I'm a curler. To be more precise, I'm the skip, or captain, of a team on the United States Curling Association's High Performance Team. I was also skip of the 2006 Olympic curling team. I'm married, and mom to a 4-month-old little girl. We have two lovable dogs that are complete opposites in personality. Because curling is an amateur sport and doesn't pay the bills, I also have a full-time job.

Life usually gets crazy for me from September through March and this season is no exception. My team is one of a select few that will be competing in the upcoming 2014 U.S. Olympic team trials this November. We will be training hard and traveling more in the months to come, all while juggling families, jobs and life in general.

I would love to wear USA on my back again in Sochi in 2014. Having been to the Olympics before and falling short has been a heck of a motivator for me to get back and do even better. It's not going to be easy and it's going to require a lot of preparation to get there. Throughout this season, I'll be posting here to give you a glimpse into our team's season -- win or lose -- leading up to Sochi, life as an athlete and new mom, and reflections on seasons past.

Is there anything you want to know about our team or curling in general? Contact me via Twitter: @ccpotter

Last week was quite the week! It was our national push championships and training camp in Calgary -- and marked the beginning of the process to make the 2014 Olympic bobsled team.

For most of my potential Olympic teammates, the first step to Sochi is to make the 2014 U.S. World Cup team, but I've been preselected to that team based on my results from last season. So for me, the week was about testing where I was in my training, while for others it was about making a statement to earn a spot on that team.

I trained hard this summer, and was hoping to see the results in my performance. I did worse than I expected in my combine (dry-land testing that including running and lifting), and was a little discouraged. I was forced to remind myself that the goal is to be as fast and as strong as possible in February at the Olympics, and I have to keep working in order to get there.

The week ended on a positive note, though, as I won my sixth consecutive push championship, and posted strong combos with every brakeman during the doubles competition. (The drivers like me are routinely paired with different brakemen to see which combination is the fastest.) Even though I'm not where I want to be yet, I am still pushing well and know that I've got much more time to improve.

And that's what was important about last week, with six months to go until the Olympics. It was an opportunity to see where I'm at and also to see where I need to go. It's going to be an intense time, but as long as I continue to work hard and trust the plan laid out by my coaches, I know I'll be where I want to be in February 2014.

Here's a behind-the-scenes look at what the week was like. Sochi, here we come!

Drug testing in Canada after only a few days! They'll find you wherever you are.

Family mealtime in the house we rented: There were six bobsledders in one house!

Bobsled spikes I had created for the upcoming season. They sure do stand out, which is just what I wanted.

Some of the girls warming up for the lifting portion of the combine.

The crammed car ride back from a long day of combine testing. We got everyone in there!

Emily Azevedo, who was first to go, at push testing for brakemen.

Nic and I enjoying some sushi on a rare carb day that doubled as a date night.

From left: Me, Lauryn Williams, Jazmine Fenlator and Lolo Jones after push championships were over. We could finally relax.

The simple truth is that summer training can be a grind. But this is what we need to do to prepare for the winter season, and now that we're six months from a date with the Olympics, we want to make sure we do everything we can to be ready.

So we hit the gym every day except Sunday, doing weights, stair intervals, cardio; you name it. Three days a week we jump at Utah Olympic Park, on the K90 (normal hill) and the K120 (large hill). In Sochi we will be jumping the K90, but 99 percent of the girls who jump the normal hill are more than capable of jumping the large hill. This is the first time women's ski jumping will be held at the Olympics, so hopefully by the next Games, in 2018, we will have a large-hill event as well as a team event -- just like the men.

Temperatures have skyrocketed into the lower-to-mid-90s in Park City during the day, which makes jumping in our foam-like suits not the most comfortable experience. Our summer jump training mimics almost exactly what we do on snow in the winter. But instead of landing on snow, we land on plastic turf that looks like green, uncooked spaghetti that overlaps.

Some of the team, including me, have side jobs, too, so it's common for us to leave training and go straight to work for a few hours. I'm a waitress at a barbecue restaurant on Main Street in Park City. We try not to work too much, though, because a late night working in a restaurant isn't the best for recovery, especially if we have to be up by 7 a.m. the next day. After a hard workout and a big night at the restaurant, I am exhausted by the time I get home -- both mentally and physically. My legs ache and my feet throb, but by the morning I am ready to go again.

But fortunately, it's not all work all the time. Park City in the summer is one of my favorite places because of the gorgeous weather and the many things to enjoy outside, like barbecues, concerts and farmers' markets.

And my older sister got married earlier this summer, right here in Park City. It was great to avoid traveling, but she doesn't live in Park City, so a lot of wedding responsibilities fell on me. Of course, I would do anything for my big sister (wink, wink) and I was happy to be a part of it all. I had to schedule my training around the three days of wedding activities, so I packed a week's worth of gym sessions into three days so I could be in 100 percent wedding mode on the big weekend.

I'm glad I did, because her gown, the flower girl dresses and our bridesmaid dresses weren't delivered on time and we had to emergency-shop for new gowns two days before the wedding!

We went to every bridal store in the Salt Lake Valley and managed to find five bridesmaids gowns that were similar to the ones we had originally ordered. We bought two new flower girl dresses and Shannon found a gown at a boutique in Salt Lake that needed only minor alterations.

The morning of her wedding was her final dress fitting and I went with her. I'm not an emotional person, but when she walked out in her gown and it looked perfect, I actually cried. Then I laughed and told her she looked ugly and the only reason I was crying was because I was relieved everything was finally ready to go. (Joking, of course, though believe me, there was a lot of relief that it had come together!)

Next up, we're on the road again. Our Visa women's ski jumping team has two big European trips planned for August and September for summer Grand Prix competitions and training. I'm so excited to get back into competition mode, and to see the other jumpers we travel with all season long but don't get to see in the summer. Our team is pretty close with the Norwegian jumpers and we generally keep in touch during the offseason, so it will be good to catch up with our friends.

It's not lost on any of us that this year is an important one, and that there are only six months left until the Sochi Games and our Olympic debut. But for me, every year is important. I am always doing everything I can to better prepare myself for the upcoming season. Last week we ran a few physical tests and the results showed that I'm the strongest I have ever been. I broke my personal record in the jump test, with a vertical of 60.4 cm. I am thrilled about that and it only makes me want to work harder, every day. We'll survive this daily training grind, because competition is just around the corner, and we want to be at our very best.

Jessica Jerome, 26, is a World Cup ski jumper and member of Women's Ski Jumping USA. She's a 10-time national champion and has two sixth-place finishes in world championship competition. Jerome helped lead the effort to get her sport into the Olympic Winter Games, where it will debut in Sochi in 2014.

American figure skater Johnny Weir-Voronov talks about Russia's new anti-gay law and its impact on the Sochi Olympics:

Michael Phelps said he was done with competitive swimming after the London Olympics, but did his comments Monday open the door for 2016?

ESPN.com's Jim Caple explains why it may be difficult for Phelps to stay away from the pool:

Here is the complete U.S. roster for the IAAF World Championships, which will be held Aug. 10-18 in Moscow:

Women's events

100 meters
Carmelita Jeter
English Gardner
Octavious Freeman
Alexandria Anderson

200
Charonda Williams
Kimberlyn Duncan
Allyson Felix
Jeneba Tarmoh

400
Natasha Hastings
Francena McCorory
Ashley Spencer

100 hurdles
Dawn Harper
Brianna Rollins
Queen Harrison
Nia Ali

400 hurdles
Lashinda Demus
Dalilah Muhammad
Georganne Moline
Christine Spence

800
Alysia Montaño
Brenda Martinez
Ajeé Wilson

1,500
Jenny Simpson
Treniere Moser
Mary Cain
Cory McGee

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What Tour de France riders do for three weeks is pretty astounding. But what if they couldn't hear? That's the situation for John Klish, a deaf cyclist who will compete at the upcoming Deaflympics in Sofia, Bulgaria (July 26-Aug. 4).

Imagine biking on a road if you weren't able to hear the sound of an approaching car. Or racing when you can't hear a competitor coming up behind you.

"That was one of the reasons why I started with mountain biking when I was 15 years old. I was intimidated by cars," Klish wrote in an email. "Eventually, I started riding road bikes in college and that help me break that barrier. I just needed to know how to ride along the road.

"I never hear cars coming. I just stay to the far right and keep an eye out, look behind me every minute or so. For mountain bike races, I look back behind me more frequently and take the responsibility to move over if I see someone. I also can look down between my arms and see how close the person is if he/she is right on my butt.

"I've had the typical near misses where people are just driving by you too close. I've learned over the years, it's better to wave thank you to those that do move over and do not respond to those who cut close to you. Save your energy for the beautiful ride ahead of you and for thanking the right actions!"

Klish says he was born with bi-lateral profound hearing loss of at least 85 decibels. He is deaf in both ears and requires hearing aids to hear any conversation. Even then, "I only hear voice sounds, so I have to look at the person speaking so I can comprehend what the sounds are."

The Deaflympics http://www.deaflympics.com/ have been held every four years since 1949, and more frequently before the interruption of World War II (the first competition was in Paris in 1924). They are separate from the Olympics and Paralympics, and as Klish understands it, they are operated almost exclusively by the deaf and hearing impaired. Competitors must have a hearing deficit of at least 55 decibels. They must also cover their own expenses.

Klish raised enough money by sponsoring bike rides and starting a webpage, and with savings from his job with the Colorado Department of Transportation. But others still need help. "I think it's also important for the fans to know that there are other deaf athletes that need help to raise money, raise awareness and support them," he said. "Please seek out your favorite deaf athlete and support them to attend this year's Deaflympics."

Klish will be one of 120 American athletes competing in Sofia. He'll be riding in the 1000M sprint, the 40K time trial, the road race and the 50KM points race.

"The only disadvantage I can think of is not being able to hear anyone come up from behind right before a sprint," he said of riding while deaf. "I have to look around a bit more and be more aware of these riders urging forward. I just started road racing again a couple of years ago and it's just a bit different world for me.

"I'm learning how to overcome that challenge at the moment. I'm almost there -- that's what I love, anyway -- challenges that push me to learn more techniques, skills and ideas to overcome certain obstacles and disadvantages. I immensely enjoy learning how to find strengths in those weaknesses, and then teaching others these invaluable tools."

You can say that again. In addition to being deaf, Klish also overcame testicular cancer. There is a certain other cyclist who survived that, but of the two, I find Klish to be more inspiring.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What have the last six months been like?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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