ESPN Olympic Sports

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

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

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

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

Wait, there's more.

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

Tired yet?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Steven Lopez and his "Choice"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mom knows best.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Second?" she joked, then got serious.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The most anticipated run-up to the London Games starts when the sun's rays will light the Olympic torch in Olympia, Greece. And you can watch it live tonight/Thursday morning via Ustream or below:

The ceremony begins at 3 a.m. ET. Cross your fingers it doesn't rain.

After the lighting, the torch will be relayed throughout Greece, ending May 17 at Athens' Panathinaiko Stadium, the site of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896. From there, the torch will be sent to England, where it will go on a lengthy route through more than 1,000 towns in the United Kingdom before arriving in London for the lighting of the Olympic Cauldron during the Opening Ceremonies on July 27.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport on Monday released a unanimous ruling that struck down the British Olympic Association's maverick clause barring its athletes with past doping offenses from competing in the Olympics. In what can only be termed unsportsmanlike conduct, BOA chief Colin Moynihan characterized the decision as a "hollow victory" for the World Anti-Doping Agency, whose code sensibly mandates that all nations abide by the same rules.

It's not as if the BOA didn't see the freight train coming. In fact, the organization leaked heavy, public sighs of resignation several days before the ruling, the better to dilute the impact of the decision when it was officially published. But anyone who has followed this issue on its winding journey knew the BOA would lose this past October, when CAS reached the same conclusion about a similar double sanction imposed by the International Olympic Committee.

As WADA director general David Howman correctly noted Tuesday in a conference call with reporters, this was not a victory for WADA but a defeat of an appeal by the BOA, which in his words "wasted a lot of time and a lot of money and got an inevitable result."

When I asked how he felt about the BOA staking a claim to higher moral ground, he pointed out that defying the rules agreed upon by every other signatory of the code has its own ethical dubiousness -- a view previously and acerbically expressed by former WADA president Dick Pound in this story for The Guardian.

To borrow Michael Douglas' line from "The American President," this is a time for serious people, and the BOA's 15 minutes are up.

I made my arguments on the subject last fall in this column on the IOC's now-defunct Rule 45 -- which would have kept all athletes with doping convictions out of the next Olympics -- so I'll only summarize them here:

International anti-doping sanctions must be uniform, or the structure will collapse. Lifetime bans for a first offense will never stand up legally, and wealthy athletes would fight them until they broke the banks of anti-doping organizations with limited police powers and budgets. The code already gives WADA-compliant nations a large array of options for punishment and lifetime bans for repeat offenders. Based on my nearly two decades of covering doping issues in sports, all a first-offense lifetime ban would deter is any possibility of confessions, contrition and cooperation by athletes.

The BOA's stance has spawned some breathtaking hypocrisy and simplistic analysis over the past few months in the country that is about to host the Summer Olympics. (This take by freelancer Richard Moore on skysports.com was a welcome exception.)

On a recent trip to London, I absorbed headline after headline lamenting the potential Olympic participation of sprinter Dwain Chambers and cyclist David Millar. Yet both have returned from doping suspensions to compete for Great Britain in other world-class events accompanied by little or no outcry. Where were the histrionics when Millar played a key support role in Mark Cavendish's world championship ride last year? Get real. The Olympic Games are both an inspirational event and the biggest and most commercial meet in the world. They are not a dry run for admittance to heaven.

The regular process of WADA code revision is under way again. Stronger sanctions may emerge from those discussions, and that may or may not advance the cause of clean sport -- the dynamic is literally one of trial and error. Best of luck to everyone engaged in that effort. Sometimes it can be like herding cats.

The Jesse Owens story has been told many times, but in our fleeting, fickle and 140-character era, his tale still deserves to be trending.

Fortunately, 'Jesse Owens: American Experience", airing Tuesday night on PBS, is a welcome and engaging reminder of all that Owens overcame and accomplished by winning four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Mixing footage of Owens with historian and eye-witness interviews, 'Jesse Owens: American Experience" fittingly moves along at an Olympic runner's pace.

The 1936 Olympics made Owens famous, but 'American Experience'' tells us that he and other athletes supported a boycott of the Berlin Games due to the already infamous Nazi treatment of the Jews (the Nuremberg Laws had been enacted the previous year). Then-USOC president Avery Brundage, however, sympathized with the fascists and insisted the United States compete.

While the German government took down repellant propaganda (such as signs reading 'No Jews Allowed'') during the Olympics, Hitler nonetheless snubbed Owens by refusing to shake his hand after he won the 100. In another disturbing move, the U.S. dropped two Jewish sprinters, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, from the 4x100 relay the morning of the race. A historian in the documentary said the Americans bowed to Nazi pressure to not have Jews compete (Glickman blamed Brundage for the decision). Owens was a reluctant replacement in the relay, where he won his fourth gold.

Just as interesting is what happens to Owens after the Olympics. Owens was a hero when he came home from Berlin, but national acclaim didn't come with the financial rewards it does today. This was long before endorsement money and reality TV offered gold medalists opportunities to cash in on their performances. For that matter, Olympians still could not be paid. There was no 'Dancing with the Stars" for Owens. With few financial opportunities and needing to provide for his family, Owens wound up racing against horses to pay the bills.

As we get ready to root for Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt, the U.S. Olympic basketball team and others in London this summer, 'Jesse Owens: American Experience" is a compelling reminder that Owens should still be remembered among the greatest Olympians of all time, if not the greatest.

PHILADELPHIA -- Track is the ultimate soloist's sport, where early-season results, especially early-season relay results, really don't matter.

But that did nothing to dim the smiles on the faces of American athletes at Saturday's Penn Relays, where the United States opened the London Olympics lead-up outdoor season in dominant fashion.

Led by meet-record efforts on the part of its female sprinters, the U.S. won all six races in the U.S. vs. the World competition, and that 6-0 tally didn't begin to describe the cold American grip on the chilly day's events.

"A great start to the year," said Allyson Felix, who helped set meet marks in the women's 4x100 and 4x400-meter relays. “We're getting the chemistry going, saying that we're here and we want to do well, and every time we step on the track we want to win."

The world never really had a chance. Felix and her partners in the 4x100 -- starter Tianna Madison, third-leg Bianca Knight and anchor Carmelita Jeter -- were nearly flawless on their baton passes in a record-setting 42.19-second trip around the track. Even more impressive: The crew had never worked together until the day before the meet, and Jeter and Knight hardly practiced at all.

"We just knew we'd get each other the stick," Jeter said. Added Knight, "We just did two handoffs [Friday] and I said, 'That's it. It'll work. Don't worry about it.'"

They didn't look worried at all, as Jeter, the world champion at 100 meters, finished more than a full second ahead of Jamaica, the Americans' chief rival. Whether that will worry the Jamaicans this early in the season is a matter of some debate.

"If they knew we just put this together yesterday," Knight said, "then they might be a little nervous."

The oft-jinxed men's 4x100 squad also looked smooth, as Mike Rodgers, Justin Gatlin, Doc Patton and Walter Dix ran a 38.4-second lap and trounced a Jamaican squad that was minus superstars Usain Bolt, Yohan Blake and Asafa Powell.

It was more of the same in the 4x400 relays. American women Francena McCorory, Felix, Natasha Hastings and Sanya Richards-Ross won in a meet-record 3:21.18, about 40 meters ahead of the field.

The usually dominant U.S. men's quarter-milers, meanwhile, were their usually dominant selves. After solid legs by Calvin Smith and intermediate hurdlers Angelo Taylor and Bershawn Jackson, LaShawn Merritt essentially toyed with the opposition, stalking and waiting until the final straightaway to glide past the Bahamas for the victory. "I wanted to make it exciting," he said.

The only true excitement Saturday came in the women's sprint medley and men's distance medley relays. In the women's race, American 800-meter runner Maggie Vessey surged off the final curve to overtake Great Britain's Marilyn Okoro in front of the frenzied Franklin Field crowd. Later in the afternoon in the distance medley, Leo Manzano of the USA Blue team beat the USA Red team's Bernard Lagat in the last lap of the final 1,600-meter leg.

The U.S. attributed the unprecedented sweep to, of all things, teamwork.

"We all get along," Patton said of the current crop of American sprinters. "There's no egos on this team anymore."

That's different from in the past, Gatlin said.

"Not taking away anything from previous relay teams from the United States," he said, about to take something away from them, "there's no prima donnas, there's no fighting for the anchor leg. We know what our positions are; we know what we're good at; and we specialize in our positions and get the stick around as quick as possible."

The U.S. will need all of the above to have any prayer of beating the Jamaicans at full strength. But despite it being early in the season (and despite the notable absences), the Americans must have felt good circling the track, wearing the stars and stripes in one of Ben Franklin's old haunts and celebrating being the feistiest and fastest bunch, at least for one day.

As Jackson put it, "London here we come."

PHILADELPHIA -- Slowly, steadily, Justin Gatlin continues his efforts to shed unwanted baggage.

The American heads into the Penn Relays on Saturday ready to take on the world, literally, in the USA vs. the World 4x100 relay at Franklin Field. And the fallen star is lighter in both body and spirit than he's been in years.

"I weighed 183 when I won my gold in '04," Gatlin said Friday, referring to his 100-meter victory at the Athens Olympics. "I'm 183 again."

He was a champion again after winning a world indoor title last month in Istanbul when he bested Jamaica's Nesta Carter in the 60-meter final.

It's a far cry from two years ago, when Gatlin was a 210-pound has-been, beginning a comeback from a four-year IAAF doping ban for elevated testosterone levels. After the triumph in Istanbul, he admitted to worrying during his exile that he'd never again be relevant in the sport. First, Tyson Gay rose in Gatlin's absence to dominate the U.S. and world stage in 2007; a year later, Jamaica's Usain Bolt broke records and attained heights of human performance never seen before.

But Gatlin's 2012 indoor season captured people's attention, and even has his competition in a forgiving mood. Bolt's coach, Glen Mills, said on a conference call this week, "I don't believe that somebody should be sentenced to death or banned for life," and that Gatlin's world title "indicates he is back to the level where he was."

Gatlin didn't plot his path to prominence this way. He hired former U.S. sprint star Dennis Mitchell as his coach in November and began the winter with a specific focus.

"I just wanted to work on my start," he said Friday. "I wanted to get the first part of my race together. I wasn't even thinking about world championships or nationals or anything like that. I just wanted to get a couple of races in and prep myself for the outdoor season."

But Mitchell, whom Gatlin called "a taskmaster, a perfectionist," altered his thinking. If Gatlin was running indoors, Mitchell told him, then he'd have to run in the world championships. And if he was running at worlds, he was winning the gold medal.

Never mind that Gatlin hadn't competed in the 60 meters since his teens; he set about critiquing his start and, at Mitchell's urging, working on "every little movement." He succeeded so well, he found himself on the podium in Istanbul.

That attention to detail matters a lot more in the Bolt era.

"The margin is smaller, and the age of running away from the field is probably past us," Gatlin said.

Since Bolt's record-setting explosion, which has seen the 6-foot-5 Jamaican lower the 100-meter record three times, from 9.74 to 9.58, "you have a lot of athletes who've passed the 'wow' factor, the shock factor of, like, a 9.85 or 9.6 or even 9.5," Gatlin said. "And they're looking at it like, 'Hey, if he can do it, I can do it.'"

Still, the Rip Van Winkle of track, who woke up from his doping ban in a completely changed world, said he doesn't think anyone could have imagined Bolt's times back in 2004.

"You'd have some people say, 'You know, somebody could run 9.5,'" Gatlin said, "but they could never tell you how."

Now everybody knows. Gatlin even had a historical analogy. Decades ago, he said, "it was so improbable to send rockets into space. And now it's like, oh well, every other month we're sending things above the atmosphere to observe stuff."

It hasn't exactly been a rocket ride for Gatlin, but these days, the man who fell to earth seems to be enjoying his journey back into rarefied air.