International Capsules: London's unemployed strive to get Olympic jobs
LONDON (AP) — The pay isn't great, the job is temporary and you could be a target for terrorists. But when Mabel Cross heard that she might be able to work at the 2012 Summer Olympics, she rushed to get to a London recruitment center early.
Immaculate in a navy suit and pink shirt, Cross painstakingly filled out forms Thursday in hopes she could be part of a vast new Olympic workforce. The recruitment effort at a school just outside the Olympic stadium in East London is the most visible signal yet that organizers are ready to stop building arenas and start delivering sports events.
"I wish I could be successful," the 52-year-old said in a voice just above a whisper. "I would be so interested to work for the Olympics."
Some 10,000 security guards are needed and organizers have already received three times that number in applications from around the country. The guards will work alongside British police and the military to deliver a robust — and expensive — security operation involving about 23,700 people.
Planners are also moving to finalize security, ticketing and transport plans despite a series of setbacks that have pushed costs higher.
"We're switching from planning stuff to really doing it," said organizing committee chief executive Paul Deighton.
While Britain's total cost for the event remains at 9.3 billion pounds ($14.6 billion), auditors say there's little wiggle room for the unexpected. The budget for the games is "finely balanced," with less than 0.4 percent of the total left to cover unforeseen expenses, the National Audit Office has said.
If anything unexpected and expensive happens, Olympic officials will have to ask British taxpayers, already struggling in tough economic times, for more money. Paying more for the games would not enhance their popularity among a public already angered by a complex, computerized ticketing system that was riddled with glitches and left many people unable to attend.
Part of the reason for the budget worries is that security costs have continued to rise. British officials last month doubled the funding for security operations at venues, raising overall security costs to more than 1 billion pounds ($1.6 billion).
London Olympic organizing committee chief Sebastian Coe assured The Associated Press in an interview that the games were on track and will stay in the black.
"Occasionally some things are slightly more than you expect," he said, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "On a lot of occasions, they're slightly less than you expect, but overall those changes have taken place within that 9.3 billion-pound envelope."
Coe vowed that glitches in the ticketing process were being ironed out before the next batch go on sale in April. About 1.9 million people made 24 million ticket applications for the 6 million tickets available.
Most of the construction work is finished, with centerpiece arenas like Olympic Stadium and the saddle-shaped swimming venue visible for miles. London Mayor Boris Johnson has even taken in the view of Olympic Park from the platform on the almost-finished Orbit, a ruby red sculpture that towers over the stadium.
On weekends, the site can even get quiet — with no beeping construction vehicles backing up.
Work crews are now focusing on details. Ecologists have reintroduced newts to the park. Bats have taken up residence. Even in a bleak London winter, grass has taken root.
Yet in London's famous Underground subway system, things remain more unsettled. Transport planners say the number of trains will increase on the Jubilee Line, one of two key subways that will serve both central London and Olympic Park. Subway travelers will notice changes.
Nigel Holness, the network service director for London Underground, took The Associated Press on a behind-the-scenes tour recently. Standing beside the driver's seat of a subway train, he spoke as the train slipped through the dark tunnels to stations near some of the city's biggest landmarks — Westminster, Waterloo, London Bridge.
"The Jubilee line is absolutely the heart of what we're doing for the Olympics," he said.
The Jubilee is also a huge question mark in a strained system. Around 6.5 billion pounds ($10.2 billion) has been invested in upgrading and extending transport links. The Jubliee, among the newly upgraded lines, marked on London transport maps by a swish of silver.
If the Jubilee has troubles, many spectators trying to get to the games will, in the daily parlance of the London Underground, be forced to "seek alternative routes."
Some 25,000 reporters are expected to land in London for the games and they won't hesitate to make comparisons to Atlanta's 1996 Olympics — where bus drivers got lost, commuters waited hours for trains and athletes nearly missed events. It was so bad in Atlanta that the International Olympic Committee began requiring host cities to make sure their transport systems could deal with the strain.
No one is more aware of the consequences of failure than Holness, who can reel off statistics at will on the improved performance of the Jubilee line. He notes the subway trains are faster than ever — by a minute and a half. They are coming at greater frequency. More of them will be in service at any one time. Switching systems have been improved.
"There will be challenges during the Olympics," he said. "We will be carrying an additional 500,000 people a day. We're working hard to manage that demand."
Challenge is a word heard often lately. Deighton described the hiring of security guards — the "massive mobilization" — as critical to efforts to leave a lasting mark on parts of East London, a neglected area known for its once-thriving but long-derelict shipyards, its dirty canals, slaughterhouses and toxic waste dumps.
Work — even if it is temporary — really matters, especially in these times.
"Jobs change lives," Deighton said.
Volunteer quits Olympic committee over Dow's role
LONDON (AP) — A volunteer on the 2012 Olympics' sustainability commission says she is resigning over the Dow Chemical Co.'s sponsorship of the games.
Campaigner Meredith Alexander said Wednesday she was quitting the watchdog body to protest Dow's links to the deadly 1984 gas leak at a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, that killed an estimated 15,000 people and injured half a million. Controversy has long been rumbling over Dow's sponsorship of the so-called Olympic "wrap," which is to hang from the rafters of the games' steel-latticed stadium.
Dow bought Union Carbide in 2000 and critics argue that the purchase makes the U.S.-based company responsible for groundwater contamination and other issues that linger in India. More than that, Dow's involvement in the Olympics has offended advocates for the thousands of dead and injured in India.
Bhopal victims' rights groups also have demanded the scrapping of the sponsorship deal, saying it would give undue publicity to a company they accuse of refusing to clean up after itself.
Officials say that the deal has been properly vetted.
Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt said this week that there was "absolutely no question there was an appalling human cost" at Bhopal, but that blame could not be pinned on Dow.
He said Dow did not own Union Carbide at the time of the disaster nor at the time of a settlement with the Indian government in 1989, which has since been repeatedly upheld by India's supreme court.
He said that made him "confident that it was a very reasonable decision" for Dow to be involved with the stadium.
"I believe that we should support them as a company that wants to do the right thing by supporting a project that will be of huge benefit to the country," Hunt said.
Alexander served on the Commission for a Sustainable London 2012, whose job is to ensure sustainability across the Olympic and Paralympic program.
-- Raphael Satter
Figure Skating
Surprise! Zawadzki steals show, wins short program
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Agnes Zawadzki sure knows how to shake things up.
The U.S. junior champ only two years ago, Zawadzki outskated not one, not two, but three former winners Thursday night to claim the short program at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships. One of the few women to skate cleanly, her sultry routine to a blues medley earned her 66.24 points and put her three points ahead of defending champion Alissa Czisny going into the free skate Saturday. Ashley Wagner was third.
Mirai Nagasu, the 2008 U.S. champ, was fifth after botching her opening jump. Rachael Flatt, the 2010 winner, was way down in ninth after a lackluster performance in front of an enthusiastic hometown crowd.
"I'm really excited," Zawadzki said, still grinning 15 minutes after she got off the ice. "Everything's finally clicked."
Earlier Thursday, Mary Beth Marley and Rockne Brubaker took a big lead in the pairs competition, winning the short program by more than four points. Marley and Brubaker, who already has two U.S. senior titles with former partner Keauna McLaughlin, scored 65.80 points with their delightfully peppy "Singing in the Rain" program.
Amanda Evora and Mark Ladwig, runners-up last year, were second again (61.27), followed by Caydee Denney and John Coughlin (60.88), winners of the last two pairs titles with different partners. The free skate is Saturday.
The U.S. women have been stuck in a rut since Michelle Kwan and Sasha Cohen hung up their skates. They've gone five years without a medal at the world championships, came up empty at the Vancouver Olympics and will have only two spots at worlds for a fourth year in a row. Czisny, Flatt and Nagasu have all tried — and failed.
All Zawadzki wants is a chance.
"I'd put her talent up against anybody," coach David Santee said about Zawadzki. "I think it was just a matter of time until it was going to come out."
Zawadzki has medals from the last two junior world championships. But skating stopped being fun last season, and she was so unhappy over the summer that she seriously considered quitting.
"I wasn't really enjoying skating," she said. "But I wanted to try something before I stopped."
A senior in high school, Zawadzki didn't want to leave Colorado Springs, Colo., where she'd spent the last several years training with Tom Zakrajsek. She began working with another coach at the rink, Christy Krall, who also coaches world champion Patrick Chan, and then called Santee, her old coach in her native Chicago, and asked if he'd help train her, too.
"I hung up and thought, 'How's this going to work?'" Santee said. "But it's worked out great."
Santee likened the arrangement to "a corporation," with Krall as the chief operating officer in charge of day-to-day training and Santee the chief executive officer. He's traveled to Colorado three times since he resumed working with Zawadzki, and she's come back to Chicago once to work with him.
Though Zawadzki had a rough Grand Prix season, she and her coaches knew she was on the verge of doing something big. Where better than at the U.S. championships?
Her program to a blues medley was so captivating you could almost see the thick fog of smoke hanging over the bar and hear the clink of bottles. She opened with a monstrous triple toe loop-triple toe combination — one of only a handful of women to even try a triple-triple combo — that seemed to last for ages yet didn't take a second off her speed. Her triple lutz was explosive, and her double axel done with ease.
The crowd was on its feet before she finished her final spin, and Zawadzki grinned and clapped before she buried her face in her hands.
"Not at all," Santee said when asked if he was surprised by Zawadzki's performance. "Because we know what she's capable of doing. We said all along she came in to win."
If she skates like this again Saturday, the rest of the favorites can't afford to make the errors they did Thursday night.
Czisny had no trouble with her triple lutz-double toe combination or her triple loop. But she botched the double axel, the easiest jump in her program, drawing a gasp from the arena.
"I hesitated just a little bit going into the jump and that usually doesn't work," she said.
But Czisny is one of the most elegant and beautiful skaters around, and her component scores were strong enough to hold her up.
"Considering (the double axel) is worth the least amount of points, it's probably the best one miss if you're going to miss one. Which I'd prefer not to," Czisny said.
Nagasu stumbled out of the landing of her triple loop — she did manage to do it in time to the music, at least — and she lost whatever spark she had. Oh, her spins were gorgeous as always, the combination spin centered as perfectly as if she'd used a protractor. But it was like watching a movie in black-and-white instead of in HD.
"I'd say it was disappointing," coach Frank Carroll said. "When the loop was not good, the spark was gone so the program looked flat. When she's in character, it's great."
-- Nancy Armour
Abbott no longer cares what the critics think
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Jeremy Abbott no longer cares what anyone thinks.
The two-time U.S. figure skating champion has been called a head case, a disappointment and all kinds of other not-so-nice things. For years, he let it all get to him. But after a performance at last year's U.S. Figure Skating Championships that was so dismal it cost him a spot on the world championships team, Abbott decided he was done worrying about what everyone else thought.
"I was just like, (forget) it all. I'm just going to do something that makes me happy, because I've worked so hard to please other people. Clearly, you can't always do that," he said Thursday. "At the end of the day, I just want to get off the ice and feel good about myself and my performance. People can say what they want — and they have said whatever they want, everything that they want. But this year, when I've gotten off the ice, every time, mistakes or not, I just felt great, really happy."
Abbott is the heavy favorite in the men's competition, which begins Friday with the short program.
Abbott is one of the most technically sound skaters in the world, with beautiful edges that carve the ice like a master craftsman and perfect body control. He is also one of the few skaters who has managed to maintain the balance between the performance quality that makes figure skating so entertaining and the tough physical tricks the system now demands. He takes an active role in choreographing his programs, and the unique style makes him stand out when so many men's programs have a similar look.
Despite all that, Abbott never has been able to make the spotlight this own. Even winning national titles in 2009 and 2010 couldn't make him a star.
Abbott had the misfortune of spending most of his senior career competing against Olympic champion Evan Lysacek and Johnny Weir, two oversized personalities whose rivalry left little room for anyone else. But Abbott didn't help matters with his tendency to fall apart on the biggest stages. He flopped at both the 2009 world championships and again at the Vancouver Olympics.
Even last year, when he should have had all the attention to himself without Lysacek and Weir around, he couldn't hold it together. Boot problems, which he'd struggled with all year, played a big role in his collapse.
"It didn't allow me to train basically," he said. "It really cut down my confidence, and I really didn't go into any competition feeling prepared. I was just trying to keep my head above water the whole year."
But no one wanted to hear it.
So Abbott decided he was done listening, too.
"I get 'head case.' I get this, I get that. You know what? You all have never been in my shoes. You've never been performing in front of thousands of people; you don't know what it's like," he said, a touch of defiance in his voice. "For me, this season is just about doing things that make me happy. I'm really focused, and I'm working hard. It's about my goals and what I want. It's not about proving anything to anybody."
Added Yuka Sato, who coaches Abbott with her husband, Jason Dungjen. "I think Jeremy's season started the day we returned from last year's nationals. There has been a lot of ups and downs and soul-searching and down times, difficult times. I think he found himself."
The difference is noticeable. The best athletes possess a confidence that borders on cockiness, and Abbott now has it. Asked who should be considered the favorite at nationals, he quickly replied, "Me. Absolutely," and then proceeded to list the reasons why. He won Cup of China and was third at the Rostelecom Cup, making him the only American man to qualify for the Grand Prix final.
When asked if he can catch world champion Patrick Chan, who has dominated the competition the past year, Abbott didn't hesitate.
"I certainly think that I can, and I think that I'm at Patrick's level. If I skate two clean programs, I'm at the same level," he said. "A couple of years ago, I definitely used to go into competitions like, 'Oh my God, these people are monsters, and they're unbeatable." ... Now I go into competitions thinking that I can win if I do my job. If I skate two clean programs and I do my job, I definitely think I can win."
And if others don't? Well, Abbott doesn't much care.
-- Nancy Armour
Notebook: Lower levels to be at nationals beginning in 2013
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — The U.S. Figure Skating Championships is becoming an all-ages event. Juvenile and intermediate, the lowest levels in competitive figure skating, will have their championships at nationals beginning next year. They had been a separate event, once known as the Junior Olympics, held at a different site and several weeks before the regular nationals.
"From a cost-savings standpoint and other reasons, we're bringing it under this umbrella," U.S. Figure Skating CEO David Raith said Thursday.
U.S. Figure Skating President Patricia St. Peter said development issues played a big part in the decision. To get to nationals, novice, junior and senior skaters go through a two-step qualifying process: regionals and sectionals. But for juvenile and intermediates, regionals was the only qualifying event.
St. Peter said federation officials were concerned because they were seeing some parents getting discouraged if their kids didn't make it to juvenile or intermediate nationals. And some parents, possibly not fully understanding the process, were unhappy if their skaters only made it to sectionals when they moved up to novice, seeing it as a step back.
"It's a re-emphasis on, 'It's a process.' It's not quick, immediate results," St. Peter said. "We were losing skaters because of a lack of patience on the part of parents, frankly. Sometimes skaters. But it was mostly parent-driven," St. Peter said. "The goal was to make it to the junior national championships and if they didn't make it, they should be done. Well, kids develop at different phases."
Next year's national championships will be in Omaha, Neb.
SUCCESSFUL "RISE": "Rise," the documentary honoring the 1961 U.S. team that was killed in a plane crash on its way to the world figure skating championships, has generated more than $500,000 for the Memorial Fund.
"Rise" was shown at theaters nationwide last Feb. 17, and the film is now available on DVD. All proceeds are going to the Memorial Fund, which was established in honor of those killed and provides financial assistance to developing U.S. skaters.
"The film met all of the objectives that we had, both tangible and intangible, and will continue to generate funds for the Memorial Fund," U.S. Figure Skating President Patricia St. Peter said Thursday.
The entire U.S. world team — 18 skaters, six coaches and 10 judges, officials and family members — died Feb. 15, 1961, when the plane it was on crashed into a marshy field a few miles short of the Zaventem Airport in Brussels. The exact cause of the crash was never determined.
GRACIE'S GOLD: Gracie Gold has a prize to match her name.
Gold won the junior women's title at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in a rout Wednesday night. Her score of 178.92 points was the highest ever by a junior woman at nationals, as was her 23.44-point margin of victory. Ashley Cain was second, followed by Hannah Miller.
"I thought both programs went very well," said Gold, a 16-year-old from Springfield, Ill. "I was happy with my short. I have improvements to make to my long, but I was very happy with myself. I thought I did a great job."
Gold will move up to the senior level next season, and left no doubt she intends to be a factor there as well. She opened her free skate with a triple lutz-triple toe loop combination, an upgrade of the triple-double combos most of the senior women will be doing. Her jumps looked so effortless she appeared to float above the ice, and her footwork was intricate and quick. Her only flaw was a fall on a double axel, but she came right back with a triple salchow-double toe combination.
With the Sochi Olympics only two years away, Gold now joins the "ones to watch" category. She has little international experience — international assignments are based on results at U.S. championships, and Gold didn't make it last year — but she won the lone international she did this year, a junior Grand Prix in Estonia. She will compete at the junior world championships, and U.S. Figure Skating President Pat St. Peter said there is a possibility the federation could send Gold to Four Continents, a senior event next month in Colorado Springs, Colo.
Four Continents draws skaters from the U.S., Canada, Japan and China.
"In theory," St. Peter said when asked if sending Gold was a possibility. "We've got criterion guidelines that will be analyzed. Gracie Gold, age-wise and so on, would be eligible."
The Four Continents team will be named at the end of nationals.
ICE CHIPS: The site for the 2014 U.S. Figure Skating Championships, which will serve as the trials for the Sochi Olympics, will be announced by May 1. ...Other lower-level winners were: Nathan Chen, junior men; Haven Denney and Brandon Frazier, junior pairs; Alexandra Aldridge and Daniel Eaton, junior dance; Karen Chen, novice women; Vincent Zhou, novice men; Chelsea Liu and Devin Perini, novice pairs; Holly Moore and Daniel Klaber, novice dance. ... Senior pairs skater Peter Biver is the oldest competitor at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships at 35. Vincent Zhou, winner of the novice men's title, is the youngest at 11.
-- Nancy Armour
Gachinski upstages Plushenko at Europeans
SHEFFIELD, England (AP) — Evgeni Plushenko got upstaged by his own training partner.
Artur Gachinski snatched the lead from the 2006 Olympic champion at the European figure skating championships Thursday after Plushenko opted not to do a quadruple jump in the short program.
Gachinski completed a quad and finished with 84.80 points, a mere 0.09 points ahead of Plushenko. Tomas Verner of the Czech Republic, the 2008 European champion, was third (81.14 points), just ahead of emerging star Javier Fernandez of Spain (80.11).
"I think this was my best ever skate. I did all the jumps, the spins and the footwork as I had planned," said Gachinski, whose eye-catching shock of blond hair bears striking resemblance to Plushenko's.
In the pairs competition, overnight leaders Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov's sublime performance to the "Black Swan" soundtrack gave them the gold and their first major title.
Volosozhar and Trankov finished with 210.45 points to lead a Russian sweep. Vera Bazarova and Yuri Larionov were second (193.79), followed by Ksenia Stolbova and Fedor Klimov (171.81 points).
Russia has been looking for someone to replace Plushenko, a triple Olympic medalist and three-time world champion, and it might have found him in Gachinski.
After winning the bronze at last year's world championships — Russia's first medal since Plushenko won the last of his three world titles in 2004 — Gachinski is poised to claim his first major title.
The 18-year-old was the only one of the top men to do a clean quad, and he thrilled the crowd with a mixture of poise, exuberance and fancy footwork in an ebullient performance to "Saint Louis Blues."
Hampered by injury, Plushenko said he couldn't have done any more in his showy routine set to the emotional "Storm" by Yanni.
"I'm pleased with the performance considering the circumstances. A program without a quad was like a trip into the past," the 29-year-old Plushenko said.
Plushenko has been highly critical of rivals who fail to attempt a quad, famously criticizing Evan Lysacek after the American beat him for the gold medal at the Vancouver Olympics.
"If the Olympic champion doesn't know how to jump a quad, I don't know," Plushenko said at the time. "Now it's not men's figure skating, now it's dancing."
Yet Plushenko was in no shape to practice what he preaches at Europeans.
"It was either doing a program without the quad or not competing, and I want to finish this competition," Plushenko said.
That he is still in contention for yet another European gold is testament to his enduring class — and the struggles of his challengers.
A master at thrilling audiences for the past decade, Plushenko hasn't lost the art of playing the showman.
Enticing the judges by circling in front of them before his routine, he was all smiles as he gave a performance full of energy and expression. At one point, he aimed a kick in front of a TV camera at the end of the rink, with his mouth wide open.
His jumps were largely spot on, too, with a triple axel particularly impressing the judges. There was no quad toe loop, however, as Plushenko — not wanting to aggravate his injuries — decided to start off with a triple lutz instead.
"When I do the quad toe, I need three or four minutes to recover from the pain," Plushenko said.
The bouquets rained down on the ice and many in the crowd rose to their feet as Plushenko lapped up the applause, despite scoring around six points fewer than his short-program total at the 2010 Olympics — his last major tournament.
That gave his rivals a chance to keep pace. But, one by one, they faltered.
Defending champion Florent Amodio of France wobbled after a quad salchow and is fifth. Brian Joubert, the 2007 world champion, fell on a quad toe and is 10th, likely out of contention for the podium.
Fernandez tumbled after a triple axel and stumbled after a triple lutz. Michal Brezina, fourth at the 2011 worlds, under-rotated on a quad salchow.
"To be honest, I think my rivals gave me a big present today," Plushenko said.
Gachinski was the only one to capitalize.
Not only did the teenager score 15.83 from his opening quad toe-triple toe combination, the bronze medalist from the 2011 worlds also received level-4 scores from judges for his spins.
"Today I am happy about Artur but especially happy about Evgeni — after one or two years away, he is able to compete again, with just one leg," said Alexei Mishin, who coaches both Gachinski and Plushenko.
Volosozhar and Trankov led by almost six points after the short program, and built on that advantage by top-scoring in the free skate. Their score of 137.65 points gave Bazarova and Larionov — who skated last — little chance of making up the deficit.
The three Russian teams took full advantage of the absence of world champions Aliona Savchenko and Robin Szolkowy of Germany.
Savchenko and Szolkowy were heavy favorites to retain their European title, but were forced to pull out before Wednesday's short program after she aggravated a thigh injury.
-- Steve Douglas
Track & Field
Clipped hurdle in Beijing hardly haunts Jones
Hurdler Lolo Jones broke out of the starting blocks with a blaze of speed and quickly settled into her easygoing rhythm. One hurdle down. Then two. Three.
The heavy favorite in the finals of the 100 hurdles at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Jones was beginning to distance herself from the field — like she had that entire season — bounding effortlessly over the obstacles in her lane.
Four hurdles down. Five. Six. Just four more to go. Three, two ...
About then, she could almost picture the exhilaration of bursting across the line first, almost feel the weight of the gold medal around her neck.
Almost. This was, after all, the hurdles and as she knew full well, anything could happen. Ten obstacles to get over. Ten chances to make a mistake.
And just like that, it happened. She clipped the top of the ninth hurdle. As she stumbled, she saw the blur of other runners speed past her — those dreams of gold evaporating in an instant. She crossed the finish line behind six others.
Jones crumbled to the track that day at the Bird's Nest, sitting on her knees as she buried her hands in her face.
Fast forward nearly four years and Jones, now 29, refuses to allow one missed hurdle to haunt her.
She's in the process of clearing that mental barrier, seeing a sports psychologist off and on, just to help her make a little more peace with what happened in Beijing, especially with the 2012 London Olympics drawing near.
Should she make the Olympic squad — through the U.S. trials in June — London could be her big moment, her chance at redemption.
But those thoughts are for later. There's plenty of work to be done before then, especially coming off spine surgery last August.
And then there are all the questions sure to be thrown at her between now and London: Still think about losing gold in Beijing? Afraid that's your legacy? Can it fuel you?
Jones doesn't mind talking about the stumble. She's hoping her misstep, although painful, can serve as some sort of lesson — brush yourself off, keep working and try again.
"It's going to feel like they're talking about an ex-boyfriend that cheated on you," said Jones, who begins the season Saturday with the U.S. Open at Madison Square Garden in New York. "But if you nail the interviews right, every one you give is a chance to reach a kid back home. They'll look at my story and be like, 'Wow, four years ago, she hit that hurdle and worked hard. She had spinal surgery that tried to knock her down and now look at her.'
"I could look at the 2008 thing as a bad thing. But I'm really hoping that it will be a great Cinderella thing."
This time, Jones may not go into the Olympics as the favorite like in Beijing. She may not even be a pick to win a medal at all.
She's coming off an injury-marred 2011 season that led to back surgery to fix a tethered spinal cord.
So debilitating were her aches that she couldn't even guide family members on tours of the French Quarter in New Orleans, let alone finish a workout.
Even worse, no one really knew what was wrong. In the indoor season, the pain started in her hip and spread to her piriformis (gluteal muscle). So, they concentrated on that.
Then, during the outdoor season, the pain shifted to her back and all the way up her armpit.
"It was spreading like wildfire," said Jones, who grew up in Iowa before a standout career at Louisiana State, where she still trains under her college coach, Dennis Shaver. "We were treating it and treating it and it wasn't budging, only getting worse."
Jones attempted to run through the pain at U.S. championships last June, finishing strong in her opening heat. That night in her hotel room, though, her back seized up again.
"I was like, 'You've got to be joking me,'" she said. "I tried to put the pain in the back of my mind."
Only, she couldn't. And yet she competed.
Jones finished well back in the semifinals, missing out on a spot on the team bound for the world championships in Daegu, South Korea. A crushing blow.
But that's also when she went to see a specialist, who pinpointed just what was wrong with her back.
"They were saying if I didn't have the surgery, pretty much my career was over," Jones said. "I was in so much pain, I couldn't even drive longer than 15 minutes without sharp pains shooting down my back and leg. I couldn't walk for more than 30 minutes. I couldn't live a feasible life."
Her surgeon, Dr. Robert S. Bray Jr., remedied the situation in a 45-minute operation, freeing a pinned down portion of her spinal cord.
Bray thinks Jones' condition may have even led to her hitting that hurdle in 2008. With her spinal cord not functioning correctly, Jones was having difficulty sensing perception with her feet.
"She knew her body wasn't right, but nobody was telling her what the reason was," said Bray, the founding director and CEO of DISC Sports & Spine Center, which provides medical services for the U.S. Olympic team. "She's like, 'I'm telling my feet to go, and they're not going where I tell it to go. What's wrong? Is it in my head?' It was in her spinal cord. I think that's why she hit that hurdle.
"I think now she's going to be a whole lot faster."
After surgery, Jones took a month off to heal.
"They said start out with a 20-minute walk," said Jones, who's been working with Red Bull's high-performance team on everything from physiological testing to nutritional analysis to help her improve on the track. "Really? I'm a professional athlete. Give me a break. But I could only make it down my driveway. But every day it got better.
"Now, I'm good. I have my life back."
Her first race will be this weekend, against a star-laden field. Dawn Harper, who won that night in the Bird's Nest when Jones staggered, will be there, along with Kellie Wells.
"Wow, throwing me back into the fire," Jones said. "Such a tough field."
Then again, it is an Olympic year. And she will be lining up against this group — and more — at the trials in six months. This will be an early test, to see how far she's come since surgery.
She definitely feels almost like an underdog these days, maybe even a little counted out.
"I know a lot of people are starting to doubt me, saying, 'I don't understand why she gets all this hype. Oh, she better do something,'" said Jones, who graced the cover of the most recent issue of Outside magazine in a red swimsuit. "I always use the downs to propel me for the ups."
That's why she hasn't gotten hung up on that hurdle she hit in Beijing. She picked herself up off the track that day and really hasn't looked back.
"Hurdles aren't road blocks to me. They're something that can launch you," Jones said. "They're opportunities."
-- Pat Graham
Powell, seeking title, tries new approach
NEW YORK (AP) — Asafa Powell, once the world's fastest man, wasn't setting any perfect attendance records at practice.
"Over the years I've been kind of lazy, thinking my talent alone can do it," he said Thursday. "This year, I'm trying something new."
Like not missing any workouts in what the Jamaican sprint star called "a very serious year."
He turns 30 in November, a few months after the London Games, which he's treating as his final Olympics.
"My age is moving as fast as me," Powell said with a laugh at a news conference across the street from Madison Square Garden, where he'll try something else new Saturday.
For the first time since 2004, Powell is racing during the indoor season.
"I've been doing something for many years and it's not working," he said.
Even though he held the 100-meter world record from 2005-08, Powell has never won a major individual title. Injuries and subpar performances on the biggest stages have left a career for now known more for what he hasn't accomplished than what he has.
So this weekend, Powell will run the 50 meters at the U.S. Open, hoping that indoor races are an ingredient in that elusive championship formula.
Powell set the world record of 9.77 seconds in June 2005 and lowered it to 9.74 two years later.
Then came a streak of lightning in countryman Usain Bolt, who shattered all expectations for the sport. Bolt first broke the mark a few miles from the Garden in May 2008 and has since lowered it to 9.58 with dominating gold medal performances at the 2008 Olympics and 2009 world championships.
Powell, meanwhile, had to settle for bronze at worlds in 2007 and '09. He was fifth at the Beijing Games.
But last year, he seemed poised to challenge Bolt at the world championships in Daegu, South Korea, running the season's fastest time of 9.78. Instead, he never made it to the starting line because of a groin injury.
After Bolt false-started, another Jamaican, Yohan Blake, won gold.
Powell acknowledged he couldn't help but wonder: "Maybe if I was there, things would have been different."
Hoping things will turn out differently at this summer's Olympics, Powell is traveling with a doctor for the first time to try to stay healthy. So far, so good.
His history of physical ailments, and not just laziness, contributed to his one-time aversion to practice.
"I tried to push myself to the limit, got injuries, and kind of just backed off a bit," Powell said of the times in the past he dedicated himself to making every workout. "Said to myself, 'Maybe the harder I train, the more injuries I get.'"
Just making the Olympic team in his track-mad country is no guarantee. There are only three spots for a deep pool that includes Bolt, Blake and Nesta Carter, who won gold on the 400 relay that Powell anchored in Beijing and will also race Saturday.
The U.S. Open field also includes Justin Gatlin, who shared Powell's record of 9.77 until the American was stripped of the mark because of a doping violation.
Still popular in Jamaica — where, he jokes, he has "a lot of coaches" — Powell concedes expectations aren't too high for him in the rest of the world. He won't say definitively that London will be his last Olympics. He just knows he won't feel forever as he does now — that he's a threat to finally win that major title.
"I'm smart enough to know when my time has come," Powell said. "I'm still here competing, so that means I have the confidence in myself."
-- Rachel Cohen
Swiss sprinter Pascal Mancini sues doctor
BERN, Switzerland (AP) — The Swiss athletics federation says sprinter Pascal Mancini will sue a doctor after twice testing positive for a banned steroid.
Swiss Athletics says the 22-year-old Mancini was mistakenly injected with nandrolone instead of cortisone, an anti-inflammatory painkiller, last September.
Mancini will skip the indoor season, including the world championships in Istanbul in March, while Switzerland's anti-doping agency investigates the case. Last year, Mancini was warned by the IAAF for using the hyperactivity drug Ritalin without permission.
The IAAF refused to recognize a Swiss record 4x100-meter time run by a quartet including Mancini at the Zurich Diamond League meeting last September.
Russia's Aryasova stripped of Tokyo marathon title
TOKYO (AP) — Russian Tatiana Aryasova has been stripped of her 2011 Tokyo Marathon title after testing positive for a banned substance.
Aryasova tested positive for hydroxyethyl starch in a urine sample taken after she won the Tokyo race in 2 hours, 27 minutes, 29 seconds on February 27, 2011.
The Tokyo Marathon Foundation stripped Aryasova of her title after she failed to challenge a two-year doping by the International Association of Athletics Federation during an appeal period that ended last week. Japan's Noriko Higuchi, who finished second, was awarded the victory with a time of 2:28:49.
Skiing
Burke honored with solemn march down the halfpipe
ASPEN, Colo. (AP) — Holding white glow sticks above their heads, Sarah Burke's friends took a slow trip down a darkened halfpipe at the Winter X Games on Thursday — bidding a sad farewell to the skier who helped push their sports to the heights they've reached today.
With light snow falling on them at the bottom, those friends embraced Burke's parents and her husband — all still mourning a week after the 29-year-old Canadian freestyle icon's death following a training accident on a halfpipe in Utah.
It was a touching moment in front of a normally raucous X Games crowd that fell silent while watching the tribute. It opened with a video remembrance of Burke, the four-time champion in skiing superpipe who used to save her best work for the fans in Aspen.
"Everything she believed in is on this mountain tonight," Winter X emcee Sal Masekela told the crowd. "Competition, excellence, progression."
Burke was the first woman to land a 720, then a 900, then a 1080-degree spin in competition. But the summary of Burke's life, Masekela said, will never be found in any stat sheet or record book.
"She was a superstar with the humility of a rookie," Masekela said.
Shortly after the tribute, with the competition moving on, Burke's name was briefly the second-hottest trending topic on Twitter — one small indication of what she meant to the action-sports world she helped shape. Meanwhile, all around Aspen, the new sticker that reads "Celebrate Sarah" was becoming an increasingly popular item.
Earlier in the day, another Canadian, Kaya Turski, won her third straight gold medal in skier slopestyle and immediately paid tribute to her friend.
"It means everything to me," Turski said. "This goes out to Sarah. Before every run, I said to myself, 'Let's do this, Sarah.' She was there for me and she led me all the way."
Even though it wasn't her best event, it was Burke's prodding that played a big role in bringing women's slopestyle to the X Games program in 2009. She had a similar impact on the International Olympic Committee, which voted to bring that sport, along with Burke's specialty, superpipe skiing, into the games beginning in 2014.
Her impact on freeskiing certainly won't be forgotten anytime soon, and yet, it was her own words, played to the crowd during the video tribute, that may have defined her best.
"I just ski because I really like it," she said in an interview from a few years back. "I'm not going out there to win the most money or make a big difference. I do it because I love it."
-- Eddie Pells
White stoked to be back in slopestyle
ASPEN, Colo. (AP) — He is every bit as polished in a boardroom as he is on a snowboard — a meticulous caretaker of both his image off the snow and his reputation on it.
And yet, here's what Shaun White had to say about his return to slopestyle at last year's Winter X Games: "I don't want to say I did the 'human' move. But I was like, ya know, if I go out there, I'm gonna get owned."
He went out there, and, yes, it all went down exactly the way he expected.
Unprepared after taking two years off to focus on his Olympic halfpipe routine, the world's most famous snowboarder looked like an impersonator wearing a red wig as he rode across those rails.
He finished 13th out of 16, didn't qualify for finals and, by the end of a day that seemed to turn snowboarding on its head, White, of all people, was eliciting sympathy from those other riders who did, in fact, own him.
For a day at least.
That day marked Day 1 of the push to the Sochi Olympics, where slopestyle will make its debut, two years from now. One important stopping point on that road comes Friday, when White heads out for preliminaries of the 2012 X Games with a bag of new tricks.
He had a minor setback Thursday when he tweaked his already sore left ankle during a practice run and had to be treated by medical staff at the bottom of the mountain. But his publicist, Crystal Garrett, said it wasn't serious, and White will be on the mountain Friday.
He doesn't expect to get owned this time.
"I could have totally ducked out and waited until I had the moves to win the event, then come back and do it," he said this week in an interview. "But I was like, 'Ya know what, this is going to teach me a lot.' Sometimes I think you do really need to lose. That felt like a true loss, and I respected it."
It made him realize, he said, "I can't compete with these guys. So I circled back, refocused on what I needed to do, looked at who won, what he did. I was able to build from there."
If this story line sounds vaguely familiar, it should.
It was in 2010, the lead-up to the Vancouver Olympics, when White took what felt like a body blow by finishing second to Danny Davis in an Olympic qualifier. Within hours of that loss he was on the practice pipe, perfecting the Double McTwist 1260 — the jump that would separate him from the pack once again.
He didn't even need it to win his second Olympic gold but put it out there during his second run — essentially a victory lap because he had already secured first place.
It's not hyperbole to say that magic moment played a huge role in pushing the International Olympic Committee to add slopestyle and a few other "action sport" events to the program starting in 2014. Bottom line: One day of Shaun White at the Olympics isn't enough.
He modestly accepts that notion.
"Slopestyle, it's going to be a great event either way," he said. "You could say the Olympics might need snowboarding more than snowboarding needed them. It's give and take. But if I'm part of that, yeah, I'll take it."
Returning to slopestyle while he pushes his halfpipe routine forward is a return to the way things used to be for White — before the Olympics turned halfpipe into his priority, which, in turn, helped the 25-year-old superstar expand his growing influence on what young people wear and watch and buy.
In 2010, White had the highest Q Score of any active athlete, according to Sports Business Journal. It's that single trick on the halfpipe — the Double McTwist 1260, where he packs 3½ twists into two head-over-heels flips while hovering over the edge of the pipe — that augmented his fame, while bringing a new level of excitement, and baggage, to his sport.
Will he try it? Can he do it? And should he? There was a time when snowboarding was supposed to be "organic" — not all about winning — so what kind of message does he send when a loss drives him so nuts that he's back on the halfpipe, trying something even more daring and dangerous to get back on top?
Many of these issues came to a head two years ago here in Aspen when White was practicing before the Winter X finals and hit his face, gruesomely, on the halfpipe. He was fine, but it was a shocking reminder of the fine line these athletes walk — one that was already on people's minds in 2010 after Kevin Pearce's near-fatal accident and is back in the headlines this month after the death of freestyle skier Sarah Burke.
"I knew if I didn't go out and compete after that accident, I'm going to create something in my head that says this trick is dangerous and I should be scared of it," White said. "Then, that will slowly build and the next thing I know I'm standing at the Olympics saying, 'I remember that crash and how I backed out of the X Games because of it. And now I'm standing here having to do this trick at the Olympics in front of more people.' I knew that could happen. So I sucked it up, ran back to the top and did it again right away."
He did the trick, won the X Games and took his second Olympic gold a few weeks later.
In short, he turned a failure into a success — not for the first time, and probably not for the last.
''If you haven't gone skiing in a while, then you come back to it, you're excited," White said. "That's what happened with me in slopestyle. I got really inspired, learned a bunch of tricks, now I'm really excited to be here and perform. Because I didn't live up to my standard of riding last season."
-- Eddie Pells
Vonn leads second downhill practice run in St. Moritz
ST. MORITZ, Switzerland (AP) — Lindsey Vonn took advantage of perfect weather and changes to the course to lead a training run Thursday for a World Cup downhill race.
She improved upon her first practice run by four seconds, finishing in 1 minute, 44.43 seconds in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Vonn leads the downhill and overall World Cup standings heading into the race Saturday. Julie Mancuso of the United States was ninth.
Fraenzi Aufdenblatten of Switzerland was the only racer within a second of Vonn, trailing by 0.57 seconds. Elena Fanchini of Italy was third.
After slow conditions for the practice run Wednesday, colder temperatures and tweaks to straighten a top section produced a truer course for the events this weekend. A super-combined is Friday and super-G on Sunday.
