International Capsules: Lindsey Vonn returns to U.S. to new level of fame

NEW YORK — One of the world’s most dominant athletes finally gets recognized on the streets of New York.

Her triumphant ski season over, Lindsey Vonn returned to her home country to discover a strange new phenomenon.

"I get that in Europe, but it’s so bizarre — and great, though — to experience that in the U.S.," Vonn told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Perhaps it has something to do with all the pre-Olympic buzz about how Vonn was going to be the star of the Vancouver Games, then the drama of a shin injury that threatened to quash her hopes, and finally that joyous celebration when she won the elusive gold medal in her first race.

Her fame creates the opportunity to do a lot of "cool stuff," as Vonn put it, which will keep her busy for the next few weeks. But all that hype and hurt and happiness is also exhausting, and that has Vonn looking forward to late April, when she’ll finally take some time off.

"I feel like now that the Olympics are over, I can just take a deep breath and really recharge," Vonn said. "I want to keep pushing strong for the next four or five years, however much longer I would choose to go for. You really need at least one good year when you’re having not as much to do in the springtime, because our seasons are so long. ... It’s tough to always be pushing through, especially with injuries. The Olympics and world championships are always a really stressful time.

"So this is really important for me to get rested up enough so I’m really excited to ski again come winter."

Vonn will return to the gym in mid-May, but she expects she’ll spend only two weeks training in Austria this offseason instead of the month she did last year. She’s hoping to visit her in-laws in Florida and play some relaxing golf once that long-awaited vacation comes next month.

But first, there’s much to do, which will have Vonn shuttling among New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. She’ll be working with sponsors such as Procter & Gamble, attending fashion events, even getting a dress made for her by designer Tory Burch.

And the best part: "Law & Order" creator Dick Wolf heard she was a big fan of the show, so he cast her in an episode.

Vonn will be home in Vail, Colo., for a few days starting later this week before hitting the road again. Her many injuries don’t bother her much as long as she’s not skiing.

The bruised right knee gets a little sore when she walks too much, and the broken right pinkie hurts sometimes when she shakes hands. Vonn said she made the mistake of trying to go without the small pink cast, which caused the finger to balloon to twice its size.

Of course, there will be a lot of hands to shake the next few weeks. Vonn hopes her newfound fame can remind Americans that skiing doesn’t stop just because the Olympics are over. She said she’s received a lot of Facebook and Twitter messages from fans saying, "This is so sad — I won’t be able to see you for another four years."

"And I’m like, no, actually, we still have a World Cup," Vonn said with a laugh.

She lets them know they can watch online. That will be the real test of her celebrity — how many Americans tune in as she chases that fourth straight World Cup overall title next season.

Fourcade wins biathlon World Cup sprint

OSLO — Martin Fourcade of France has won a men’s 10-kilometer sprint in the biathlon World Cup.

Fourcade finished in 26 minutes, 8.1 seconds Thursday. Russia’s Maxim Tchoudov finished second, 7.1 seconds behind, and Christoph Sumann of Austria was third. The three shot flawlessly.

Norway’s Emil Hegle Svendsen, who won two golds at the Vancouver Olympics and led the overall World Cup standings before Thursday’s event, missed a shot and finished 15th, 53 seconds behind Fourcade.

Simone Hauswald of Germany won the women’s 7.5-kilometer sprint.

She finished in 20 minutes, 42.4 seconds. Darya Domracheva of Belarus took second place and Sweden’s Anna Carin Olofsson-Zidek came third.

Swimming

Slow suits, slow times at Australian trials

BRISBANE, Australia — Olympic champion Stephanie Rice set the bar low when she was training in her Brisbane pool this past month for the Australian swim trials.

Out of mind were the blistering times she set while establishing individual medley world records — one since broken — and winning both gold medals over 200 and 400 IM distances at Beijing in 2008.

Instead, with the sleek full-length polyurethane suits that she and most elite swimmers wore in the last two years now banned by the sport’s governing body and replaced by the traditional textile suits, Rice went back three years to establish a benchmark for her training times.

"I could only look to 2007, when I had just begun, to try to get a feel for where I was," Rice said.

The 21-year-old Australian is in good company at this week’s Australian trials in Sydney for the Commonwealth Games and Pan-Pacific championships.

She will soon be joined by hundreds of other elite swimmers around the world as they experience the post-polyurethane blues: how to improve on the 255 world records set since early 2008 when the sleek suits were first handed out to swimmers.

The Australian championships in March 2008 — then the Olympic trials — were where records started falling. Rice set two herself in her specialties.

And the meet being held this week at the Sydney Olympic pool is the first involving one of the top swim nations since the ban on the suits began Jan. 1: now it’s shorts for men and shoulder-to-knee textile suits for women.

Brenton Rickard received a quick illustration of how much difference the suits meant to his world record-setting time in the Rome pool last year at the world championships — one of 43 set there.

Rickard broke the world 100-meter breaststroke mark with a time of 58.58 seconds. On Wednesday night, his time in qualifying first for Thursday’s final at the Australian titles was 1:00.80 — nearly 2 seconds slower.

He improved on that time slightly — to 1:00.19 — in winning Thursday’s final.

While the swimmers might seem like they’re treading water for a while, Australia’s new head coach Leigh Nugent believes the ban will restore some credibility to the sport tainted by fast times caused by swimmers basically floating above the water in the buoyant suits.

"It was like, ‘How hard is it to break one of these?’, whereas traditionally it’s incredibly hard," Nugent said of the records. "If we have lost it, yeah, tomorrow will be the start," of regaining credibility.

There have been some exceptions: Australian backstroker Emily Seebohm set the fastest women’s 100 time in history in a textile suit (59.25 seconds) at last month’s New South Wales titles. That time would have won the 2007 world title in Melbourne.

"We will measure by times pre-2009 and maybe 2008, but we won’t be looking for a soft option," Nugent said. "We still want them to get as high up on the (current) world rankings as they can."

On the plus side is that new, inexperienced swimmers just might get a slender advantage over their more high-profile teammates who traditionally may have seen the advanced versions of swimsuits before the lesser-lights.

On Wednesday night in Sydney, 14-year-old Yolane Kukla became the youngest swimmer to qualify for the Australian team since Ian Thorpe in 1997.

Kukla defeated the reigning world champion in the 50-meter butterfly, Marieke Guehrer, who is 10 years older, to win her first national title.

"I only came in here expecting to do PBs (personal bests), and I am really shocked even to get into that race. I think I am a bit overwhelmed," Kukla said.

Thorpe was 14 years, 168 days when he was selected for the 1997 Pan-Pacific championships, just a week younger than Kukla will be (14 years and 175 days) when the national team is named on Sunday for the New Delhi Commonwealth Games in October.

Rice will be on that team, and if her predictions hold true, her 400 IM mark of 4 minutes, 29.45 seconds she set at the Beijing Games will still be the benchmark in New Delhi.

American Ariana Kukors supplanted Rice as the 200 IM record holder, her time of 2:06.15 one of those 43 set last year in Rome.

"In terms of my races like the 200 IM, (Kukors’ mark) is almost 2.5 seconds faster than what I did in Olympics and I don’t know whether there’s that much improvement in me to be able to go 2.5 seconds faster than that," Rice said. "I’d like to come as close as I can to it, but I don’t know if it will ever happen."

Rice was asked in a recent Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio interview if records established during the era of the controversial suits should be abolished.

"I think that you can’t ever really take away someone’s records and someone’s times because they’ve obviously achieved it legally," Rice said. "But it’s just sort of hard now because they’re so far ahead of where we’re going to be once this year starts up competitively because of the new suits that have now come in are definitely not to that sort of standard."

She suggests that more than asterisks be used in the record books.

"I think what would be good is to sort of have two lots of world records," Rice said. "A lot of world records that are going to start now, because obviously those ones that were achieved in ‘09 are not going to be broken for maybe 10 or 20 years."

-- Dennis Passa

Smit helps Stanford to lead at NCAA championships

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Stanford’s Julia Smit set a pool record in the 200 IM and put the Cardinal on top of the points standings after the first day of the NCAA women’s swimming and diving championships.

Smit won the title in 1 minute, 53.56 seconds, helping Stanford earn 142.5 points.

Cal is second with 122 points, thanks in part to Liv Jensen winning the 50 free.

Arizona’s 400-yard medley relay team also set a pool record of 3:31.16, more than two seconds slower than the American record it set a year ago.

Thursday’s other winners were Anastasia Pozdniakova of Houston in 1-meter diving, Allison Schmitt of Georgia in the 500 free and Florida in the 200 relay.

The meet continues Friday and Saturday at Purdue.

Cycling

Armstrong riled by Kornheiser’s anti-cyclist rant

WASHINGTON — Lance Armstrong says he’s going on Tony Kornheiser’s radio show to discuss their differences about cycling.

The seven-time Tour de France champion tweeted repeatedly Thursday about Kornheiser’s comments last week on ESPN980 that criticized people who ride bikes on streets, including the tongue-in-cheek line: "They dare you to run them down, and then when you do, they get angry."

Armstrong posted on his Twitter feed: "Disgusting, ignorant, foolish. What a complete ... idiot."

Later, Armstrong wrote that he spoke with the former Washington Post columnist and "Monday Night Football" talker, "who’s very sorry 4 his comments."

Armstrong said he’ll be on the show Friday.

Cipollini lays down challenge for Armstrong

MILAN — Mario Cipollini wants to see Lance Armstrong do more than just use the Milan-San Remo race to get in shape for the Tour de France.

The retired sprint specialist told the ANSA news agency on Thursday that "it would be great if he attacks 60 miles from the finish and throws the race into chaos. It would be fun."

Armstrong finished 125th in San Remo last year in one of his first races back from retirement. He was more than eight minutes behind winner Mark Cavendish of Britain.

Before retiring in 2005, Armstrong raced the Milan-San Remo six times and never won. His best result was 11th in 1996. Cipollini won in 2002.

The 185-mile race Saturday is the opening single-day classic of the cycling season.

French doping adviser sentenced to prison

PARIS — A French medical adviser accused of inciting cyclists to cheat with drugs has been sentenced to a year in prison by a Paris appeals court.

Bernard Sainz was convicted on charges of "incitement to doping" and illegally practicing medicine in 1998 and 1999 — during and after the 1998 Festina affair at the Tour de France in which police found a stash of performance-enhancing drugs in a team car, plunging the race into crisis.

Sainz was sentenced to two years in prison, including one year suspended, Thursday.

Sainz, 66, was put under investigation in May 1999, accused of providing testosterone and other performance-enhancers to cyclists. He has repeatedly denied the charges, arguing that he was providing only homeopathic therapy.

Olympics and Paralympics

Canada’s Own the Podium has Dick Pound’s support

WINNIPEG, Manitoba — Canada’s Own the Podium program, which produced the most gold medals of any country at the Vancouver Olympics, has the support of Canadian IOC member Dick Pound.

He said the program worked and the blueprint should be repeated for future games. He added that Canada had been "too nice" in the past when it handed out Olympic training funding.

"It allows you to say ... ‘We’re not going to give you anything because you haven’t merited it,"’ Pound said Thursday following a speech in Winnipeg. "Those are the kind of things Canada has been loath to do in the past."

Own the Podium pumped millions worth of corporate and federal dollars into training Canadian athletes, concentrating on those with the best chance of winning.

Some winter athletes — like speedskater Denny Morrison — blamed the program for limiting training. Others, like gold medalist ice dancers Scott Moir and Tessa Virtue, said they couldn’t have won without it.

Canada won 14 gold medals last month, breaking the record for any Winter Olympics. The U.S. won more medals in Vancouver than any country.

The program also got a vote of confidence in the most recent federal budget, earning an extra $16.7 million a year for the next two years. That’s on top of the $46.4 million the government already spends each year to fund elite summer and winter athletes.

Pound, a former Olympic swimmer, said athletes funded through the program weren’t put under undue pressure by increased expectations.

"Athletes seek this pressure out. Nobody is there with a gun at their back," he said. "They want to go out and be the best in the world."

Visually impaired skier wins more Paralympic gold

WHISTLER, British Columbia — Brian McKeever of Canada won his second gold medal of the Paralympics, the 10-kilometer classic cross-country race for the visually impaired.

McKeever, with brother Robin his guide, won in 26 minutes, 1.6 seconds on Thursday. Norway’s Helge Flo was second, followed by Russia’s Nikolay Polukhim.

McKeever credited his brother.

"He was able to excel at will, but I wasn’t able to follow," he said. "It was hard for me to fight through when we were trying to go around another people. When it comes time to create these little bursts and make a move, I have a hard time doing it."

McKeever won the 20-kilometer race Monday. Last month, he had been set to become the first winter sport athlete to compete in the Olympics and Paralympics, but the Canadian coaching staff decided not to start him in the 50-kilometer race.

The host country won two other gold medals Thursday, raising its total to six.

Alpine skier Lauren Woolstencroft won her third gold with a victory in the women’s standing downhill. Viviane Forest took the women’s downhill for the visually impaired. It was her third medal of the Paralympics but first gold.

Whitaker free to compete at London 2012 Olympics

LONDON — British show jumper Michael Whitaker has won an appeal against an Olympic doping ban and will be eligible to compete at the 2012 London Games.

Whitaker received a four-month ban after his horse, Tackeray, failed a drug test at a competition at La Baule, France, in May 2009. Under British Olympic Association rules, the doping suspension meant that Whitaker would not be allowed to compete at any future games.

But a BOA appeals panel has ruled that the 49-year-old Whitaker, who won a team silver medal in at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, did not administer the banned substance and was not "personally negligent or at fault."

Figure Skating

Portland named host city for 2010 Skate America

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Portland has been named the host city for the 2010 Skate America competition, part of the international Grand Prix of Figure Skating series.

The competition is scheduled for Nov. 11-14 at the Rose Garden, home of the Portland Trail Blazers. The venue also hosted the 2005 U.S. national championships.

Skate America, an Olympic-style competition that features men’s, ladies, pairs and ice dancing, is one of the six stops on the Grand Prix series.

Other stops include Skate Canada, Cup of China, Trophee Eric Bompard (France), Rostelecom Cup (Russia) and NHK Trophy (Japan).

MotoGP

Hungary’s MotoGP off, moved to Spain

BUDAPEST, Hungary — The International Motorcycling Federation says Hungary’s MotoGP event has been canceled because the track will not be ready in time for the race Sept. 19.

Construction of the track in the town of Savoly has been delayed after the Hungarian government last week decided to back out of a financing deal for the project.

Instead, the race will be held at Motorland Aragon in Spain on the same day.