International Capsules: Phelps slips under the radar at worlds camp

ROME — Michael Phelps has somehow slipped under the radar while preparing for the world championships.

The swimmer who won a record eight Olympic gold medals at last summer’s Beijing Games has been getting over jet lag, eating pizza and adjusting to the Mediterranean sun without much commotion. Which is just what his team wanted.

"It’s actually been real calm here, and that’s what we were looking for when we chose this location," Mark Schubert, head coach and general manager of the U.S. national team, told The Associated Press from Riccione on Italy’s Adriatic coast.

"He’s been asked for a few autographs by fans and they’ve been polite, but it hasn’t been huge crowds, Schubert said, speaking by phone. "I think he’s a little lower on the radar in Riccione."

Swimming events in Rome begin next weekend and the U.S. team won’t arrive in the capital until Thursday. The team has access to indoor and outdoor pools in Riccione.

"The training has been going really well," said Bob Bowman, Phelps’ personal coach. "The last three-four days we’ve just been acclimating and getting over the time difference. It’s a beautiful setup here."

Phelps will swim only three individual events in Rome — the 200 freestyle, and 100 and 200 butterfly — plus all three relays.

"You don’t have to do quite as much conditioning, but the pressure is probably greater with fewer events," Bowman said. "Michael has been kind of following the normal practice patterns, sharpening a few things up a little bit. He’s just got to rest up and get mentally ready."

At the U.S. national championships in Indianapolis last week, Phelps set a world record in the 100 butterfly, although he pulled out of the 100 free with a sore neck.

A couple days ago, two-time defending 100 freestyle world champion Filippo Magnini of Italy intimated that Phelps withdrew from swimming’s signature race because the Baltimore native realized he wouldn’t win.

"He wasn’t there. I was there and I saw him," Schubert said. "(Magnini) is entitled to his opinion, but he’s not stating the facts."

Bowman added that Phelps would return to the sprint event in the future, perhaps at the 2011 worlds in Shanghai.

"It will all work itself out in time," Bowman said, noting that Phelps had limited training for what was supposed to be his new event.

Phelps was suspended for three months by USA Swimming after the publication of a photo showing him inhaling from a marijuana pipe in February.

"We come into this meet with three months of training and I changed his stroke," Bowman added. "He will absolutely do (the 100 free) in the future."

Phelps won seven golds at the last worlds in Melbourne, Australia, two years ago. In Montreal in 2005, his haul was five golds and a silver.

"I think Michael is going to swim well," Schubert said. "If you look at how he performed in Indianapolis, you can see he’s in great shape now. He’s excited and he always seems to bring out his best at big events."

For now though, Phelps is taking it easy and slowly building up his training regimen.

"Last night we all went out to dinner and most of the team enjoyed an Italian pizza," Schubert said. "We’re staying at a family run hotel and the food has been Italian and I think everyone has been enjoying the quality of the food."

Phelps isn’t up to the 10,000-calorie diet he made famous in Beijing yet.

"We’re still in training mode," Schubert said.

U.S. takes silver in men’s 3-meter synchro diving

ROME — Olympic champions Qin Kai and Wang Feng of China defended their world championship title in 3-meter synchronized diving on Saturday, beating Troy Dumais and Kristian Ipsen of the United States in the six-dive final.

Qin and Wang compiled 467.94 points to win the gold medal on the second day of the swimming world championships at the Foro Italico. Dumais and Ipsen took silver with 445.59 points and Alexandre Despatie and Reuben Ross of Canada were third with 428.64.

The 29-year-old Dumais and 16-year-old Ipsen blend youth and experience. The pair only began training together in March, yet they remained in the top three positions after each round.

Dumais is appearing in his sixth worlds, having previously won three medals — silver on 3-meter and bronze on 3-meter synchro in 2005 and silver on 1-meter in 1998.

This is Ipsen’s first worlds, having won a junior world championship on 1-meter in 2006.

"I was pretty confident during prelims. In finals I was more nervous because I’ve never had a meet this big, but Troy calmed me down," Ipsen said.

Canada’s Despatie earned his seventh medal at worlds.

Earlier, Paola Espinosa of Mexico upset Olympic champion Chen Ruolin for the gold medal in women’s 10-meter platform.

Espinosa scored 428.25 points through five dives from in highest event. Chen took the silver medal with 417.60 points and Kang Li of China was third with 410.35.

Espinosa scored a 10 on her second dive, a back 3½ somersault tuck, and another perfect score in round 3 with a reverse 3½ somersault tuck.

It was the first gold medal for Mexico at the swimming worlds, which have been held since 1973.

During the news conference afterward, Espinosa received a congratulatory call from Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

"I have worked hard all my life, my ambition is confirmed with a gold medal," said Espinosa, who finished fourth in 10-meter platform at last summer’s Beijing Games.

Elsewhere, rough seas forced organizers to rearrange the schedule for open water swimming events.

The men’s and women’s 5-kilometer races scheduled for Sunday have been pushed back to Tuesday, both 10K races will be held Thursday and both 25K events will take place next Saturday.

In synchronized swimming, overwhelming favorite Russia led the team technical preliminaries, with Spain second and China third.

-- Andrew Dampf

Softball

U.S. wins rematch against Japan 6-1

OKLAHOMA CITY — No matter what happens now, the U.S. softball team can never get back the gold medal it lost in Beijing. But for one night, beating rival Japan sure felt good.

Alissa Haber and Andrea Duran homered as the United States exacted a measure of revenge for its loss in the Olympic gold medal game, defeating Japan 6-1 Saturday night at the World Cup of Softball.

"It’s always good to beat them. It’s definitely sweet right now," said left-hander Cat Osterman, who struck out 13 in a four-hitter. "We’re not taking it as we just beat the same team we saw in Beijing, but it’s always nice to win."

The stakes weren’t nearly as high in the rematch, and many of the faces were different, too.

Seven U.S. players retired following the Beijing Games, and Japan has had its fair share of roster turnover, too. Most notably, ace Yukiko Ueno — who has beaten the Americans five times in the last four years — didn’t accompany her team to the World Cup.

If anything, the game was a chance for the next generation of American softball stars to make their mark in the rivalry.

"For the young kids, I think it gives them a taste of what the rivalry is like. For the old kids, obviously a little bit of a sweet redemption to some extent," first-year U.S. coach Jay Miller said. "But also, we’ve got to keep it in perspective because it doesn’t mean anything."

Still, there was plenty of emotion. Osterman (1-0), who lost the gold medal game, pumped her left fist after striking out Rei Nishiyama to end the game.

The U.S. (4-0) still hasn’t sealed a spot in Monday night’s championship game and will have to beat Australia on Sunday to ensure that.

Haber smashed the first pitch thrown by reliever Naho Emoto (0-2) the opposite way over the left-field wall to put the U.S. ahead 2-1 in the bottom of the fifth inning. As lightning from an approaching storm could be seen in the distance, Duran added a two-run blast later in the inning to extend the lead.

Duran said she took one strike because she was distracted by the lightning.

"It totally froze me," Duran said. "Honestly, I was just like, ‘I need to get this at-bat over with."’

Without Ueno, Japan (1-2) used four pitchers. Starter Mika Someya and Makiko Fujiwara combined to strand four U.S. runners in scoring position in the first three innings before the Americans finally broke through in the fourth.

Pinch-runner Chelsea Bramlett raced in to score the game’s first run on Ashley Charters’ chopper just in front of home plate, diving in head first to beat the tag of catcher Maki Tanigawa.

But the Japanese rallied right back to tie it in the fifth on Rei Nishiyama’s sacrifice fly.

That set the stage for Haber, one of 10 rookies on the U.S. roster. She came through with her third extra-base hit in 15 games with the U.S. team. She later added an RBI single and scored on Jenae Leles’ grounder.

"Even though I wasn’t on the (Olympic) team and I didn’t even experience it, I still felt the pain," Haber said.

After Duran’s homer, the teams were taken off the field for a 53-minute weather delay, and the capacity crowd of 6,196 was asked to leave the seating area to avoid the risk of lightning.

U.S. 15, Canada 0, 4 innings

Natasha Watley hit a grand slam, and Duran and Leles also homered as the U.S. piled up its most lopsided victory against its northern rival.

The Americans jumped on starter Leah MacIntosh (0-1) for five runs in the first and added nine more in the third — all 14 runs coming with two outs. The game ended because of the mercy rule following Ashley Hansen’s RBI single in the bottom of the fourth.

The Americans eclipsed their 14-1 victory at the 1991 Pan-American Games for the largest margin in the series.

After back-to-back RBI singles by Jennie Finch and Leles, Duran broke the game open by smacking a three-run homer the left-center field fence.

Monica Abbott (1-0) struck out seven and allowed two singles.

Canada 6, Italy 4

Jennifer Yee homered and Jennifer Caira threw six strong innings in relief as Canada overcame a three-run deficit.

Italy had a 3-0 lead in the first inning when the game was suspended Thursday night due to an approaching storm, but the Canadians took control after play resumed Saturday morning.

Sheena Lawrick tied it with an RBI triple in the bottom of the third and scored on Evelyne Pare’s single to make it 4-3.

Yee added a solo shot in the fourth inning. Caira (2-0) allowed two hits and one unearned run.

Kate Gentile hit a three-run homer for Italy (0-4), which is playing in its first World Cup.

-- Jeff Latzke

Winter Sports

Austin teenager training for Winter Olympics

AUSTIN — Like plenty of Austin kids, Jared Orenstein’s first experience on ice came at the indoor skating rink at Northcross Mall.

"He was out there seven or eight minutes, one lap, and he was (done)," his mother, Kym, said.

Jared, who was 7 at the time, recalled, "No ice sports for me. It was too cold."

About six years later, however, Jared learned what real cold felt like. Last year he left balmy Austin and flew to New York. The weather in Albany wasn’t too bad, but by the time he had taken a two-hour ride to the U.S. Olympic training center in Lake Placid, the temperature had plummeted. The teen was still dressed in his jeans and a shirt, and when he tried to step out of the car, a blast of 20-below-zero air quickly drove him back.

He steeled himself and made a dash for the nearby building, slipping and sliding on the ice and snow in his cowboy boots, too unnerved by the cold to remember to put on the coat that he carried.

At the training center, he became an amusing oddity, a Texan who could barely walk on ice trying to learn the fastest sport on that frozen surface: luge.

"It’s kind of like the Jamaican bobsled team," Kym Orenstein said of her son’s whirlwind involvement in such an unlikely sport.

It hasn’t been all cool runnings for Jared. He withdrew from Canyon Vista Middle School in January, not long after a truant officer came to his house while he was training in New York. Yet he has shown a talent for this bizarre and dangerous winter pursuit, so much so that earlier this month, Jared learned he was one of three males from the United States’ junior team selected to begin training year-round in Lake Placid.

"We’ll have to buy a new wardrobe," Kym Orenstein said.

As a slider, Jared lies on his back and whips down mountains on the slightest of sleds.

"I’m going faster than a car, and I’m this far off the ground," Jared said, holding his hand a few inches off the floor. "And there’s nothing but the gloves and the body suit between me and the ice."

He’s already topped 70 mph, but lugers’ speeds at the 2010 Winter Olympics could pass 100. Jared, 14, is too young to be sliding at the Vancouver Games, but he is pointing toward the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

"I’ve got to go and represent," Jared said.

Rather than wait for athletes to come to them, for the past 24 years USA Luge has actively searched for slider candidates nationwide. USA Luge looks for 11- to 14-year-olds, believing that it takes about eight years to master the sport. Two-time Olympic medalist Brian Martin was discovered in such a search, as was current women’s world champion Erin Hamlin, along with the majority of other international medal winners for the United States.

The search, overseen by U.S. coaches, uses a street version of luge, with sleds that have wheels instead of runners and a 14-foot-high starting ramp, which is hauled to various towns. Two years ago the Texas stop was near Fort Worth, and Kym Orenstein reasoned, why not go?

The sledding route was on a hilly road in the middle of nowhere, and it ran by a cemetery and an abandoned church. Protective hay bales were placed near a ditch and at the end of the course. The novices were first shown how to make some turns on a flat stretch and then given a chance to use the ramp.

Jared looked at the course skeptically and then asked, "Mom, do you want me to die for U-Haul?"

Kym Orenstein, a traffic control manager, works for U-Haul. So does Jared’s father, Bruce, as a facility maintenance technician. They don’t have to borrow any trucks to get home or to work. They live across the street from a U-Haul on U.S. 183. And U-Haul happens to be a corporate sponsor of USA Luge, which was how the Orensteins learned about the 2007 tryout in Texas.

Glancing again at the course, though, Jared reasoned, "It’s no worse than me going down Yaupon (Drive) on my skateboard."

While other would-be sliders used their feet to try to slow down when they sensed trouble, Jared wasn’t about to scuff his Air Jordans that way. After using them to get a good push, he stayed on the sled until something, or somebody, stopped him.

"I don’t care if I crash as long as I don’t break anything," Jared said.

Coaches noted his lack of fear, which matched his responses on a questionnaire. When asked what other activities he would like to try, Jared checked off things like football, lacrosse, bull riding, sky diving the more dangerous it sounded, the better, he reasoned.

He also did well in some physical tests, such as chin-ups and sit-ups. The coaches then announced that of about 800 athletes tested nationally, only 75 would be picked to go further.

Jared said, "A few months later you either get an acceptance letter to the camp and a big envelope or a little card saying you didn’t get accepted."

He was picked to attend a screening camp at Lake Placid to try the training sleds, which are a little easier to steer than the ones used in competition.

Luge, the French word for sled, is a sport that originated in the ski resorts of Europe, and it has been nearly perfected by the Germans, who’ve dominated the medal counts since luge became an Olympic sport in 1964. A single-person luge weighs 50.6 pounds, and its rider steers it with slight adjustments of the shoulders, head and legs.

Jared said one person in his development camp had a luge track in his backyard, and another prospect came from a family of sliders. While northern states do produce a few athletes like that, luge is an exotic sport there as well. As with the bobsled, competitions are ideally held on refrigerated tracks, and there are only a couple in the U.S., in Park City, Utah, and Lake Placid both sites that have hosted the Olympics.

"The first time I slid in the winter," Jared said, "I did it without a glove, and I hit a wall and sliced my hand open. I’d forgotten my gloves and left them at the bottom of the track. I went down because I didn’t think I’d hit a wall, but I did. ... It was like minus-20, so I couldn’t feel it even though I was losing a lot of blood."

The gloves, used for paddling on the starts, have spikes sewn onto the fingertips for greater traction at the pull-and-push start.

"If we forget and do high fives, we’ll stab each other," Jared said of celebrations after a good run.

The one-piece racing suits are aerodynamic, and the helmets are made of Kevlar. The gear is designed to be as light as possible because of the gravitational forces up to 5 G’s that can be exerted on a slider’s head.

Although the equipment and the environment were strange to Jared, it didn’t show.

"He stood out among them. He just picked it up quicker on the ice," said Pat Anderson, development coach for USA Luge. Jared was the only boy from his screening camp to make the development team, which usually consists of 15 to 25 male and female athletes each year. To remain in the program, the athletes have to periodically pass physical tests.

A commitment to the sport involves more than the time and effort spent in the winter and summer training camps. Development team members don’t receive financial help from USA Luge. Kym Orenstein estimated that Jared’s expenses, including six training camps, have totaled $18,000 so far, although he gets financial assistance from U-Haul. Now that he’s been selected to train year-round, however, USA Luge will pick up most of his expenses.

Jared left for Lake Placid and its indoor training center, with three refrigerated ramps for practicing starts, on June 26 for three weeks. He will return again in September. When training at home, Jared runs, lifts weights, in-line skates and does pull-ups on door ledges.

Jared raced at the national luge championships in Park City in February. There, he kept to his pre-race routine of meticulously working on his runners, or steels as they are called. The runners are so sharp that, if Jared’s not careful, they can slice through his racing suit when he carries them on his hip. To get them ready for a race, he’ll work on them for five arm-burning, hand-blistering hours, stripping them with acetone and then buffing them with diamond paste and sandpaper until they glisten like mirrors.

"They have to be in perfect condition or you will hit the walls," Jared said.

After hours of sanding, Jared zipped down the Park City course in 1 minute and 28 seconds. His run earned him the gold medal in the Youth B men’s national championship for athletes up to age 15.

Things have not gone as smoothly at home for Jared, who would eventually like to join the Marines and, until this week, wanted to attend Westwood High School and join the ROTC program there.

As an eighth-grader at Canyon Vista Middle School, his participation in the Olympic development camps and his 23 missed school days created friction with the administration, so much so that a truant officer was sent to arrest him. Kym Orenstein then withdrew Jared from school to avoid further problems and costly court fines.

Barbara Paris, principal of Canyon Vista, said that such extracurricular activities don’t qualify a student for excused absences.

"There’s some leeway, but not much," Paris said. "It was the same with Lance Armstrong; schools were not able to excuse him."

In Armstrong’s case, he withdrew from Plano East and graduated from a private school in Dallas.

Jared has been accepted at the National Sports Academy in Lake Placid. The private school has an average class size of fewer than 10 pupils, and USA Luge will pay for most of his schooling.

As for his education on the track, Jared said, "I’ve probably learned one percent of the sport."

But a Texan who was once averse to the cold is now on the fast track in the fastest sport on ice.

-- John Maher writes for the Austin American-Statesman

Volleyball

Dalhausser, Rogers win at Manhattan Beach

MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif. — Reigning Olympic gold medalists Phil Dalhausser and Todd Rogers went undefeated Saturday at the AVP Manhattan Beach Open to move into Sunday’s semifinals.

Dalhausser and Rogers, the second seed, moved through their third-round match in straight sets, then needed three to beat seventh-seeded Matt Fuerbringer and Casey Jennings, while Jennings’ wife Kerri Walsh and new son Joey watched for the first time together. Then, in the fifth round, Dalhausser-Rogers beat third-seeded Jake Gibb and Sean Rosenthal to make the semis.

Dalhausser and Rogers are trying to become the third men’s team in history — and first in nearly 25 years — to win four straight Manhattan Beach Opens.

The top-seeded women’s team of Nicole Branagh and Elaine Youngs cruised into Sunday’s semifinals, winning their third through fifth-round matches in straight sets.

The top-seeded men’s team of John Hyden and Sean Scott were upset in the fourth round and relegated to the contenders’ bracket.