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Skating great Peggy Fleming talks about life, cancer
By LUCIANA CHAVEZ
Raleigh News & Observer
Friday, August 17, 2007
It's 12:30 p.m. in Los Gatos, Calif., on a hot summer day, and Peggy Fleming is consulting with a local gardener and worrying about her indoor plants.
"I tend to over water," says Fleming, 59, the 1968 Olympic figure skating champion.
Her familiar ABC Sports commentator's voice lilting with laughter during a phone interview, Fleming talks about enjoying simple, daily tasks.
After learning she had breast cancer nine years ago, Fleming did not know how much longer she had to do those simple things -- taking care of her sons, grandchildren and husband, Greg Jenkins, or looking after her plants and the grapes at the family's Fleming Jenkins Vineyard and Winery.
She has been cancer-free for nearly nine years and now is active in breast cancer research.
"Life is good and the grapes are doing great," Fleming said.
She recently visited North Carolina for Dessert First, a V Foundation fundraiser.
Fleming loves the idea behind Dessert First: Enjoy life.
China's politics cast shadow over Beijing Games
By GREGG PATTON
The Press-Enterprise
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
The 2008 Olympics is about one year away, and already the Beijing Games are like no other.
The usual run-up questions about blown construction timetables and worrisome security issues have been replaced.
Winter Olympics security budget called into question
By ROBERT MATAS
Toronto Globe and Mail
Friday, July 27, 2007
An internal Canadian police report has identified numerous "gaps" in the budget for security at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.
The Vancouver bid in 2002 was based on a projected security cost of $175 million.
Vision-impaired judo athlete prepares for Pan Am Games
By CLAY LATIMER
Scripps Howard News Service
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Even at the Olympic Training Center, with its assortment of world-class boxers, swimmers and weight lifters crowding gyms and training rooms, Grace Ohashi is an attention grabber.
USOC, State Department reject Olympic boycott
By JAMES W. BROSNAN
Scripps Howard News Service
Monday, June 04, 2007
The U.S. Olympic Committee and the State Department on Monday rejected a proposal by Democratic presidential contender Bill Richardson to have the United States pull its team out of the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing if China does not use its leverage on Sudan to end the violence in the province of Darfur.
"We completely disagree with the point of view expressed by Governor Richardson.
Cal theater major seeks acclaim on track
By JOHN SCHUMACHER
Sacramento Bee
Friday, May 25, 2007
Alysia Johnson loves to perform. The Cal theater and performance studies major hasn't landed any roles yet, though, primarily because her running ability tends to leave her weekends pretty well booked.
So she works behind the scenes, her latest stint coming as a costume designer on a dance project.
Miller fits American mold
By BERNIE LINCICOME
Scripps Howard News Service
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
I suppose something must be made of ski creature Bode Miller stiffing the U.S. of A. There is a patriotic obligation to spank the young man. Somehow this just has to have something to do with not supporting the troops.
Miller is, by the way, and when he feels like it, a very, very good skier, but a bit of a loner, not an un-American trait. After all, Steve McQueen made a whole career out of it.
He is, or should be, at the very peak of his powers, getting from up there to down here. And Miller should be doing it for the red, white and blue, for the greater glory of the land of the free and the home of the snowplow.
There are medals to be won and flags to be raised and anthems to be played.
But Miller says no thank you, maybe not even adding the thank you, courtesy being not one of his stronger qualities.
He will continue to ski and will continue to be an American, just not one in support of the other.
These sorts of nationalistic kafuffles occur in sports from time to time. Jimmy Connors used to not play Davis Cup. Andre Agassi, too.
When the last Dream Team went off to Japan for the 2006 World Championships, several significant players were absent, as they were in Athens for the Olympics, with the expected result of finishing somewhere out of first place.
It is not as if any one of us is less proud or fortunate to be an American, but when they are passing out prizes, you feel better when one of your own gets one than not.
Tiger Woods, for all his attendance at Ryder Cups, has a bit of the Miller bug when it comes to playing well with others.
It is the only time Woods is criticized for anything and this in a game every bit as individualistic as skiing alone on a mountain.
As far as I know, our very best soccer players always show up for the World Cup and take the abuse of being non-Brazilian or something. The point is, they lose, but they care.
When these things happen we cringe a bit at losing and console ourselves that our junior varsity tried and that, if it mattered, we would always be best. So generous are we in sharing that we name a German the best basketball player on the planet, instead of the usual Canadian.
So Miller will now compete as an independent, free of the U.S. Ski Team's demand that he share the same soap as his teammates.
He will show up when he wants to, sleep as late as he wants to and win or lose as it happens.
In other words, nothing much will change for Miller, only for the team that is now without the best skier in America.
There is a Roger Clemens aroma to this, being able to do what you want to when you want to, except that Miller is paying his own way now, or using his sponsors' money for expenses as well as luxuries.
And there is something thoroughly American about it, the ability and the nerve to tell your bosses to take their job and shove it, or schuss it in this case.
This would be a big deal in, oh, Austria, where just making that ski team is considered a life goal. If all those years Hermann Maier had disdained his homeland, he would have been scorned as a traitor and an ingrate.
Or, if this were America swimming without Michael Phelps, there would be a sense of disgrace about it.
In most Olympic sports, there are years of support from associations to develop athletes to the point they can afford to be ungrateful. It is the American way. That is almost how you know if you are any good.
Miller has more in common with Lance Armstrong than any other recent American sports figure, a man of solitary vision and selfish purpose.
Armstrong focused almost exclusively on winning the Tour de France, and if he did it for the U.S. Postal Service team, it was not for the U.S. of A. Yet the American flags and the flags of Texas waved Armstrong home seven years in a row.
It is just fine to be independent. It is, in fact, more admirable to go it alone. When we think of American icons, we almost always picture the loner standing up to impossible odds.
We see Gary Cooper walking down Main Street at high noon, alone.
Or McQueen on that motorcycle, leading the entire Nazi nation on a chase through barbed wire.
Of course, Miller still has to win or we will not care at all.
