olympic sports

Three years of planning, and it all could have been ruined by Kobe Bryant's bum pinkie.It will require surgery. Naturally. Jerry Colangelo, the man who had been charged with reviving USA basketball -- and who had spent three years building a program -- braced for phone call from his star."Don't worry about me," Bryant said.Huh?

This comeback stuff is apparently more difficult than it looks -- and it didn't look all that easy in the first place.After dipping their toes in the pool marked "retirement," twins Paul and Morgan Hamm returned to men's gymnastics to make a run at the Beijing Olympics. It's been a successful return -- both appear to be heading to China -- but a bumpy one.

Steven Lopez was only 5 years old when he began taekwondo training with older brother Jean in their family's garage in Sugar Land, Texas.A few years later his younger brother, Mark, joined them. Then little sister, Diana, started.

Even Olympians have favorite Olympians. We asked several members of the U.S. team to pick their all-time favorite Olympic athlete.

This idea that Olympic swimmers practically live in the pool, that they could almost swim from here to China if you added up the distance they've covered in workouts? It's not always true.Natalie Coughlin has a different approach.

Here we are, less than two weeks out from the start of the Beijing Olympics, and a man's thoughts naturally turn to ... particulates?Yes! Particulates!The gunky stuff that floats in the air!Seems there might be too many particulates floating around in the Olympic air, although that depends on whom you ask.

The shouts of "Beijing! Beijing!" are likely still echoing through this city of more than 16 million.

We are less than one month from the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, at which point the world will slow down considerably for two weeks and produce a truckload of great stories. Naturally, we have no idea what those stories will be. But there's a chance some of them may spring from this early guess at who will be the biggest American newsmakers at the Olympic Games:

A 41-year-old woman did the impossible. Dara Torres swam faster than she ever did before, making her fifth Olympic team. As a result, she faced questions about doping, suspicions she fully expected and completely deserved.

EUGENE, Ore. -- The night before the final in the women's 100-meter dash at the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials, Lauryn Williams had a dream -- no, make that a nightmare -- that she'd "just be scrambling to get the 200" in order to make the U.S. Olympic team.