Predicting U.S. stars for Summer Olympics

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:

10. Cat Osterman, Crystl Bustos and the rest of the softball team -- It's the swan song for the sport in the Olympics, dumped because the IOC says not enough countries compete. There's also the fact that the U. S. just beats the cleats off its competition, making this a quadrennial yawner. The potential bigger story is that the team may run into a red-hot pitcher and do the unthinkable: lose in its farewell appearance, instead of blowing the place up with a bunch of farewell 8-0 wins.

9. Katie Hoff -- The women's answer to Michael Phelps, a fellow Baltimorean. She qualified for five individual events and is expected to swim in two relays, but no one expects her to have a Phelpsian gold medal haul. Her story stays alive in direct proportion to the number of wins she puts up. Otherwise it sinks like a bronze medal in a pool.

8. Lopez Lomong -- This 1,500-meter runner was born in the Sudan and came to the United States as an impoverished child refugee. A naturalized citizen, he will be competing in China, which has been criticized heavily for its role as a weapons supplier for the devastating war in Lomong's homeland. He has a better chance of making a political impact in Beijing than an athletic one. That isn't bad, assuming he finds the right words and the right forum to be heard.

7. Jenn Stuczynski -- The fast-rising pole vaulter set an American record at the recently completed Olympic trials and should be in the gold medal hunt. The best thing about this story is that Stuczynski's chief competitor will be Russian world-record holder Yelena Isinbayeva. It may be the closest we get to a good, old-fashioned Cold War showdown between the Yanks and the Rooskis -- a classic throwback for those that miss that sort of thing.

6. Dara Torres -- One thing about sports is that if you can make it to 40 and still beat the kids, you're a magazine cover, and we're not talking just "AARP" here. The 41-year-old mom will swim in three or four events in Beijing, representing everybody who just won't act their age.

5. Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh -- Bikinis and an all-but-guaranteed gold medal for America? Now if that isn't a combination made for large chucks of American TV time, I don't know what is. These tall women in skimpy swimwear won gold and strong ratings in Athens in 2004. Things haven't changed much. Is it a compelling story? Does that matter at NBC?

4. Paul Hamm, Shawn Johnson, Nastia Liukin and the rest of the men and women gymnasts -- Gymnastics is always a prime time biggie, mainly because the Games as a whole draw more female viewers than any other major sports event. No better place, then, to demonstrate to the entire American public just how important these Olympics are to the Chinese. Alas, we love our munchkin athletes, but we fear the lads and lasses may end up mashed by one of the signature juggernauts that China will unleash on the sporting world in August.

3. Kobe Bryant -- What's he doing here? The men's basketball tournament figures to be a huge event for America, mainly because it's for redemption and pride and to show the world we're still hoop kings. Bryant, in particular after the Lakers' loss in the NBA Finals, is on a mission to help the U. S. win significant international gold for the first time in eight years.

2. Michael Phelps -- The poster boy of the Beijing Olympics will be trying to improve on the six golds and two bronzes he won in Athens. The 23-year-old swimming superstar is still being held to the Mark Spitz standard: the seven gold medals in seven events in 1972. In this faster-higher-stronger world, anything less will sadly be regarded as a disappointment.

1. Rulon Gardner -- No, the Greco-Roman wrestler isn't around anymore. But maybe the script is. To refresh your memory, in 2000, Gardner was barely known even in wrestling circles, but somehow found himself in the gold medal match against the best there ever was -- Alexander Karelin. The Russian was a three-time Olympic champion who went unbeaten in international competition for 13 years. He was the unmovable object and the irresistible force rolled into one legend. Gardner, who grew up wrestling cows on a farm in Wyoming, scored a 1-0 upset that even he couldn't quite understand. He wanted to see the replay.

It's the story we don't expect that will top them all. Here's to a replay -- for someone we've never heard of.

(Contact Gregg Patton at gpatton@PE.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)