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10 U.S. Athletes To Watch

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By BILL WARD

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 5, 2008

Michael Phelps, Swimming

After winning six gold medals in the 2004 Athens Games and seven at last year's World Championships in Australia, there's talk of Phelps taking home eight golds from Beijing. If Phelps can pull that that off with his 6-foot-7 wingspan and size 14 feet, he could overshadow any athlete and any story line from these games. With two previous Olympics under his belt and a space-age Speedo LZR Racer swimsuit covering his body, Phelps has a chance. But he'll have to swim at least 17 races (four more races than Mark Spitz's seven-gold-medal showing in 1972) and that schedule could be his undoing.

Sheila Taormina, Modern Pentathlon

With all due respect to Phelps, what the 39-year-old Taormina has accomplished is unheard of: she is the first person to qualify for the Olympics in three different sports. In 1996, she won a swimming gold medal. In 2000 and 2004, she was a triathlete. This time, Taormina will compete in the Modern Pentathlon, which combines fencing, shooting, swimming, show jumping and running. As of four years ago, she had never held a gun, ridden a horse or held a fencing epee. But when she heard making the transition to another sport couldn't be done, that's all the motivation she needed to give it a try.

Jeremy Wariner, Track & Field

Wariner, the defending Olympic and world champion from Texas, has shown he is in good enough shape to break the 400-meter world record his mentor and manager, Michael Johnson, set nine years ago. But U.S. teammate and rival LaShawn Merritt might get the record first. Merritt has been a thorn in Wariner's side this season, upsetting Wariner at a meet in Berlin earlier this year and again at last month's Olympic trials. Wariner, however, has been consistent in the event and two weeks ago ran the fastest 400 time of the year, 43.86.

Dara Torres, Swimming

At age 41, Torres is blazing new trails and swimming faster than she ever has - and that's after giving birth to a daughter two years ago and undergoing surgeries on her shoulder and knee within the last nine months. That has caused some to suggest steroid use, but Torres has offered to undergo any test to prove she is clean. This will be her fifth Olympics, the most by a U.S. swimmer. She won her first Olympic gold medal in 1984, before more than half of this year's U.S. squad had been born. If Torres can add to her haul of nine Olympic medals, the former Gator will become one of the biggest stories of the year - again.

Allyson Felix, Track & Field

Graceful and self-effacing, the 22-year-old Felix used to be called "Chicken Legs" by her Los Angeles Baptist High teammates. Five years later, she's been featured in both Vogue and Glamour magazines' "Greatest Bodies On Earth." And she's also one of the top sprinters on the planet. Raised by her father, Paul, an ordained minister, Felix is a two-time world champion at 200 meters, won three gold medals at the 2007 World Championships and is expected to do that again in Beijing in the 200 and two relays. She was the U.S. team's teenage darling at the Athens Games, but she's now one of its leaders in Beijing.

Shawn Johnson, Gymnastics

Iowa's Johnson will be just 16 at these games, the same age as Mary Lou Retton when she became an Olympic all-around champion. The 4-foot-9 Johnson comes to Beijing as the reigning world all-around champion and the favorite to take the gold medal. But she'll have stiff competition from her own teammate, 18-year-old Nastia Liukin, who has held the U.S. uneven bars title the last four years. Who has the edge? Maybe Johnson's coaches - Liang Chow and Liwen Zhuang, Beijing natives who fell in love while competing for the Chinese national team - give her something of a homecourt advantage.

Venus Williams, Tennis

Williams says she still remembers the bad taste left in her mouth from the Athens Games, when she made quick exits from singles and doubles play. It was the exact opposite situation from the 2000 Sydney Games, where she won the gold medal in singles and teamed up with her sister, Serena, to win the doubles crown. Venus and Serena are back, and they're not only focused on medals, but also they want to add to their Olympic pin collection. They're avid traders and seek the hard-to-get variety: athlete pins. When they're not playing, they're trying to pull off trades and deals for the pins, which they have even dedicated special cases for.

Jennie Finch, Softball

Finch will represent the U.S. squad at the Olympics for the second time in her career, and she will be one of the pitchers for the gold-medal favorites. One of the most recognized female athletes in the world, she made her Olympic debut in Athens, where she finished with a 2-0 record and a 0.00 ERA. That same year, she joined baseball's Alex Rodriguez and NASCAR's Dale Earnhardt Jr. as the only athletes among People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People." More recently, Finch was on the Donald Trump reality show, "The Celebrity Apprentice." She was playing for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation but was "fired" by Trump four weeks into the program.

LeBron James, Basketball

James makes his second Olympic appearance in Beijing but expect to see a lot more of him on the court and less on the bench, where he spent most of the Athens Games. That U.S. team failed to win the gold medal for the first time since 1988, settling for bronze. The Americans again earned bronze at the '06 worlds, but James and other new faces, including Carmelo Anthony and Dwyane Wade, were just coming to the forefront. During the 2008 NBA All-Star Weekend in New Orleans, James made an Olympic gold-medal guarantee, telling reporters, "We will be Olympic champions this year."

Steven Lopez, Tae Kwon Do

Lopez, whose parents are Nicaraguan, is one of three Lopez siblings competing in Beijing. His sister, Diana, and younger brother, Mark, are tae kwon do athletes. And the eldest Lopez sibling, Jean, is their coach. Steven has accomplished just about everything there is to do in the sport, including back-to-back gold medals and four world championships. But after being suspended three months in 2006 for a stimulant he said was the result of using an over-the-counter inhaler, the 29-year-old Lopez has something to prove at these Games and wants to go out with another gold medal.

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