USS Updates: Lots of news! Read on for coaching/program director news, team updates, and disappointment on the Vegas World Cup.

Part 1. Coaching news & new program director hired
It's great to hear that former Assistant Coach Tony Goskowicz, who resigned at the end of the last season, will remain on board to handle the team's equipment needs. This includes some very high-tech new hardware that will benefit from his computer geek expertise. Coach Li Yan assumes full coaching duties when she returns from her maternity leave next month.

Derrick Campbell in Bormio, Feb. 2004
Stepping into the role of Short Track Program Director comes the latest import from up north, Canadian Derrick Campbell. I had expected him to be named the new coach, so this is a surprise! Derrick will soon relocate to Colorado Springs where he'll work closely with coach Li Yan and the team.

Derrick brings a stellar track record to the U.S. program. A veteran Canadian team member of the same generation as Stephen Gough, Derrick brings a wealth of experience as both a competitor and a coach to the plate. A member of Canada's gold medal winning men's relay team at the 1998 Nagano Winter Games, the Ontario native also brought home fistfuls of medals from his years representing Canada in World Cups and the World Short Track Championships. Details of his skating achievements are available on Cyberscoreboard.

While enjoying tremendous success over the course of his skating career, Derrick has had his share of heartache. (Is there a short track athlete alive who hasn't?) Still, the heartbreaking chain of events he experienced in the 1000m final at the 1994 Lillehammer Games makes for quite a tale. Some things in short track never change!

Those of you who attended the October 2003 World Cup in Calgary will recall that Derrick, now 32, was inducted into Canada's Speed Skating Hall of Fame in a ceremony at the Calgary Olympic Oval the weekend of the World Cup. He has been a coach of the short track program at the Oval since 2000, working with familiar names such as Amanda Overland (now training in Montreal) and Alanna Kraus.

According to the Calgary Oval web site, Derrick's philosophy of coaching is "to assist athletes achieve their personal goals holistically both in and out of sport by addressing individual athletes’ needs while remaining within the parameters of personal ethical values and fair play."

Part 2. U.S. Short Track Team Updates
I've got a few updates for you about the team out in Colorado Springs. This is a mix of old and new news, so apologies if I am repeating myself.

The training program started up again in Colorado Springs in mid-May, so it's been underway a good 2 months now. The program started off with a 'mini-camp' in early May for those who were already in town.

The team
The lineup for the Colorado Springs training program this year is shaping up as follows:

Men: Adam Duncan, Alex Izykowski, Anthony Lobello, Apolo Anton Ohno, Derek Gray, J.P. Kepka, Mike Kooreman, Misi Toth, Rusty Smith, Ryan Cox
Women: Allison Baver, Cherise Wilkins, Hyo-jung Kim, Kristen Biondo, Maria Garcia, Marin Austin

As you can see there a few newcomers on the list, including a pair of very successful inliners crossing over to ice -- Ryan Cox and Anthony Lobello. On the ladies' side, Marin Austin joins Maria Garcia in COS as the two latest exports of the SoCal Speedskating dynasty!

Notable by their absence: Caroline Hallisey, Bridie Farrell and Derek Gray. Caroline has opted out of the program this year, though she is training independently in COS. She had indicated in a recent news report that she needed a change. Also, Bridie has been at home in Saratoga Springs rehabbing the knee she injured last season, but she is expected to return to Colorado early next month. Derek is training this summer in Calgary.

Best wishes for a speedy recovery go out to J.P. Kepka, who recently broke a bone in his foot while playing basketball.

Congratulations are in order to Coach Li Yan and her husband, proud parents of baby Isabella, born last week in COS and weighing in at ~7lbs.

The 2004-05 season
The emphasis for next season is racing, racing and more racing, to give the skaters as much experience as possible in the last full season before the 2006 Winter Games. As a result, the team will skate all 6 World Cups this season, as well as quite a few major domestic events. Unlike last year, no skaters will receive byes onto the World Cup team. Instead, the World Cup team will be decided through a series of qualifying competitions.

The skaters who qualified for the World team in Sweden will skate the first two World Cups in October. Those skaters are:

Men: AAO, Shani Davis, Kepka, Smith
Women: Hallisey, Kim, Baver, Garcia

If Shani chooses not to skate at the first 2 World Cups, then Mike Kooreman would skate in his stead.

American Cup 1 in November will select the skaters for World Cups 3 and 4 in North America. American Cup 2 in January will determine which skaters make the team for World Cups 5 and 6 in Europe next February. US Speedskating plans to field a full team of 5 men and 5 women for the final 2 World Cups and for the World Championships next March. The team will NOT attend the World Team Championships in Korea.

Here's a partial domestic competition schedule for 2004-05:
Nov. 13-14: American Cup 1 - Saratoga Springs (selects World Cup team for World Cups 3 and 4)
Nov. 26-28: World Cup 3 - Madison, WI (probable)
Jan. 22-23: American Cup 2 - Cleveland (selects World Cup team for World Cups 5 and 6)
late Feb: U.S. ST Championships - Milwaukee (selects World Ch. team)
late March: North American Championships - Milwaukee

Part 3: The World Cup in Las Vegas is no more
Disappointing news for fans and skaters everywhere: the much-anticipated Las Vegas World Cup scheduled for this Thanksgiving will not happen. For reasons that are not totally clear (but may include difficulty in securing an appropriate ice surface in Vegas), the U.S.-hosted World Cup is expected to be moved to Madison, Wisconsin.

Right now it's not known if the date of the World Cup will change, but it's possible that the U.S. and Canadian World Cups will be switched, now that Vegas has been taken out of the equation.

Apolo Ohno's Badminton Buddy

[Vietnamese-American Howard] Bach will pair with fellow Asian immigrant Kevin Han to comprise America's only badminton entry in Athens, in men's doubles. Bach is a friend of short track speed skating Olympic champion Apolo Anton Ohno, and the two sometimes play badminton when Ohno is in the Los Angeles area. When USA Today asked Bach whom he would want to portray him in the event of a "Kevin Han/Howard Bach story" film, Bach said Ohno.

Read more

Here's the final batch of photos from the men's relay heat in Sweden (which means I've completed all the Friday pictures from Worlds - yipee!).

In addition, World Championship gallery #2 is (finally!) complete.

Apolo pushes off to um, um... J.P., I think

engadget | Counting Every Second: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Timing and Scoring the Tour De France

Does this image remind you of something?

Turns out that the cameras of our Finish Lynx buddies are playing a big role in timing and record keeping in the Tour de France. While this article focuses on the technology behind timing the Tour, it also sheds some light on how photo finish for short track works too.

Additionally, the transponder technology worn by each cyclist is a concept that has been proposed for short track to provide the most accurate timing possible, but the ISU has deeemed it too expensive/complicated at this time. (Apparently it would require burying transponders beneath the ice at each venue.)

Lawrence (KS) Journal-World | KU grad lands job of Olympic magnitude

Jessica Scott is getting used to seeing world-class athletes. On her first day as an intern at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, she sat near speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno, but it was no big deal.

"Everyone's basically the same here," Scott said. "It's not like KU, where everybody sees a basketball player and they stop to stare."

Scott, a 2004 Kansas University graduate from Haven, just south of Hutchinson, will spend the next six months interviewing those athletes as one of two interns for the U.S. Olympic Committee's Media and Public Relations Division.