Greg Louganis won four Olympic golds and five world championships during his illustrious diving career. During the 1988 Olympic springboard competition he hit his head on the board and suffered a concussion but still returned to win gold, capping one of the most memorable comebacks in the history of the Games. In 1995, Louganis revealed he was HIV positive. The New York Times caught up with the diving great, who recently returned to the sport as a juniors coach. Some interesting tidbits from the piece:

1. Louganis accepted a job with SoCal divers four months ago only after being assured that he could implement his “building blocks mentality,” which keeps a focus on mechanics. It’s the first coaching he’s done since 1976, when he helped out his high school team after returning from the Montreal Games.

2. The diver threw himself a “spectacular party” when he turned 33 because he expected it to be his last birthday. Eighteen years later he says his health is so good “you kind of forget about it.”

3. He appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” last month to discuss the 1995 show in which he revealed he was gay. Also appearing on that show was a man who said that Louganis’ appearance on Oprah, which he saw when he was 12 years old, helped give him the courage to live his life as an openly gay man.  

4. Before returning to coaching, Louganis was spending his time training dogs for agility competitions. A former Olympic teammate said Louganis’ work with the dogs helps him give clear commands to his divers.

5. Up until returning to coach, Louganis said he didn’t dive. His Malibu house didn’t even have a diving board at the pool. That’s evidently changed. The Times article concludes with a description of the diving great getting on the board during a break in practice and performing pikes that “barely caused a splash.”

Tommie Smith is selling the gold medal he won at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, where his Black Power salute on the podium shocked the sports world.

The former San Jose State runner has put his gold medal for the 200 meters and red-and-white Puma spikes up for auction at New York-based M.I.T. Memorabilia. The bidding starts at $250,000, and the sale is scheduled to close Nov. 4.

Smith, now 66 and living in Georgia declined to comment on the auction to the San Jose Mercury News. “He feels that what he did ruined his life in many ways, and he simply doesn’t want to put himself in the media spotlight,” Zimet told the newspaper.

San Jose earned the nickname “Speed City” during that era for its plethora of world-class athletes.

Smith won the 200 meters in world-record time before officialls expelled him from the Games along with bronze medallist John Carlos when they bowed their heads during the Star-Spangled Banner and raised their black-gloved fists in protest during the medal ceremony on Oct. 17, 1968.

As for the glove, Zimet told the newspaper that Smith has lost track of it through the years.  Zimet noted that he’d also like to get in touch with Carlos about a similar sale.

M.I.T.’s Gary Zimet said Smith is selling the medal for the money but also because he wants to share it with the public.

The human rights protest eventually earned Smith and Carlos international acclaim.

Smith’s biography on his official website sheds light on his attitude toward the fallout from the incident, questioning why the public interpreted the gesture as “an act of disloyalty to the country he represented.”

“Why do so many Americans still consider this gesture as disrespectful even today, when we consider ourselves to be politically correct and considerably more understanding of cultural differences?” the biography asks.

“Can we honestly look back at the state of civil rights in 1968 and tell these young black men that they had no right to choose a worldwide forum to protest inhumane treatment of blacks and other minorities at that Olympic Games?” it continues.

The Mercury News also noted that in Smith’s 2007 autobiography, “Silent Gesture,” the former sprinter appears to remain bitter about his post-Games reception in San Jose, which he described in the book as a racist place.

Thirteen time Olympic gold medalist, Michael Phelps, goes shirtless at the Tao Beach resort on Saturday (June 19) in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Still got it!

Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson’s voice cracked Thursday as a prosecutor showed her a knife found in the car of a man accused of stalking her.

Johnson, however, was mostly composed as she testified against Robert O’Ryan, who is accused of breaking onto a studio lot to meet the gold medalist as she competed on the ABC show “Dancing With the Stars.”

“I didn’t know him,” Johnson said. “He was a stranger to me. To see somebody had that much kind of obsession, it made me really scared.”

Prosecutor Wendy Segall also showed the 18-year-old Johnson a handgun, shotgun and bulletproof vest allegedly found in O’Ryan’s car during his March arrest.

Prosecutors say O’Ryan, 36, harbored a dangerous obsession for Johnson and traveled from Florida to Los Angeles with the hope of meeting and marrying her. Johnson was 17 at the time.

O’Ryan has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to felony stalking and burglary charges. He sat quietly and showed no reaction during the 23 minutes Johnson spent on the witness stand.

She recounted being informed of O’Ryan’s presence at the studio after she performed on “Dancing With the Stars.” Police and her parents told her the man had been armed and she needed a bodyguard.

“They didn’t want to tell me too much to scare me, but of course it did,” Johnson said.

Johnson calmly answered questions posed by prosecutors and O’Ryan’s public defender, saying she was nervous about appearing in court.

Segall asked Johnson about poems O’Ryan allegedly wrote about the athlete, some of which had her name hyphenated with O’Ryan’s.

One of the poems, shown in court Monday, professed unwavering love for Johnson. “I feel quite lucky,” the poem read, “that we fight happy, I want everything to go your way, and this is how I pray, that we will be together to stay …. and no matter what you do, I will always love you.”

Authorities say they found numerous other writings addressed to Johnson and gifts for her and her family in O’Ryan’s car. Prosecutors also say they found a piece of a paper with an Iowa address for a person named Shawn Johnson, but it was not the gymnast’s address.

Johnson said she considered resigning from “Dancing With the Stars” and moving back to Iowa after O’Ryan’s arrest. However, she stayed on the show and eventually won her season.

Johnson won a gold medal in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

O’Ryan has been jailed since he was arrested for investigation of jumping a fence at the studio lot.

He could face up to four years in prison if convicted. He also could face two years in jail if he is convicted of two misdemeanor concealed weapons violations.

If O’Ryan is convicted, a judge will then determine whether he is legally insane. His attorney, Judith Greenberg, said in opening statements that O’Ryan was a well-educated engineer before he developed a mental illness several years ago.

In a tape of an interview with police played in court Thursday, O’Ryan asks a detective whether he believes in ESP. O’Ryan told the officer he used ESP to communicate with numerous people on television, including rappers Ludacris and Lil Jon and some daytime soap opera stars.

O’Ryan said he started communicating with Johnson telepathically when she competed in the Beijing Olympics.

Prosecutors are expected to conclude their case Thursday.

O’Ryan has waived his right to a jury trial and his fate will be decided by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor.

Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle, 53, has been tipped to produce the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games in London, The Independent reported on Monday. Organizers are believed to have approached the British filmmaker to produce a ceremony that would top the spectacular opening of the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

When the official logo of the 2012 London Olympics was released three years ago, the odd puzzle-piece design was the object of so much scorn that organizers were desperate to avoid similar criticism when they unveiled the mascots for the Games on Wednesday. With the introduction of Wenlock and Mandeville (above), London 2012 organizers realized their goal. The criticism of the mascots won’t be similar to the complaints about the logo. No, they’ll be much, much worse.

Look, I don’t know what to say. Olympic mascots have always been the object of scorn (remember Izzy?), but these two, uh, things take the absurdity to a whole new level. There’s a complicated backstory to the characters which was written by a children’s author. It explains why the mascots have one eye (it’s a camera lens to see the world) and yellow lights on tops of their heads (an homage to London taxicabs), but fails to tell the tale of why they look like early rejects from a Pixar movie. Plus, the fact that some details are explained only makes me wonder about the things that aren’t. Why does the one on the left look like it’s wearing an oven mitt? Where are their feet? What, are both those design features a metaphor for how we can’t run away from global warming?

Officials boasted that focus groups of children helped form the designs of the mascots, which makes total sense because this looks exactly like something a bunch of second-graders would create as a class project. It’s like Wenlock and Mandeville were pieced together from every child’s suggestion. “They should have one eye!” “It’d be cool if they did karate!” “Make them fly!” There was no filter. Instead of simple (like the only good Olympic mascot in history, Barcelona’s Cobi) London went for a design as complicated as can be.

The natural defense of the mascots is that they’re not designed for adults, but for the children who will convince adults to buy them a bunch of merchandise with said mascots. That’s a cop-out. Pandering to children isn’t an excuse for an uninspired design. The aforementioned Pixar caters to kids, yet its films still resonate with the older set. 

Wenlock is named after Much Wenlock, a village in Shropshire which held an event in the 19th century which inspired the modern Games. Mandeville is named after the hospital at which the Paralympic Games were founded. Though both sound like Tolkein characters, the names are quite good and are the only thing that makes the mascots distinctly British.

London 2012 released a video explaining the pair’s orgins as well. Somehow, it makes them look even weirder than before:

This is one of the more brutal crashes we’ve seen in a long time. We don’t have much context for it, but for now it seems the blame for this one is on the woman. You can’t just wander into the lane of sprinter like that. Bad things will happen.

Avril Lavigne rocks the house during a surprise performance at the Closing Ceremony of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics at BC Place in Canada on Sunday (February 28).

The 25-year-old Canada native performed her hits “My Happy Ending” and “Girlfriend” at the ceremony, which also included remarks and performances by Neil Young, Catherine O’Hara, Michael J. Fox and Michael Buble!

The Canadian women’s hockey team is in hot water after its impromptu on-ice celebration Thursday night. The gold-medal party has drawn the ire of the International Olympic Committee.

Nearly an hour after the Canadians won their third consecutive Olympic gold medal with a 2-0 win over the Americans, the players came back out on the ice in the near-empty arena, smoking cigars and swigging champagne and beer. (Rebecca Johnston even tried to drive the zamboni.)

Star-Ledger photographer Andy Mills captured 18-year-old Marie-Philip Poulin, who scored both goals in the gold-medal game, drinking Molson Canadian beer. Poulin doesn’t turn 19 – the legal drinking age in British Columbia – until next month. The Canadian team trains in Alberta, where the legal drinking age is 18.

The IOC said it would look into the matter.

“I don’t think it’s a good promotion of sport values,” Gilbert Felli, the IOC’s executive director of the Olympics, told the Associated Press after learning about the celebration. “If they celebrate in the changing room, that’s one thing, but not in public. We will investigate what happened.”

Hockey Canada apologized for the team’s behavior in the following statement:

”The members of Team Canada apologize if their on-ice celebrations, after fans had left the building, have offended anyone. In the excitement of the moment, the celebration left the confines of our dressing room and shouldn’t have. The team regrets that its gold medal celebration may have caused the IOC or COC any embarrassment.”

Canadian Olympic Committee spokesman Steve Keough said the COC didn’t provide the alcohol.

“In terms of the actual celebration, it’s not exactly something uncommon in Canada,” Keough told the AP. “I think Canadians understand it’s quite an emotional moment for our team. It was not our intention to go against any IOC protocols.”

The women’s hockey players aren’t the first Canadians to celebrate with alcohol during these Games. Skeleton athlete Jon Montgomery took to the streets of Whistler with a pitcher of beer earlier in the week after he won gold.

If ever there was a blunder of Olympic proportions, this was it.

Sven Kramer lost the gold medal Tuesday when coach Gerard Kemkers sent him the wrong way on a changeover during the 25 laps of the 10,000-meter speedskating race – a mistake so elementary, it defies belief.

“It is a disastrous error,” said Kemkers, still in shock because his faulty instructions had Kramer disqualified and moved Lee Seung-hoon of South Korea from silver to gold.

“This is unprecedented in an Olympic Games,” said U.S. coach Derek Parra.

Kramer had not lost a 10,000 in three years, making him the prohibitive favorite to win – until the inexplicable happened.

Every lap, a skater moves from the outside lane to the inside lane, or vice versa, for a changeover to make sure everybody skates the same distance.

Almost never is there a problem. But sometimes the skater can get into such a zone of focus on his style and pace that the mind becomes blurred.

“You are thinking a lot of things in your race. It is a mental fight for 25 laps,” said defending champion Bob de Jong, who won bronze because of Kramer’s disqualification.

“Sometimes you’re coming out and looking for good ice, you might go either tight on the track or wide on the track to get better ice. And it’s at that time you think – ‘OK, where did I just come from?’”