Think Nancy Kerrigan vs. Tonya Harding. Or Jesse Owens vs. Adolf Hitler. Or Rulon Gardner vs. Alexander Karelin.

Here are eight great rivalries that will help fuel the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

USA's Tyson Gay vs. Jamaica's Usain Bolt and Asafa Powell, 100-meter dash

The 100-meter dash, always one of the Olympics' most glamorous events, determines the unofficial title of “world's fastest man.” This year's 100 should have even a little more pop than usual. Gay will have two worthy Jamaican challengers – world-record holder Bolt and his countryman, Powell.

Originally, it was supposed to be Powell who flew alongside Gay toward the finish of this race, and it still might be. But Bolt came out of the sky like a … well… lightning bolt when he recently blew away the world record with a time of 9.72 seconds. At 6-foot-5, Bolt is a giant of a sprinter, a half-foot taller than Gay.

Gay ran a sizzling 9.68 at the U.S. Olympic trials in his late June victory, but it was wind-aided and didn't go into the record books as a world mark. Then his hamstring cramped in the 200 at the trials and he literally tumbled out of the event. While those close to him insist Gay will be fine to run the 100 in Beijing, it's still not certain, and the injury adds another intriguing element.

USA vs China, women's gymnastics

This ranks as the most high-profile team rivalry at these Olympics. Expect NBC to cover it in breathless detail. The U.S. has two of the best all-around gymnasts in the world in Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin, but China has excellent depth and a home-court advantage that can't be discounted.

“China is our biggest competition,” said Johnson, who is 16 years old, 4-foot-9 and the reigning champion in the all-around event. “Knowing we're going onto their home turf will give us a little more pressure.”

But, added Liukin: “We are the team to beat. We've earned that.”

The U.S. women won gold at the 2007 worlds. China won gold at the same meet in 2006. The Chinese have three-time world vault champion Cheng Fui and possibly more depth than the American squad.

USA's Michael Phelps vs. the field, men's swimming.

No single swimmer can challenge the overall supremacy of Phelps, who enters these Olympics as a splashy superstar. He won eight medals last time out in 2004 (six golds, two bronze). Entered in eight events once again, Phelps might surpass his gold medal total this time around.

But that doesn't mean Phelps can't be challenged in individual events. Teammate Ryan Lochte was inches away from beating Phelps in the 400 individual medley at the U.S. Olympic trials, with both swimmers going under the world record. Phelps is perceived as a bit vulnerable in almost all of his events, and even Phelps will tell you that he's not quite as energetic as he used to be.

USA vs Brazil, women's soccer

Brazil sports the best women's soccer player in the world – Marta. Her nickname is “Pele with skirts” and she is a gifted forward who helped Brazil whip the U.S. at the 2007 Women's World Cup, 4-0. That was the game that also sparked a huge controversy when then-U.S. coach Greg Ryan replaced regular goalkeeper Hope Solo with Briana Scurry. An angry Solo said after the game she would have made saves on the goals Scurry allowed.

In retribution, Solo got kicked off the team and blackballed by her teammates.

Now Solo is the starting goalie again. The team has decided to let bygones be bygones under new coach Pia Sundhage. We'll get a chance to see if Solo really could stop some of Marta's creative shots, assuming the two teams advance out of round-robin play as expected.

The U.S. won gold over Brazil in 2004 when Abby Wambach scored the game-winner on a header. Wambach, the best goal scorer for the U.S., will miss this Olympics with a broken leg, however. Longtime stars like Mia Hamm, Brandi Chastain and Kristine Lilly won't be back, either. China also might be a factor in the hunt for the gold medal.

China's Lui Xiang vs. Cuba's Dayron Robles, 110 hurdles

Except for basketball star Yao Ming, there might not be a Chinese athlete more well-known entering these Summer Games than Lui Xiang. The hurdler is a source of national pride due to his gold medal in the 110-meter hurdles at the 2004 Olympics.

Lui was China's first gold-medal winner in track and field in 20 years. He has proven that wasn't a fluke with a slew of good performances since, often followed by a round of karaoke later that night.

Lui will be fiercely challenged in these Games, however, and no challenge will be as fierce as the one put forth by Robles. It was Robles who took Lui's world record away in June, running a 12.87 seconds to break the mark of 12.88. When the two have competed, it's been even – they split four meetings during the 2007 season.

The American hurdlers could also be a factor in this race – this is an event that the U.S. traditionally rules – but Robles and Lui look most likely to duke it out for gold and silver.

USA's Jeremy Wariner vs. USA's LaShawn Merritt, 400 meters

Wariner, the Olympic gold medalist in 2004, was invincible in this race for awhile. Not anymore. It was Merritt – who spent his brief college career at East Carolina – who won the U.S. Olympic trials in early July. And although Merritt is only 3-13 lifetime against Wariner, he has now beaten Wariner in two of their past four meetings.

Wariner has two trademarks: his sunglasses and his finishing kick. Merritt might still be perceived as the underdog in Beijing, but given the close recent outcomes, he will probably consider himself as the favorite. Either man has a shot at Michael Johnson's world record of 43.18.

USA's Brendan Hansen vs. Japan's Kosuke Kitajima, 100 breaststroke

The two best breaststrokers in the world will face off again in 2008 in the 100-meter breaststroke with their battles in 2004 serving as a tantalizing backdrop.

Kitajima beat Hansen in both the 100 and 200 breaststroke in the 2004 Olympics. Hansen finished second in the 100 and third in the 200. The two are the obvious class of the field. Hansen holds the world record in the 100 and Kitajima holds it in the 200 (breaking Hansen's record in June). Hansen finished a disappointing fourth in the 200 at the U.S. trials, however, so he will only get a chance for revenge in the 100 against Kitajima.

The American swim team was suspicious of Kitajima in 2004. Aaron Peirsol, a U.S. backstroker and close friend of Hansen's, accused Kitajima of using an illegal dolphin kick to help propel himself to the gold medal. “He knew what we was doing,” Peirsol said. “It's cheating.” But the Japanese swimmer wasn't penalized by the judges.

USA's Misty May-Treanor/Kerri Walsh vs China's Tian Jia/Wang Jie, beach volleyball

Walsh and May-Treanor have long formed the best duo in the world in this sport, always one of the hottest tickets at the Olympics because of the beach-party atmosphere that usually surrounds it. Both have gotten married since they won the gold medal together in 2004, and both would like to win gold again in 2008 and then get to work on starting families.

China's duo might have something to say about the gold, however. Tian Jia has played with two previous partners also named “Wang,” but the third one might be the charm. She and the 6-foot-3 Wang Jie have been posting very good results over the past two years, including a runner-up finish to Walsh and May-Treanor at the 2007 World Championships. The two would need to play the match of their lives to beat May-Treanor and Walsh in a sport where that duo has been so dominant for so long. But the match will be played in China, which might help.

There is really nothing else.

An unhealthy attitude? In most cases, yes. You wouldn't want your kids to think that way. But Donovan – a Charlotte resident since 2001 and now the coach of the U.S. women's Olympic basketball team – believes it is a realistic attitude given her current job. And I'd agree.

“It's funny,” Donovan said as we sat over coffee at a south Charlotte Starbucks. “When I see some athlete get a silver medal and say he won't even wear it because it's not gold, I think, ‘That's sad.' But we've got a history in U.S. women's basketball. Anything less than gold will be looked at as a failure by a lot of people, including myself.”

Donovan, inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as a player in 1995, is 6-foot-8 and a giant of the women's game. She was once the best coach the WNBA's Charlotte Sting ever had. Before that, she was a three-time U.S. Olympian as a player and one of the best college basketball players ever while at Old Dominion.

And before that, she was a very tall girl, enduring the teasing to which all tall girls sometimes are subjected. Growing up in New Jersey, she was the eighth of eight Donovan children, and when the family gets together these days, the ceiling fans better brace themselves. The “short” Donovan sister is 5-10. She has a brother who is 7-1.

“It's not easy to be comfortable with your height when you're 6-8,” said Donovan, who comes across as gracious and honest in person. “Not even today, at age 46. But I've been blessed with seven older brothers and sisters who went through everything I was going to go through. I had role models. Catholic school helped. And of course basketball helped. Those three gave me a niche.”

Donovan's personal history has threaded through various U.S. women's basketball teams for 30 years.

She started her USA basketball career as a 15-year-old in 1977. She's been a player, an assistant coach in 2004 and now the head coach. Which was the most fun?

“Oh, as a player, definitely,” Donovan laughed. “You're so carefree. Someone else plans the practices. You just play. My first year that I coached – now that was a real education.”

Single and very driven, Donovan has carved a career out of coaching. She got her first WNBA head-coaching job in Charlotte in 2001 when the Sting hired her. Her first team in Charlotte rebounded from a 1-10 start to make the WNBA finals that season and then the playoffs in 2002.

Then Donovan took another job. She hated to, because she loved Charlotte. “But the writing was on the wall,” she said. The Sting was sinking and there was some question whether it would even exist in 2003 (the franchise ultimately would fold in 2007). Donovan had a chance to take the head-coaching job with the WNBA's Seattle Storm, where she would win the WNBA championship in 2004.

The funny thing is that Donovan officially kept Charlotte as her permanent home during her five seasons in Seattle. She spent every offseason here with her neighbors, family and her cat Romeo.

Now she's back in Charlotte, semi-permanently. She resigned in November in Seattle, intending to devote all her work time in this Olympic year to the team. But after August, she'll be without a job again.

“That will be a peculiar time for me,” Donovan said. “I don't know what will be next. I'll look at college jobs and WNBA jobs, but who knows?”

For now, though, the Games stare her in the face. Donovan said her team's main rivals will be Australia and Russia in Beijing. She worries most about her squad's suspect defense and the players' limited training time together.

And she worries about the team being perceived as a failure.

“It used to be we just showed up and picked up a gold medal,” Donovan said. “Not anymore.”

Donovan won't coach the Olympic team in 2012 – she already knows that and is fine with it.

So this is Donovan's one shot. Even at 6-foot-8, she knows it's far from a tip-in.

Wrestler Dremiel Byers knows exactly what he means.

Byers waited until his senior year to start on his high school wrestling team at Kings Mountain, even though he was one of the best heavyweight wrestlers in the state as a junior.

But that was nothing compared to how long Byers has waited for the 2008 Olympics. He has been hidden in the large shadow of endearing Olympic champion Rulon Gardner for the past eight years.

Now, Byers is 33. And it is finally his turn.

Byers has made the U.S. Olympic team in Greco-Roman wrestling – the type of Olympic wrestling in which the combatants can't grab each others' legs. Byers will be the only American representative in the 264.5-pound heavyweight (96-120 kg) division.

“I'm training like a madman,” Byers told me this week from Colorado Springs, Colo., where he now lives. “I'm staying focused and allowing no vices whatsoever to get in the way. I'm just too close now. It's time to be a little selfish, because I didn't put in all these years to lose.”

Said his mother Beverly Byers, who still lives in Kings Mountain and flies two Olympic flags outside her home: “He has tried so hard for so long. I'm so proud of him. As for me, I'm thrilled. It has taken me weeks to stop having a goofy look on my face – the one where you just can't stop grinning.”

Byers will be easy for you to root for in Beijing. He's got those deep Kings Mountain roots, of course, and can be quite humorous bemoaning the lack of sweet tea and slaw dogs in Colorado. He's also a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army – he enlisted in 1994 and has stayed in ever since. In 1997, he joined the Army's world-class athlete program, which allows Byers to pursue his wrestling career full-time in return for helping the Army out as a recruiter in high schools.

And here's an example of the sort of person he is.

In the 2004 U.S. Olympic Trials, Byers and Gardner battled for the single spot available in their weight class.

Byers was thought to be the favorite by then. Gardner had won an unlikely gold medal in 2000 with one of the most famous Olympic upsets ever over Russian legend Alexander Karelin. But, by 2004, Gardner was struggling with injuries and nearing the end of his career.

But Gardner summoned up another fine performance and edged Byers in the trials.

Byers, instead of sulking, volunteered to be Gardner's training partner at the 2004 Olympics in Greece.

Gardner gladly accepted. Byers was inches from his dream in Athens, warming up Gardner before every match. It was both painful and motivational.

“Imagine wanting so much to be a part of something, but you don't get to compete,” Byers said. “I could almost touch it. But I took the whole thing as a lesson. I was so proud of Rulon. He needed my help, and I did the best I could for him.” Gardner ultimately finished third in those Olympics and then retired.

So Byers' patience is finally paying off. But he's used to waiting. He grew up in Kings Mountain, raised by a single mother. Beverly Byers gave birth to Dremiel at age 18 in New Jersey, then took him to Kings Mountain when he was a year old because she had family there.

At about that age, Dremiel started carrying around a one-pound weight as a toy. That led to his childhood nickname of “Bam Bam,” later shortened to Bam.

An only child, Byers was both a standout wrestler and a football player at Kings Mountain. Steve Moffitt was his wrestling coach. “In his junior year, Bam had just come off the (junior varsity),” Moffitt said. “I had a returning wrestler named Tony Young who had already won the regionals twice. They were both awesome heavyweights – I had two of the best in the state that year and knew it – but Bam was second string almost all year. And he busted his tail every day anyway. It really was a lot like what he would do for Rulon Gardner many years later in Greece.”

Said Byers: “Tony was my ride to school. I never challenged him because of that.” After Young graduated, Byers won a wrestling state championship for Kings Mountain in 1993. N.C. A&T wanted him to play for them as a linebacker and gave him a scholarship. But Byers left school after a year. He had a grandfather, Theodore Byers, whom he was very close to and who had once been in the Army. Byers decided to follow that path.

Shortly after enlisting, he entered an Army-only wrestling tournament.

“When I got on the mat, I kind of vented on those poor guys,” Byers said. “And it turned out God had a plan for me.” The right people had seen his performance, and suddenly the Army got very interested in turning Byers into an elite wrestler.

That was 13 years ago. Now Byers is truly one of the best in the world. He will have to cut some weight before he wrestles in Beijing, but he always does that. Right now, the 6-foot-2 Byers said he weighs 286 pounds, and he will have to be at 264.5 in China.

But Byers will get there. He's not about to let something like that stop him now, not when his Olympic dream is finally there for the tasting.

There is, however, a “M-E.”

Sometimes in sports, it's worth celebrating the great individual performance. Today's column does that. I've compiled a list of the 10 best individual efforts I've seen in the past 20-odd years, since I started writing about sports at my college newspaper.

My list is purely subjective, of course. Yours would undoubtedly be far different. And you can join the conversation by posting your own list on www.charlotte.com/sports under the online version of this story.

One major ground rule to follow: you had to see these great performances in person, not on TV.

And now, counting them down:

10.Mario Chalmers. I still don't quite believe Kansas guard Chalmers made the shot that pushed the NCAA championship game into overtime in April. With Memphis guard Derrick Rose looming in his face, Chalmers nailed a gorgeous 3-pointer from the top of the key that will be replayed for decades. You knew Memphis was done as soon as it swished.

9.Chris Leak. The Independence quarterback had a surgeon's touch in high school, when he set innumerable records. The game that sticks in my brain was a five-touchdown effort against Vance in 2002 when Leak broke the national record for career TD passes.

8.Kobe Bryant. In the best Bobcats game I've ever seen – now there's a short list! – Bryant was incredible. He scored 58 against the Bobcats on Dec.29, 2006, yet Charlotte managed to win in triple overtime.

7.Marat Safin. I know what you're saying: Marat who? Safin is a temperamental tennis genius who hardly ever realized his potential. I saw him do it once, though, in New York – a startling 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 pummeling of Pete Sampras in the 2000 U.S. Open final. Safin made Sampras – one of the best players of all time – look ancient and bewildered.

6.Nick Maddox. This running back from Kannapolis A.L. Brown was absolutely the most dazzling high school football player I've ever seen. He scored 45 touchdowns his senior season – an addictive pleasure to watch. In the 1998 game I remember most, Maddox scored five TDs and threw a 71-yard pass for a sixth in a 55-14 rout of Central Cabarrus.

5.Len Bias. In 1986, I was still in college and a very raw sportswriter. Still, it was impossible to miss the greatness on display when Bias scored 35 points and almost single-handedly led Maryland's win over No.1 North Carolina 77-72. Once, Bias hit a 20-footer, then stole the inbounds pass and dunked it. Backwards.

“If Lenny Bias ain't the player of the world after tonight,” said Maryland coach Lefty Driesell, “somebody don't know something about basketball.”

Four months later, Bias had died of cardiac arrest attributed to a cocaine overdose. Bias has now been dead nearly as long as he was alive. It's a shame, and a cautionary tale. In the NBA, Bias would have been almost Jordan-esque.

4.Jilen Siroky. Few outside the Charlotte swim community knew this 14-year-old when she swam the race of her life at the 1996 U.S. Olympic trials in Indianapolis. She was ranked 54th in the world in the 200-meter breaststroke entering the event.

In the eight-woman final, Siroky (pronounced Sir-OAK-ee) was sixth after 50 meters. The Charlotte middle-schooler needed to finish second to make the Olympics. And she just kept passing people, ultimately swimming 3.5 seconds faster in the event than she had before. In the final 10 meters, Siroky went from third to second – from off the Olympic team to on it. She sobbed as soon as she saw her time. It was beautiful.

In the Olympics themselves, Siroky finished 15th. But hey, she got there.

3.Payne Stewart. The 1999 U.S. Open at Pinehurst was a classic – the best single day of golf I've ever covered.

Stewart won on a misty Sunday, beating Vijay Singh, Tiger Woods and, finally, Phil Mickelson with a wonderful display of nerveless golf.

On the final three holes, Stewart one-putted – from 25, 5 and then 15 feet on No.18. If he had missed that last putt on the final hole, he and Mickelson would have been tied for the lead.

Instead, Stewart won it outright. Then he bear-hugged his caddie. Then he grabbed Mickelson (whose wife would give birth the next day) and told him how much Mickelson would love being a father.

Four months later, Stewart died a bizarre and very public death. Along with five other people, he was aboard a doomed private jet that veered halfway across the country before crashing in North Dakota.

2.Stephen Curry. With Davidson's literal son of a gun, you've got a lot of performances to choose from even if you just limit it to the past six months.

My favorite, though, was Curry's second half in a 2008 second-round NCAA tournament game against Georgetown in Raleigh on Easter Sunday. Curry looked frustrated and had only five points at halftime. Soon thereafter, Davidson was down by 17. It looked like the 40 Curry had scored against Gonzaga in a first-round NCAA game might be dismissed as a one-hit wonder.

And then Curry went nuts. He scored 25 points in that second half, including one four-point play. He ended up with 30 and Davidson won 74-70. It was ridiculously good, and it was the game that imprinted the baby-faced Curry on America's psyche.

1.Steve Smith. No Carolina Panther has ever played better for 60 minutes than Smith did in the NFC playoffs against Chicago in 2006. The Bears had beaten the Panthers 13-3 earlier in the season. Now Chicago – boasting what was supposed to be the NFL's best defense – would get the Panthers again at Soldier Field.

And Smith absolutely torched the Bears. Every time the Panthers needed a play, he would run past or fight through some hapless Bear. “If you lined up my Mama out there,” he said, “I'd catch it over her, too.”

Smith ended up with 218 yards and two TDs in the Panthers' 29-21 win. As Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher growled afterward when asked what happened to the Bears: “Steve Smith. That is what happened to us.”

He had won 12 national championships at Auburn as swim coach. He could probably stay right there – coaching at his alma mater and riding a wave of personal success – for the rest of his career.

But Marsh, 49, felt itchy. Recruiting was a constant grind. Family time was difficult to come by. He was on his fifth athletic director.

So he made a leap of faith to Charlotte. The Mecklenburg Aquatic Club lured him to become its head coach with an experimental concept – supported by USA Swimming – that would turn the club into a “Center of Excellence” for American swimmers who had a chance to one day compete in the Olympics.

“The plan was really more to concentrate on London and the 2012 Olympics than on Beijing,” Marsh said.

But the dividends have already started to show. Mark Gangloff and Cullen Jones – two swimmers who followed Marsh to Charlotte – made the 2008 U.S. Olympic team at the Olympic trials here this week.

To be sure, Marsh is not responsible for every great swimmer in the Charlotte area.

Ricky Berens, who grew up in Charlotte and now swims for the University of Texas, made the U.S. Olympic team independently of Marsh. Ellen Grigg and Scot Robison, two teenagers and Charlotte Latin graduates who trained at New South Swimming, finished in the top 16 in their best events. Twins Matt and Sean Patton don't swim for Marsh, either, but did well at the trials.

Marsh, though, is a magnet for some swimmers who compete at the national level. “Arguably, David Marsh is the top swim coach in the country,” said Mark Schubert, the U.S. national team coach.

Marsh brought a team of 20 from MAC to the Olympic trials – most of whom are post-college swimmers who came to Charlotte to be coached by him. And he plans to have a larger group competing at the 2012 U.S. Olympic trials.

In 2007, Marsh signed a five-year contract to lead MAC through at least the 2012 Summer Olympics. Some in the swim world were shocked.

Said Marsh with a smile: “The most frequent question I get even now is: ‘What in the heck are you thinking?' The college jobs in swimming are generally pretty secure. Club jobs have the reputation of not being so secure. All it takes is one crazy parent on the executive board and you can get fired.”

Jeff Gaeckle, a former coach at MAC and now the president of its board of directors, was the man in charge of finding a new head coach in the summer of 2006. He called Marsh for advice, not to offer him the job.

But after several talks and some timely intervention by Schubert, Marsh was ready to leave his comfort zone. He packed up, left the Auburn program where he had been head coach for 17 years and moved his wife and three children to Charlotte.

USA Swimming wanted Marsh to do that badly enough that it gave what Schubert termed a “minuscule” amount of seed money to develop the “Center of Excellence” concept at MAC. But it is the club – a nonprofit organization – that pays Marsh's salary. Gaeckle has been charged with obtaining major sponsors to underwrite some costs for MAC's “Team Elite,” which he admits has been challenging in the current economy.

“But we'll make this thing work,” Gaeckle said, “especially in 2012. Any success that we are having for the 2008 Olympic year is really gravy.”

Schubert said USA Swimming would like to help three to four similar “Centers of Excellence” sprout up around the country.

“Our sport is getting older,” Schubert said. “Swimmers are staying in the sport longer. We want to develop centers where the best U.S. swimmers can train with and against each other at practice, ultimately pursuing gold medals.

“I had some very selfish purposes for helping to nudge this along and get David to Charlotte. To me, I see it as a way for America to improve its performance and win more gold medals in swimming by getting some of the best coaching around.”

Marsh had to change one thing. At Auburn, he won partly because he recruited international swimmers. The “Team Elite” squad at MAC – with the exception of Bahamian Jeremy Knowles, who was “grandfathered” in – is completely American.

Curly-haired and calm, Marsh has a style that suits many of his current swimmers.

Said Jones, the former N.C. State standout who became an Olympian Thursday: “He doesn't put his foot in a lot of behinds. He doesn't yell. But he has a great knack of knowing how to shave off seconds from your time. If you move your hands one centimeter to the right, he picks up on it.”

Said Tim Liebhold, another one of Marsh's MAC swimmers: “He doesn't seem that organized compared to a lot of coaches I've had, but then you realize it's all there in his head. And every workout is individualized. If there are 20 of us practicing in the morning, we might be doing 20 different workouts.”

Not everyone wants to be coached by Marsh. Margaret Hoelzer, who also made the Olympic team in Omaha, left the MAC program just a couple of months before the Olympic trials and joined a swim team in Seattle. She said in Omaha that her new head coach in Seattle had put the “fun” back into swimming for her.

Marsh seems happy but not impressed with the level of success so far at MAC. “Hopefully, we're delivering some of the goods,” he said. “But I'm really looking forward to the next Olympic cycle in 2012. Watch out for us then.”

Jones, a former N.C. State standout and current Charlotte resident, needs to finish in the top six of the eight-man final to earn the Olympic spot he craves. He posted back-to-back personal bests Wednesday in the preliminaries and semifinals of the 100 at the U.S. Olympic trials.

“I think a lot of people think of Cullen Jones as just a 50 freestyler,” Jones said after swimming the 100 in 48.58 seconds. “So I'm turning some heads today.”

Also, Butler High graduate Matt Patton finished fourth in the 200 butterfly, missing an Olympic spot by two places. Patton, 21, who swims at Michigan, was three seconds short of an Olympic berth. He did place far higher than his seeding of 14th entering the event.

Jones, 24, has long embraced his role as one of the few prominent African-American swimmers in America. A spot on the U.S. team would allow him far more exposure for his crusade to make sure more black children learn to swim.

He would love to qualify in two events instead of just one. Jones' best individual event is the 50, which is swimming's all-out version of track's 100-meter dash. That event only takes the top two from each country to the Olympics.

The 100 is more forgiving. It offers U.S. Olympic spots to the top six – although only the top two will swim the individual portion of the race in Beijing – because more bodies are needed for the 4-by-100 freestyle relay.

“I like to say the 50 is my bread and butter, but the 100 is more what I'm devoted to being better at right now,” Jones said. “The 50 seems to come a little more naturally to me.”

Jones moved from Raleigh to train at the Mecklenburg Aquatic Club two months ago, seeking the coaching of MAC's David Marsh.

“When Cullen came in, he needed more than just tweaking,” Marsh said. “He needed to believe again. He needed to get more fit. He needed to get his strength up. And he needed to create a race strategy that would work.”

The two decided Jones needed to take more breaths in the 100 and work on his start. Marsh also wanted Jones to attack the race instead of swimming it conservatively.

Jones took that to an extreme in the preliminaries, when his first 50 meters were the fastest among the 120 swimmers participating in the event.

Then he “just about died” on the way back, Marsh said. In the warm-down pool, a paramedic actually approached Jones and asked if he needed help.

Jones recovered well and went even faster. If he can do that one more time tonight, he will make his first Olympic team.

Cullen Jones edged closer to a spot on the U.S. Olympic swim team Wednesday, finishing fourth in the semifinals of the 100-meter freestyle to advance to the final tonight.

Jones, a former N.C. State standout and current Charlotte resident, needs to finish in the top six of the eight-man final to earn the Olympic spot he craves. He posted back-to-back personal bests Wednesday in the preliminaries and semifinals of the 100 at the U.S. Olympic trials.

“I think a lot of people think of Cullen Jones as just a 50 freestyler,” Jones said after swimming the 100 in 48.58 seconds. “So I'm turning some heads today.”

Also, Butler High graduate Matt Patton finished fourth in the 200 butterfly, missing an Olympic spot by two places. Patton, 21, who swims at Michigan, was three seconds short of an Olympic berth. He did place far higher than his seeding of 14th entering the event.

Jones, 24, has long embraced his role as one of the few prominent African-American swimmers in America. A spot on the U.S. team would allow him far more exposure for his crusade to make sure more black children learn to swim.

He would love to qualify in two events instead of just one. Jones' best individual event is the 50, which is swimming's all-out version of track's 100-meter dash. That event only takes the top two from each country to the Olympics.

The 100 is more forgiving. It offers U.S. Olympic spots to the top six – although only the top two will swim the individual portion of the race in Beijing – because more bodies are needed for the 4-by-100 freestyle relay.

“I like to say the 50 is my bread and butter, but the 100 is more what I'm devoted to being better at right now,” Jones said. “The 50 seems to come a little more naturally to me.”

Jones moved from Raleigh to train at the Mecklenburg Aquatic Club two months ago, seeking the coaching of MAC's David Marsh.

“When Cullen came in, he needed more than just tweaking,” Marsh said. “He needed to believe again. He needed to get more fit. He needed to get his strength up. And he needed to create a race strategy that would work.”

The two decided Jones needed to take more breaths in the 100 and work on his start. Marsh also wanted Jones to attack the race instead of swimming it conservatively.

Jones took that to an extreme in the preliminaries, when his first 50 meters were the fastest among the 120 swimmers participating in the event.

Then he “just about died” on the way back, Marsh said. In the warm-down pool, a paramedic actually approached Jones and asked if he needed help.

Jones recovered well and went even faster. If he can do that one more time tonight, he will make his first Olympic team.

The costume in question: something that looks like a swimsuit your great-grandfather wore at the beach.

Speedo's LZR (pronounced “laser”) swimsuit is all the rage here at the Olympic trials. It's so tight that it can take 20 minutes – and help from a couple of assistants – to wriggle into.

But once it's on, it's something. More than 40 world records have been broken by swimmers wearing the suit this year.

And I don't like it.

Swimmers do, though. The LZR is so popular – especially the full-body version that retails for about $500 – that Speedo has set up a lending library here in Omaha. Any athlete who wants to wear one can borrow one. Scores have. Who wouldn't want a suit that slices through the water more efficiently than human skin and supposedly makes you two percent faster?

Said Ryan Lochte, one of America's best swimmers (and a Speedo pitchman): “When I put it on, I feel like I'm some kind of action hero, ready to take on the world. It makes me feel like I'm swimming downhill.”

It shouldn't make you feel like that.

I wouldn't go as far as to call the Speedo LZR “technological doping,” as Italy's coach has. But to me, all swimming world records are cheapened when they are broken this often.

In one two-minute span at these trials Monday, Hayley McGregory broke Natalie Coughlin's 100-meter backstroke world record in the 15 {+t}{+h} heat of the preliminaries. In the 16 {+t}{+h} heat, Coughlin retook the one-minute-old record.

Of course, swimsuits have evolved through the years. Johnny Weissmuller, a great swimmer of the 1920s before he turned into “Tarzan,” actually wore a wool swimsuit with shoulder straps. Mark Spitz used to wear nylon briefs with no cap or goggles.

Some advances are inevitable. But these new suits – several other companies are involved in the swimsuit race, and of course a lawsuit is involved – are too slick. They have built-in girdles and no seams, to reduce drag.

Dave Marsh, coach of the Mecklenburg Aquatic Club, has mixed feelings about the LZR. He said if he were king of the swimming world, he would make sure no suit made by any company could be a bit buoyant. Some of the current models actually float.

“What I'd institute immediately is zero flotation,” Marsh said.

But he likes other parts of the new suits. And he knows world records bring the sport more attention. FINA, which is swimming's governing body and has approved use of the LZR and other similar suits, knows that, too.

“The built-in quandary,” Marsh said, “is that FINA and swimming garner more attention when world records are broken. Publicity goes up. Rights fees go up. So I'm not sure the fox isn't watching the henhouse a little bit.”

If you're a swimmer, of course, you just about have to wear a LZR or something like it. Cullen Jones, the sprinter who lives in Charlotte and starred at N.C. State, is sponsored by Nike.

Nike trails badly in the swimsuit race and has granted its athletes permission to wear competitors' suits in Omaha. Jones will wear a LZR today when he swims in the 100 freestyle preliminaries, Marsh said.

Some older swimmers don't see a thing wrong with the new suits.

Said Janis Hape Dowd, a Charlottean who was on the U.S. Olympic team in 1976: “I think the suits are great. The fact that it's causing so much attention is really a positive for our sport. Technology is always going to improve in all sports. This is not the same as doping like the East German women were doing when I was swimming. Not at all.”

I'd agree. It isn't doping.

But I still don't like it.

Would you hug everyone in sight? Would you start doing a crazy dance? Would you promise a gold medal to the crowd?

Mark Gangloff did none of that Monday when he made it. Outwardly, he barely celebrated at all in the first few minutes after four years of work had come to fruition in 60 seconds.

“I'm relieved more than anything else,” Gangloff said moments after the race, still dripping from the pool at the Qwest Center. “I'm not happy with the way I performed tonight, but I got my hand on the wall second. In the Olympic trials, it's all about making the team by finishing first or second, and I was able to do that. I've still got more to show in Beijing, though, that's for sure.”

Gangloff has already made an Olympic team before. He qualified for the U.S. squad in 2004 in the same event – the 100-meter breaststroke – and won a gold medal in a relay.

He wanted more Monday. He hoped to swim under a minute for the first time in his life, but instead finished in 1:00.42. He hoped to beat longtime rival Brendan Hansen, but instead Hansen swam the race about a half-second faster.

Still, Gangloff got his spot.

“I am happy,” he insisted. “But I'm most happy that I don't have to feel all this stress anymore. I'll get happier over the next couple of days. But right now I just feel like a burden has been lifted off of me.”

The Olympic trials can provoke unusual emotions. Doug Van Wie, Gangloff's road-trip roommate here, has been to this meet before. But the Charlottean got so overhyped before the 200 freestyle preliminaries that it ruined his race.

“I just took it out way too fast,” Van Wie said. “I got too excited. I had so many people here watching me, and the crowd was so big, and I wanted to do so well and I just did too much early.

“I felt like I was just floating on top of the water to start, but then I couldn't hold on.”

Van Wie ended up a disappointing 25th in that event, although he still has two more chances to make the Olympic team before the week ends.

Gangloff, 26, kept counseling his Mecklenburg Aquatic Club teammates all week to stay calm. Then he took his own advice – almost too well. “I went out too slow,” he said.

Normally, he leads the 100 breaststroke halfway through. This time he was third.

That set Gangloff up for a final 50-meter test, which he passed. He couldn't beat Hansen, but he beat everyone else, and that was enough.

“I'm relieved just like Mark,” said Dave Marsh, Gangloff's coach at MAC. “It wasn't his best race, but the job here is to make the team. Mark already has a medal in his pocket from 2004, so we're going to be real aggressive in Beijing. We'll just throw caution to the wind.”

Will that be enough? Who knows?

But Gangloff is definitely under the radar now. If he had won Monday, upsetting Hansen, it would have been different. Now the pressure is off.

When I mentioned that to him, he smiled a little.

It was an eventful – but not particularly successful – Sunday for Olympic hopefuls from the Carolinas in both the U.S. track and swimming Olympic trials.

In a dramatic 400-meter hurdles race in Eugene, Ore., eight women raced for three available Olympic spots. Columbia's Lashinda Demus, trying to make a comeback after giving birth to twins in 2007, ran in second place behind her former South Carolina teammate Tiffany Ross-Williams for most of the race.

But Demus was passed by two other hurdlers – Sheena Tosta and Queen Harrison – in the final 10 meters. NBC's cameras then showed Demus sitting down, alone, on the track. Her fourth-place finish left her 0.14 seconds out of third place and a spot at the Olympics in Beijing in August.

While Demus was a “no” for the Olympics, triple jumper Shakeema Welsch of Charlotte apparently remains a “maybe.” Welsch finished a strong second in her event in Eugene, which started her toward the road to Beijing. However, Welsch also needed to jump the Olympic qualifying “A” standard of 46 feet, 7 inches to qualify for Beijing.

The fifth of her six leaps in Eugene was 46-10. Some of those in the stadium – including her husband and her coach – thought she had qualified with that leap and started to celebrate. But then the wind monitor showed that the wind had been 3.5 meters per second at the time of Welsch's career-best leap, above the allowable 2-meter standard.

“So it's been a real roller-coaster day for all of us,” Jonas Welsch, Shakeema's husband, said while attending the Olympic trials in Oregon. “But we have been told that if Shakeema can make the jump in the next few weeks, she can still represent the U.S. at the Olympics.”

Shakeema Welsch plans to go to Europe, enter several track meets and try to duplicate that exact jump. She has until July 23 to jump 46-7, or else she won't get to go to Beijing, according to Jonas Welsch. The official U.S. Track and Field news release chronicling Sunday night's events said the U.S. was prepared to send a two-woman triple-jump team (without Welsch). The two other qualifiers Sunday night – first-place finisher Shani Marks and third-place finisher Erica McLain – have already qualified at the “A” standard.

At the swimming trials in Omaha, Neb., Charlotte's Matt Patton finished in a respectable seventh place in the 400-meter freestyle. Patton, seeded eighth, would have had to make the top two to make the Olympics.

On a more positive note, Mark Gangloff of the Mecklenburg Aquatic Club easily qualified for tonight's final in the men's 100-meter breaststroke. Seeded second in the race, Gangloff will need to finish in the top two to make the Olympics.

In both the preliminaries and the semifinal heats Sunday in Omaha, Gangloff had the second-best time of all competitors, trailing only longtime rival Brendan Hansen. In the preliminaries, Gangloff swam a personal best of 1:00.10. He hopes to break the one-minute mark for the first time in tonight's final.

Charlotte's Ricky Berens is only 20, but he has already competed once in the Olympic trials.

As you might imagine, he was overwhelmed.

“It was pretty scary – just like, ‘Wow!'” Berens said of competing in the 2004 trials in Long Beach, Calif. “Swimming in front of 10,000 people – that was amazing. My highest place was about 20th. But I was only 16.”

Now he is four years older and a rising junior at the University of Texas. His quest to make the Olympic team starts today in Omaha, Neb., in the preliminaries of the 200-meter freestyle. He will compete in as many as three other events, depending on how his prelims go.

“The main goal in swimming is to make the Olympics,” Berens said. “It's always been a goal of mine, too, but I didn't really get the perspective that I could do it until a few years ago.”

He will be a “dual” swimmer at the meet, representing Longhorn Aquatics and the Mecklenburg Aquatic Club. A graduate of South Mecklenburg, where his mother, Leslie, coaches the swim team, Berens' training in Austin these days includes practices against some of the world's best swimmers.

Texas has long been a swimming power. Its best collegiate swimmers also tend to stick around and train there even when their collegiate eligibility is complete. “So we have a world record-holder here in every stroke,” he said.

The topic of Berens' recruitment still makes MAC Team Elite coach Dave Marsh shake his head in rueful dismay. “I was the head coach at Auburn at the time,” Marsh said, “and I tried really hard to get him there. What a talent that kid is.”

If Berens makes the team, he will join swimmers such as Melvin Stewart and Jilen Siroky as Charlotteans who have earned places on the Olympics team in the past two decades. Doug Van Wie and twins Matt and Sean Patton – all of whom grew up in Charlotte as well – also are competing for Olympic spots in Omaha.

Berens' best chance to make the Olympics will likely come in either the 100 or 200 freestyle. Both events take the top six to Beijing, rather than the normal top two, since a relay is also held at both lengths.

What does Berens think his chances are of making the Olympic team?

“I'd like to say they are really good,” he said, “but I don't want to push it. I've got to be my absolute best.”