Divers preparing for a competition have a sense of the point total they need to advance from the preliminary round to the next round and, ultimately, to place in a medalist position.
Dana Vollmer, a gold medalist as a teenager in 2004, returns after failing to make the 2008 team and is a contender in the 100-meter butterfly.
At that level of competition, every contender is a potential gold medalist on a perfect day, and no athlete is immune from loss in less than ideal situations.
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He recently came out of retirement to coach Olympic sprinter Walter Dix, who is a bronze medalist in both the 100 and 200 meter events.
Earlier, we talked with Alonzo Mourning, a gold medalist in the 2000 Sydney Olympics with Team USA, about the challenges this year's squad will face in London.
"In 1932 Babe Didrikson (a gold medalist in hurdling and the javelin at the Los Angeles Games of 1932) came in and evolved into the big name and pushed everyone else onto the sidelines, " said Mallon.
Rebecca Soni, a surprise gold medalist in Beijing, is a favorite in the 100- and 200-meter breaststroke.
Caleb was a four-time X Games medalist attempting a move he has landed several times previously.
On the undercard, Sara McMann, a 2004 silver medalist in wrestling at the Athens Olympics, won her UFC debut with a TKO over Sheila Gaff.
Jones is also much closer to being a solo gold medalist in track than Oscar Pistorius, the South African sprinter who lost both legs at the knee as a child and yet became a world-class athlete using curved carbon blades for feet.
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"It was like baseball, " Said Tom Dolan, a three-time medley medalist who now runs a swim school in Virginia.
Bolt was talking to CNN Olympic contributor Linford Christie, a 100m gold medalist at the Barcelona Games in 1992, after recording 9.76 in Rome on Thursday -- the fastest time this year.
After two months in a cast and two more in a boot, Orozco moved to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs in December 2010 to work with Marinitch, who had been a Soviet gold medalist in the 1989 world championship team event.
For the two out of the last three years, one of those students drawn to the joy of competing under your school name while hanging out with your friends is Missy Franklin, a five-time medalist in the 2012 London Olympics who, between celebrity appearances and a continuing Olympic-level swim schedule, goes to school and swims for Regis Jesuit, a private high school in the Denver area.
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Caleb is a four-time X Games medalist who fell short on his rotation on a move he has landed several times previously.
Mr. Saez is a professor of economics at UC Berkeley and a John Bates Clark medalist.
The renaissance is largely thanks to the 2008 hiring of Ezio Gamba, a onetime judo gold medalist for Italy, to coach the men's team.
The four-time Paralympic Games gold medalist won a silver medal as part of South Africa's 4x400-meter relay at the world championships in Daegu, South Korea, last year.
Karch Kiraly, the assistant coach of the U.S. women's volleyball team and a three-time Olympic gold medalist in the sport, says that physical contact is a sign of closeness.
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"Bart was a lovely 'gentle giant' of a man who I have so many fond memories of inside the British Olympic Sailing team, " added Robertson, herself a double Olympic gold medalist.
Shiffrin, who last year became the youngest American to win a national alpine skiing championship, heads the slalom standings by 22 points from Hofl-Riesch -- the overall World Cup champion in 2011 and a double Olympic gold medalist.
The recommendations come after Andrew Simpson, a British two-time Olympic medalist, died after the boat of Swedish team Artemis Racing capsized during a May 9 practice run.
The Cuban defector, a two-time gold medalist believed to have fought over 400 amateur bouts, landed 129 of 396 punches.
Benita Fitzgerald Mosley, an Olympic gold medalist, left a public-relations post at the U.S. Olympic Committee to head a struggling cable-television trade group for women.
In recent years, Abdirahman said he's actually matured, in part thanks to a close relationship with Bernard Lagat, a two-time Olympic medalist in the 1, 500 meters.
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There isn't the same sort of general consensus on the marketability of a silver- or bronze-medalist, however.
But Mr. Marsicano, a speed-skater who was a U.S. silver medalist in the 2010 Olympics, will have to appreciate Lady Liberty from afar.
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