Helene MayerLONDON – Hiding in plain sight beside a row of London 2012 shuttle buses stands a small metal frame holding the mystery of a past Olympics. Attached to the frame is a photograph. It is an old photograph, snapped on an August afternoon during the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

And in this picture there is a woman, dressed in the white uniform of the German team. She is standing on a medal podium having just received her silver for fencing and her right arm is outstretched in a Nazi salute.

The woman's name is Helene Mayer.

She is the daughter of a Jewish man.

And because of this fact, she has essentially been banished from Germany to the United States, allowed on the Olympic team only so the Nazis can tell the world they support a Jewish athlete.

At best she is a pawn. At worst she is scorned.

Still, when she wins a medal, she raises her arm.

[ Related: American under fire for carrying Mexican flag ]

The frame holding Helene Mayer's photo stands in front of the Wiener Library for

Read More »from In Helene Mayer, a Jewish athlete who competed for Germany in 1936, an Olympic mystery remains

USA's Jordan Burroughs celebrates after defeating Iran's Sadegh Goudarzi in their men's 74kg freestyle gold medal match. Burroughs, the poster boy of American wrestling, lived up to all the pre-London 2012 hype by adding Olympic gold to his world title in the men's 74kg freestyle category. (AFP Photo/Marwan Naamani)LONDON – At the moment the gold medal and a $250,000 bonus was won, American wrestler Jordan Burroughs jumped in the air. He ran around the ring. He stood on the medal stand even though the medal ceremony wouldn't happen for another half hour.

Then he wanted to see his mother. The only problem was, Janice Burroughs was high up in Section 410 in North Arena 2 of the ExCeL Centre. Between them stood a waist-high wall, several rows of stands, and hundreds of screaming people.

And yet Burroughs, now the Olympic champion in the middleweight division, would not be denied. He jumped over the wall into the swarm of fans and then waded through fist pumps and back slaps until he finally reached Janice standing in front of seat 291, more than halfway up the stands.

He hugged her. He told her he loved her. But before he could say anything else, he was pulled away. The fans in Section 410 weren't accustomed to Olympic Read More »from Wrestler who'd 'double-leg the queen' wins gold

LONDON – Dominance doesn't always wear cleats and knee-high socks, and yet America's fascination with a female champion goes only as far as Twitter wars and "Dancing With the Stars." In a basketball country, the most beloved girls play on a soccer team.

On Thursday, just before the U.S. women's soccer team won another gold medal, the U.S. women's basketball team won its 40th straight Olympic game, beating its only rival, Australia, by 13 points in the best game Australia can play. The U.S. found a way to stop a 6-foot-8 center who has dunked in these Olympics. And it broke the Aussies with a ferocious zone defense. On Saturday, Team USA plays for its fifth straight gold medal. It would be an enormous shock to see the team lose.

[ Photos: U.S. women's basketball team ]

Yet nobody much cared. Only a handful of American journalists came to the game. The questions were brief. The players weren't in demand. It was nothing like a U.S. women's soccer game, where the flood of

Read More »from America's most dominant team? Women's basketball, even as the country ignores it

LONDON – By now everyone should understand that China's sports machine is not going to slow. China's goal was never to build big just for the Beijing Games in 2008. The goal was to build big for Beijing, then dominate the world.

"The intention of the Chinese is to win every medal, every single medal," said Jeff Ruffolo, an American who has worked for the Chinese government to help plan several sports competitions including the 2008 Olympics.

"Watch what happens in Rio," added Ruffolo, referring to the 2016 Games in Brazil. "Watch what happens in 2020. The Chinese want to prove to the world that their system is the best system."

[ Related: USA looks to be the favorite to finish at the top of the medal table ]

Somehow people seem surprised that the Chinese are fighting again to win the medal count in these Olympics. But ever since China allowed its teams to compete in the 1984 Summer Games after a 32-year absence, the Chinese have gone from winning 32 medals in Los Angeles to 100

Read More »from China's Olympic goal: Dominate the medal count

LONDON – The problem with saying you are a virgin and posing naked in magazines is that the world tends not to leave you alone. And so Lolo Jones is not going to disappear from these Olympics, even as she flickered out of the 100-meter hurdles with a fourth-place finish on Tuesday night.

A day later, her name still dangled over the Olympic Stadium because of a morning appearance on the "Today" show during which she cried. She said she was crying because of a column in the New York Times that criticized her for being a marketing creation built more on looks than athletic substance. She said this was unfair. She said the newspaper should be supporting her because it is published on American soil. Lolo Jones did not medal in the women's 100-meter hurdles and Dan O'Brien says that's not a shock.

The video of her crying made the Internet on Wednesday morning and by afternoon it had become one of those things that everybody was talking about. Was the column fair? Was she too sensitive? Didn't the two women who finished ahead of her criticize her too?

"Lolo is a friend of mine

Read More »from American track athletes: Leave Lolo Jones alone

LONDON – In the mayhem after disappointment there was shouting all around Aly Raisman. Nobody on the American team could believe her fourth-place balance beam score of 14.966. It wasn't accurate. The American coaches Bela and Marta Karolyi looked at Raisman's personal coach, Mihai Brestyan, and shouted.

You have to appeal!

Appeal?

In his more than 20 years of coaching gymnasts at an elite level Brestyan had never filed an appeal, known as an inquiry in the gymnastics world. He knew the process. All Olympic coaches do. Early on Tuesday, he went through the same pre-performance routine of neatly typing an appeal form in case it was needed since the rules say you have little time to file it after a score is posted. Then he put the form in a manila folder that he tucked deep in his brown, over-the-shoulder brief case.

[ Elite Athlete Workouts video: Aly Raisman relies on surprising drink for nutrition ]

Now suddenly he needed that paper.

Where was it?

Ultimately, he would

Read More »from Fresh Take: Raisman's day turns golden thanks to her quick-thinking coach and one lucky talisman

Gabrielle Douglas falls off the beam during the Artistic Gymnastics Women's Beam final. (Getty Images)LONDON – Maybe there was too much fame. After the frenzy from the American team gold and the all-around gold and the interviews and advertisements and everything that suddenly made Gabby Douglas very, very popular, there were more Olympics.

For this, she was not ready.

"She is a young girl and she was given the limelight, and it was too much too quick," American coach Marta Karolyi said after Douglas slipped during her only event, the balance beam, on Tuesday.

Douglas's tumble came early in her routine, and it clinched a seventh-place finish, the day after she finished eighth in the uneven bars. Her foot rolled off the top of the beam, and she nearly fell to the floor. She managed to catch herself, hanging strangely beneath the beam for a moment, before crawling back up and finishing the routine.

"I'm human, we make mistakes," Douglas said after the beam, which was her last event in the Olympics.

[ Video: Aly Raisman's surprising Olympic medal haul ]

Already her life has

Read More »from Gabby Douglas's Olympics end after seventh-place finish on balance beam

LONDON – Barely an hour after needing a protest to win a bronze in the balance beam, American gymnast Aly Raisman won her second medal of the day with a gold in the floor routine.

Raisman performed a near-flawless routine on the floor, perfectly landing several high-spinning moves. When she was done, the sold-out crowd at the North Greenwich Arena roared its approval. Coincidentally, the woman she knocked out of the bronze on the beam – Romania’s Catalina Ponor – finished second with a strong performance of her own that followed Raisman’s. When Ponor received only a 15.200, well below Raisman’s 15.600, the cheers that serenaded Raisman turned to disappointed boos.

[ Elite Athlete Workouts video: Raisman relies on surprising drink for nutrition ]

For the Olympics, Raisman took three medals, including the team gold last week.

Raisman’s American teammate, Jordyn Wieber, whose Olympics have been a roller coaster, finished seventh. Wieber, who was left out of the all-around

Read More »from Aly Raisman captures gold in the floor routine for her second medal of the day