AP110723152507CHICAGO -- Shawn Johnson had not competed since winning a gold medal on balance beam in Beijing, and her rust showed at the CoverGirl Classic on Saturday night. Competing in two events, Johnson was shaky, but happy to work through her nerves.

Johnson worked a strong uneven parallel bars routine until the dismount, a full twisting double layout. Johnson landed awkwardly with a stiff leg, forcing her to bend over and touch the floor. On the balance beam on the next rotation, Johnson fell off the beam during her opening aerial sequence.

"It's my first time back out in over three years, and I expected this. It's just to get the shakes out. I was coming here to test the waters, and get the nerves out," Johnson said.

She injured her knee skiing last year, which pushed her into making the decision to make another run at the Olympics. For the past year, Johnson has worked on rehabbing her knee and getting back into shape to compete in all four events again, like she did when she won silver in

swimming twitter

Don't expect many posts on @michaelphelps in the next few weeks.

The Associated Press notes that swimmers in China for next's week swimming and diving world championships will be without Twitter and Facebook, both of which are banned by the Chinese government. Competitors can get around the firewall by creating their own private network or relaying messages to someone outside the country, but that sounds like a lot of trouble go through for something so trivial.

Because, on a one level, what's the big deal? So some swimmers can't check Facebook or send 140-character messages to a few thousand followers. They'll kill time in China doing something else, like watching DVDs or sending texts or reading a book. Fans won't suffer either, unless reading Ryan Lochte responding to Tweets with an affirmative" jeah!" or Michael Phelps' frustrated travel updates is a crucial part of their sporting experience.

Except that this is a big deal. Free speech and sedition are banned for 1.3 billion

Usain Bolt won the 200 meters at a Friday meet in Paris while wearing a shirt emblazoned with his own picture:

bolt shirt

This is something Muhammad Ali would have done, which is fitting since Bolt's attention-grabbing antics can be traced back to The Greatest. Like with Ali, Bolt postures and preens and it's as much for the opponents as it is the camera. It's not enough for Bolt to let the stopwatch do the talking. He wants opponents to know that he knows he's the best and that he knows that you know he's the best. Everything he does is designed to intimidate, to get in the heads of the other seven guys on the block before the gun goes off.

There was a 10-minute delay before Friday's race. While the other competitors paced around nervously, Bolt was the picture of calm. When they finally began, Bolt made up the stagger in the first 40 meters, dominated for the next 100 and then slowed to a jog down the stretch. The only victory pose was on his shirt.

Your move, Novak Djokovic's father.

Other

epo syringeThe IOC announced Friday that athletes at the 2012 Olympics will be banned from possessing needles and syringes. The announcement is part of the IOC's ongoing efforts to rid the event of performance-enhancing drugs.

Athletes and doctors will need medical clearance to bring needles in living areas, locker rooms, practice sites and competition venues.

Some thoughts:

1. Have athletes been openly flaunting their needle possession? Because that's the only way this rule would have any impact. Of all the things that cheating athletes have to do to cover-up steroid use, hiding the needle is probably the easiest thing. This is like DUI enforcement teams banning empty beer bottles from cars.

2. "We won't accept medical equipment like syringes and needles in the field of play." -- IOC medical commission chairman Arne Ljungqvist

Finally! There have been far too many instances in past Olympics of sprinters shooting themselves up with deca durabolin during races. Remember when those East Germans

ali lights 96 olympicsThe Associated Press reports that the USOC could be making a last-minute bid to host the 2020 Olympics. A revenue-sharing dispute is being worked out and may lead to the United States submitting the names of applicant cities to the IOC before the Sept. 1 deadline. Fourth-Place Medal looks at the pros and cons of the United States entering the bidding and whether or not a potential bid could land the 2020 Games.

When you fall off a bike, you get right back on it. To be fair, Chicago losing the 2016 Olympics to Rio de Janeiro was more like getting pushed off a bike, but that's no reason to stay mad at the IOC forever. The governing body of the Olympics is always going to be greedy, ego-driven and self-serving. Petulantly holding out on a 2020 bid isn't going to change that.

Chicago's biggest problems were overconfidence (from both organizers and the media that pre-anointed the Midwestern town as a shoo-in) and Rio's status as a "project" for the IOC. The Olympic suits don't like being

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With a jubilant presentation headlined by figure skating champ Yu-Na Kim and Korean-American bronze medalist Toby Dawson as well as a strong and compact plan for the Games, Pyeongchang captured the bid for the 2018 Olympics. It was their third bid, and their experience helped them win.

Well, that's one way to look at it. If you're from Munich, the city that lost to Pyeongchang, you may see it slightly differently.

"We know that in sport winning is not everything and that defeat does not spell the end," said IOC Vice President Thomas Bach, a German who was one of Munich's bid leaders. "But obviously we are very disappointed. It seems that the sympathy effect for the Korean proposal played its role."

Yikes! The sympathy effect, Munich? That's not nice. Pyeongchang worked hard to overcome their last two losses. Their presentation was moving and focused on what the legacy of sport can do for a country. Two-time Olympic gold medalist Katarina Witt would understand that, right?

"At the

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Yu-Na Kim, the Olympic figure skating champion in 2010, scored another victory for her country. She helped lead the Pyeongchang delegation to a successful bid to host the 2018 Winter Olympics. But will she be around to compete when the Games do make it to South Korea?

At just 20 years old, she has plenty of good skating ahead of her. Both her dazzling performances at the Olympics and before the International Olympic Committee showed that she can perform under pressure.

If she chooses to continue competing, time and injury will be Kim's biggest enemies. After sitting out most of the competitive 2010-11 season with a hip injury, she took silver at the World Championships. To stay at elite world levels, she has to stay competitive through Sochi and Pyeongchang.

She could also choose to follow the path set for her by Katarina Witt, who stumped for her home country of Germany in a losing bid for the 2018 Games. Witt won gold in the 1984 and 1988 Olympics, then retired after her second gold

peyongchang winter18

The Winter Olympics are going back to the Far East.

After two heartbreaking near-misses, Pyeongchang was named the host city of the 2018 Winter Games, winning in the first round of voting at the IOC bid meeting in South Africa. The South Korean city defeated Annecy, France, and Munich, Germany, in the vote.

Twice before, the South Korean city had come up short in bids to win the Olympics. Pyeongchang won the first two rounds of voting in 2010 and 2014 before being narrowly defeated on a second ballot by Vancouver and Sochi, respectively. It entered Wednesday's vote as the favorite, a position which hardly guaranteed a victory given the IOC's penchant for surprises.

Those past votes, plus the fact that a win for France or Germany would have meant putting the Winter Games back in Europe for the fifth time in eight Olympics, gave Pyeongchang the status as a clear frontrunner. The power of the bid was confirmed when the city won on the initial vote, the first time that's happened since