Complete U.S. Olympic Team pending USOC approval

By Nick ZaccardiJan 26, 2014, 3:46 PM EST

The U.S. is slated to send the largest number of athletes to a Winter Olympics by any nation ever.

A total of 230 athletes have been nominated to the 2014 U.S. Olympic Team.

If they are all approved by the U.S. Olympic Committee, as expected, the U.S. will field the largest athlete delegation for the 13th straight Winter Games.

Host Russia will reportedly have 223 athletes. The last time another country had more athletes than the U.S. at the Winter Olympics was Germany in 1964, according to Olympic historian Bill Mallon.

The youngest athlete nominated to the U.S. Olympic Team was slopestyle skier Maggie Voisin, who was born on Dec. 14, 1998.

Voisin would be the youngest U.S. Winter Olympian since curler Erika Brown in 1988, if you count Brown’s participation in a demonstration sport, which curling was at the time.

If Brown is not counted, Voisin is the youngest since 1972, according to sports-reference.com.

Brown, now 41, was also nominated to the 2014 U.S. Olympic Team.

Brown reflects on 1988 Olympics

The five oldest athletes nominated were all curlers — Ann Swisshelm (45), Brown (41), Allison Pottinger (40), Debbie McCormick (40) and Brown’s younger brother, Craig Brown (38).

The oldest non-curler was Nordic combined skier Todd Lodwick, who is 37 and set for a record sixth Winter Olympics by an American as long as his shoulder holds up.

The median age of the 230 athletes is about 26.5 years.

Erika Brown was the only athlete nominated who competed at the 1988 Olympics, again if curling then counts.

Lodwick was the only athlete nominated who competed at the 1994 Olympics.

Erika Brown, McCormick, Lodwick, Nordic combined skier Bill Demong and Alpine skier Bode Miller were the only athletes nominated who competed at the 1998 Olympics.

Bobsledder Lauryn Williams was the only athlete nominated who competed at the 2004 Summer Olympics. Williams and fellow bobsledder Lolo Jones were the only athletes nominated who competed at the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics.

Here is the full list of athletes nominated to the U.S. Olympic Team:

Aerials
Mac Bohonnon — @macbohonnon
Ashley Caldwell — @ashleyskis
Emily Cook — @emilycook

Alpine Skiing
David Chodounsky
Erik Fisher — @skifastfish
Travis Ganong — @travisganong
Jared Goldberg — @jared_goldberg
Tim Jitloff — @t_jit
Nolan Kasper — @nolankasper
Ted Ligety — @tedligety
Bode Miller — @millerbode
Steven Nyman — @believeinsteven
Marco Sullivan — @marcosullivan
Andrew Weibrecht — @a_weibrecht
Stacey Cook — @staceycookusa
Julia Ford — @juliawford
Julia Mancuso — @juliamancuso
Megan McJames
Laurenne Ross — @lalalalaurenne
Mikaela Shiffrin — @mikaelashiffrin
Leanne Smith
Resi Stiegler — @resistiegler
Jacqueline Wiles — @skierchick53

Biathlon
Lowell Bailey — @lowellcbailey
Tim Burke — @tb_burke
Russell Currier — @russellcurrier
Sean Doherty
Leif Nordgren — @lcnordgren
Lanny Barnes
Annelies Cook
Hannah Dreissigacker
Susan Dunklee — @susandunklee
Sara Studebaker — @sarastudebaker

Bobsled
Cory Butner — @corybutner
Nick Cunningham — @bobsledr
Chris Fogt — @christopherfogt
Steven Holcomb — @stevenholcomb
Steve Langton — @stevenlangton
Justin Olsen — @justinbolsen
Johnny Quinn — @johnnyquinnusa
Dallas Robinson — @drobusa
Curt Tomasevicz — @ctomasevicz
Aja Evans — @ajalevans
Jazmine Fenlator — @jazminefenlator
Jamie Greubel — @jamiegreubel
Lolo Jones — @lolojones
Elana Meyers — @eamslider24
Lauryn Williams — @lauryncwilliams

Cross-Country Skiing
Erik Bjornsen — @erikbjornsen
Kris Freeman — @teamfreebirdxc
Brian Gregg — @xcskilifebg
Simi Hamilton — @simihamilton
Noah Hoffman
Torin Koos
Andy Newell — @andynewellskier
Sadie Bjornsen — @sadzarue
Holly Brooks — @brooksha1
Sophie Caldwell — @dophed
Jessie Diggins — @jessdiggs
Kikkan Randall — @kikkanimal
Ida Sargent — @idasargent
Liz Stephen — @lizstephen

Curling
Craig Brown
Jeff Isaacson
John Landsteiner — @jlandsteiner
John Shuster — @shoostie2010
Jared Zezel — @jaredzezel04
Erika Brown — @ebrowncurls
Debbie McCormick — @deb_mccormick
Allison Pottinger — @apottinger
Jessica Schultz — @jess_curls
Ann Swisshelm — @curlannie

Figure Skating
Polina Edmunds — @polinaedmunds
Gracie Gold — @graceegold
Ashley Wagner — @ashwagner2010
Jeremy Abbott — @jeremyabbottpcf
Jason Brown — @jasonbskates
Madison Chock — @chockolate02
Evan Bates — @evan_bates
Meryl Davis — @meryl_davis
Charlie White — @charlieawhite
Maia Shibutani — @maiashibutani
Alex Shibutani — @alexshibutani
Marissa Castelli — @marissacastelli
Simon Shnapir — @simonshnapir
Felicia Zhang — @felicia_zhang
Nathan Bartholomay — @natebartholomay

Hockey
David Backes — @dbackes42
Dustin Brown — @dustinbrown23
Ryan Callahan — @ryancallahan24
John Carlson — @johncarlson74
Justin Faulk — @justinfaulk27
Cam Fowler — @c_fowler4
Jimmy Howard
Patrick Kane — @88pkane
Ryan Kesler — @ryan_kesler
Phil Kessel — @pkessel81
Paul Martin
Ryan McDonagh — @rmcdonagh27
Ryan Miller — @ryanmiller3039
Brooks Orpik
T.J. Oshie — @osh74
Max Pacioretty
Zach Parise
Joe Pavelski
Jonathan Quick — @jonathanquick32
Kevin Shattenkirk — @shattdeuces
Paul Stastny — @paulywalnuts26
Derek Stepan — @derekstepan21
Ryan Suter — @rsuter20
James van Riemsdyk — @jvreemer21
Blake Wheeler — @biggiefunke
Kacey Bellamy — @kbells22
Megan Bozek — @meganebozek
Alex Carpenter — @carpy05
Julie Chu — @juliechu13
Kendall Coyne — @kendallcoyne
Brianna Decker — @bdecker1814
Meghan Duggan — @mduggan10
Lyndsey Fry — @fry_x_cycle
Amanda Kessel — @amandakessel8
Hilary Knight — @hilary_knight
Jocelyne Lamoureux — @jocelyneusa17
Monique Lamoureux — @moniquelam7
Gigi Marvin — @gigimarvin
Brianne McLaughlin — @briannemcl
Michelle Picard — @shellfish20
Josephine Pucci — @josephinepucci
Molly Schaus — @schaus729
Anne Schleper — @_aschlep
Kelli Stack — @kstack16
Lee Stecklein — @leesteck2
Jessie Vetter — @vetter31

Luge
Aidan Kelly — @aidankellyusa
Chris Mazdzer — @mazdzer
Tucker West — @tuckerwest1
Summer Britcher — @summerbritcher
Erin Hamlin — @erinhamlin
Kate Hansen — @k8ertotz
Preston Griffall — @prestongriffall
Matt Mortensen — @mattmortensen_
Christian Niccum
Jayson Terdiman — @jterdimanusa

Moguls
Patrick Deneen — @patrick_deneen
Brad Wilson — @wilsfreestyle
Hannah Kearney — @hk_ski
Heidi Kloser — @heidikloser
Heather McPhie — @heathermcphie
Eliza Outtrim

Nordic Combined
Bill Demong — @billydemong
Bryan Fletcher — @skifletch
Taylor Fletcher — @tfletchernordic
Todd Lodwick

Short Track Speed Skating
Eddy Alvarez — @eddyalvarez90
Kyle Carr — @ckylecarr
J.R. Celski — @jrcelski
Chris Creveling — @tophcrev
Jordan Malone — @j2k111
Alyson Dudek — @alydudek
Emily Scott — @emscott89
Jessica Smith — @thejessicasmith

Skeleton
Matt Antoine — @mattantoine
John Daly — @johndalyusa
Kyle Tress — @kyletress
Noelle Pikus-Pace — @noellepikuspace
Katie Uhlaender — @katieu11

Ski Cross
John Teller — @john_teller

Ski Halfpipe
Aaron Blunck — @aaron_blunck
Lyman Currier — @urmotherlovesme
Torin Yater-Wallace — @torinwallace
David Wise — @mrdavidwise
Maddie Bowman — @maddiebowman
Annalisa Drew — @anna_drew_
Brita Sigourney — @britasig
Angeli VanLaanen — @angeli_v

Ski Jumping
Nick Alexander — @skiflyzander
Nick Fairall — @nick_fairall
Peter Frenette — @pfskijumping
Anders Johnson — @flyingaj
Sarah Hendrickson — @schendrickson
Jessica Jerome — @jessicajerome
Lindsey Van — @lindseyvan

Ski Slopestyle
Bobby Brown — @bobby_brown1
Joss Christensen — @josschristensen
Nick Goepper — @nickgoepper
Gus Kenworthy — @guskenworthy
Keri Herman — @keriherman
Julia Krass — @juliakrass15
Devin Logan — @dlogan
Maggie Voisin — @skimagg123

Snowboard Alpine
Justin Reiter — @justin_reiter

Snowboard Cross
Nick Baumgartner — @nickbaumgartner
Alex Deibold — @adeibold
Nate Holland — @n8holland
Trevor Jacob — @trevorjacob93
Faye Gulini — @fayegulini
Jackie Hernandez — @jackiepatty_
Lindsey Jacobellis — @lindsjacobellis

Snowboard Halfpipe
Greg Bretz — @gregbretzz
Danny Davis — @theddeadshow
Taylor Gold — @taylor_gold
Shaun White — @shaun_white
Kelly Clark — @kellyclarkfdn
Kaitlyn Farrington — @kaitlynfarr
Arielle Gold — @arielletgold
Hannah Teter — @hannahteter

Snowboard Slopestyle
Chas Guldemond — @chasguldemond
Sage Kotsenburg — @sagekotsenburg
Ryan Stassel
Shaun White — @shaun_white
Jamie Anderson — @jme_anderson
Jessika Jenson
Karly Shorr — @karlyshorr
Ty Walker — @ty_walker_

Speed Skating
Shani Davis — @shanidavis
Tucker Fredricks — @tuckerfredricks
Jonathan Garcia — @jagarcia23
Brian Hansen — @brianthansen
Jonathan Kuck — @jdkuck
Emery Lehman — @mry_the_eman
Joey Mantia — @jrmantia
Patrick Meek — @patjmeek
Mitch Whitmore — @whitmoreusa
Brittany Bowe — @brittanybowe
Lauren Cholewinski — @lmcholewinski
Kelly Gunther — @kellyagunther
Maria Lamb — @mariatlamb
Heather Richardson — @hlynnrichardson
Anna Ringsred — @annaringsred
Jilleanne Rookard — @jmrookard
Sugar Todd — @sugarmotion

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World figure skating championships the latest chapter of Deanna Stellato-Dudek’s comeback

By Philip HershMar 20, 2023, 3:44 PM EDT

There are so many improbabilities in the story of how Canadian pair team Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps got to this week’s world figure skating championships that the whole thing reads like a flight of fancy.

You start with a talented junior singles skater from suburban Chicago named Deanna Stellato, whose skates had sat in a closet at her mother’s home for 16 years after injuries pushed her from the sport.

You bring her back to the skating world in 2016 as a married woman of 33 with a different name, Deanna Stellato-Dudek, and in a different event, pairs, making the switch on the recommendation of U.S. Figure Skating high performance director Mitch Moyer.

You have Moyer able to make that suggestion because he coincidentally was visiting a Florida rink the day Stellato-Dudek went there to sound out her old singles coach, Cindy Caprel, about the idea of a comeback.

You end her 12-year career as an aesthetician in a plastic surgery practice and have her go back to the ice, keeping her apart for long stretches from her husband of nine years, Michael Dudek, a Chicago-based turnover management specialist.

You have her begin a pairs’ career in summer 2016 as the partner of a 2014 Olympian, Nathan Bartholomay, with whom she would win bronze medals at the 2018 and 2019 U.S. Championships before the partnership ended when a bum knee made Bartholomay’s competitive future uncertain.

“I was still gung-ho on continuing until 2022,” Stellato-Dudek said.

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You hear her talk of having messaged everyone she ever had met in skating to see if they knew of a possible new partner and have one reply, from 2018 Olympic pairs’ bronze medalist Meagan Duhamel and her husband, Bruno Marcotte, a pairs’ coach, tell Stellato-Dudek they had the perfect guy for her.

You have it be a guy she had never heard of, Maxime Deschamps, a French-Canadian from suburban Montreal who had skated with eight previous partners, finished no higher than fifth at the senior level at the Canadian Championships with any of them and thought of ending his competitive career many times.

“Yes, it’s kind of an unusual pairing,” said their coach, Josée Picard.

You have their tryout in June 2019 be the skating version of love at first sight, leading Stellato-Dudek to cancel scheduled sessions with other potential partners.

You have their getting-to-know-you workouts in Montreal stopped cold by the Covid pandemic, forcing them to train outside whenever there was ice for much of a year.

“We made the best of what we could do,” Deschamps said. “It was a really hard time. We questioned ourselves a lot. The goals we were setting up as markers keep us going and able to pass through those hard times.”

You have them begin this season after the first extensive offseason training of their partnership and watch them win a silver medal at Skate America that makes Stellato-Dudek, 39, the oldest medalist in the 25-season history of the Grand Prix Series.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Maxime Deschamps (@maximedeschamps)

You have them win their second Grand Prix event before Stellato-Dudek comes down with a respiratory virus (RSV, not Covid) that has her coughing, feverish and listless and eventually paralyzes her left vocal cord, inhibiting her swallowing, breathing and speech to the point she needs ongoing work with a speech pathologist to relearn how to talk.

“It was a big setback,” Picard said of the lingering sickness. “It was three months, and we had to adjust a lot of things and diminish the amount of training and do everything very, very carefully.”

You have doctors tell her there is no risk in continuing to train and compete (other than the risks that come with pairs’ skating, in which the woman is flung across the rink and carried some seven feet above a hard and slippery surface), but it isn’t easy training while constantly out of breath and having difficulty swallowing water. That Stellato-Dudek would keep at it impressed her coach.

“Just to come back at 30-some years old and do a totally different discipline in the first place shows that somebody has a lot of ambitions and a lot of goals and a lot of guts,” Picard said. “This just amplifies it, you know, to show that she’s not giving up, and she has all the willpower, and she wants to succeed.”

You have her fight through the Canadian national championships out of her desire to give Deschamps, 31, a shot at his first national title – and have them win.

“I really had a strong will,” Stellato-Dudek said. “I thought to myself, ‘If this was the Olympic Games, I would be skating.’

“Max really stepped up in our partnership during that time. Often, it’s not both partners who are able to give 100 percent. For those three months, I was able to give 80 percent, and Max was making up for that 20 percent and still giving his 100 percent, so he was giving 120.”

You have her healthy as they go to the world championships beginning Wednesday in Saitama, Japan, with a decent chance for Stellato-Dudek, now 39, to win her second world medal, the other a silver from the world junior championships 23 years ago.

And, finally, you have them looking toward the 2026 Olympics where she could, at the age of 42 years and 229 days, be the oldest woman to compete in Olympic figure skating since 1928 and the third oldest in history, according to Olympedia.org. (That’s assuming Stellato-Dudek gets Canadian citizenship in time for a chance at the team; it is required for her to represent Canada at the Olympics, but not at other international competitions after U.S. Figure Skating granted her a release.)

“I think I’ve lasted a lot longer than anybody thought I could — even now,” Stellato-Dudek said.

How prophetic it seems that her mother, Ann, told me in an interview for a 2000 Chicago Tribune story, “Deanna is a worker, not a child prodigy.”

Among all the unlikely parts of this tale, Stellato-Dudek’s age has attracted the most attention. The subject has become amusing to her, so much so that when Canadian figure skating press officer Karine Bedard tells Stellato-Dudek about an interview request, she will answer lightheartedly, “What do they want to interview me about? Skating while old?”

The truth is Stellato-Dudek has come to embrace such questions after a family member told her, “I think what you are doing is bigger than you.”

Stellato-Dudek began to gain that perspective in reading the hundreds of messages she said she has received from people who say they have been encouraged by her comeback to return to something they also loved.

“They will say, ‘I’ve always wanted to go back, but I’ve been too busy or too afraid to kind of step foot back in the rink, but I know that you started from somewhere so I can start from somewhere, too,’” Stellato-Dudek said. “And I thought maybe what I’m doing has a bigger meaning than even just what I’m doing for myself. It takes myself out of it a little bit and brings it back to something even bigger than just my personal goals.”

A similar desire to keep doing something he loved – and the dream of getting to the Olympics – is what led Deschamps to continue skating when progress was elusive and push came to shove, forcing him to interrupt his studies for a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology after two years because he couldn’t afford both the sport and school.

When asked to give more than 100 percent this season, which is impossible physically, he found the extra contribution by remaining upbeat as his partner struggled to train.

“It was mostly the mental part, (giving extra) to keep it positive because it was way harder (without) the physical capacity for the things,” Deschamps said. “And that’s how we were able to keep going.”

The interruptions caused by the pandemic mean that their four years together have included just two full competitive seasons. That has dramatically reduced the time each has had to learn the nuances of a new partner – and for Stellato-Dudek to master different techniques she has learned in Canada, like her hand placement on throws, in which she used to place both hands on her right shoulder but now has her left arm wrapped around the front of her body and the right arm around the back.

“There was a lot I had to do control-alt-delete and restart for,” she said.

“(Our skating) has just been evolving and evolving,” Deschamps said. “And we’re just trying to push our limits every single time, trying new elements, trying to even improve the sport by doing new stuff.”

One such element is the forward outside death spiral, hardest of the four types of death spirals (with the highest base value.) According to skatingscores.com, only 11 pair teams have done it internationally over the 19 seasons of the current judging system, including two Olympic champions: Chinese pairs Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo and Sui Wenjing and Han Cong. Only one other team, Alisa Efimova and Ruben Blommaert of Germany, has done it internationally this season.

In the absence of the long-dominant Russian pairs, barred from international competition since their country’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine 13 months ago, Stellato-Dudek and Deschamps have the fourth-best score this season of the 23 teams in the world championships field.

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A post shared by Deanna😁Stellato (@deannamsd622)

From last season to now, their personal bests in the short program, free skate and total have improved by 28 percent, 12 percent, and 16 percent, respectively. They have won medals at four of their five international events this season, finishing fourth at the Grand Prix Final, when Stellato-Dudek began to feel the effects of the virus.

“We always believed that (the success) was a possibility, but this season has surprised both of us,” she said. “When it began, we were getting a lot of positive feedback from everyone who had seen us, but you know, you don’t really believe that until you go to an event, and you get a new high score you’ve never received before.”

The high international scores and medals would send them to the Canadian Championships in the unexpected and potentially discomfiting position of being heavy favorites. They overcame the psychological and physical burdens to win the national title, a crowning achievement for many elite skaters.

“That was a brand-new place for us to be,” Stellato-Dudek said. “We’ve never been chased. We’ve always been chasing.

“We’re gaining a lot of very valuable experience. Because it’s a very new place to be mentally.”

It’s the place she always wanted to be. And there, truth be told, you have the plot of a neverending story that is no longer a fantasy.

Philip Hersh, who has covered figure skating at the last 12 Winter Olympics, is a special contributor to NBCSports.com.

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Kanak Jha, U.S.’ top table tennis player, banned for missed drug tests

By OlympicTalkMar 20, 2023, 2:50 PM EDT

Getty

Kanak Jha, the U.S.’ highest-ranked singles table tennis player, was given a backdated one-year ban for missing drug tests.

Jha, No. 23 in the world, was banned for missing three drug tests last year: March 18, June 2 and Sept. 4.

Athletes in Olympic sports face bans if they miss three drug tests in a 12-month span.

Jha, a two-time Olympian who has never tested positive for a banned substance, was given a reduced ban of one year, backdated to last Dec. 1, the date his provisional suspension was imposed.

First-time bans for missed drug tests can be as long as two years, but Jha was deemed by an arbitrator to have a light amount of fault and wasn’t trying to evade testing.

Jha disputed his third missed test, hoping it would be thrown out to avoid a ban.

During his one-hour testing window on Sept. 4, he was not present at the German address he listed on his doping-control forms, though he was at a nearby address.

The drug tester attempted to call Jha before his one-hour testing window was up, but the call did not go through as the tester did not dial the “+1” country code for a U.S. phone. Jha did not include the country code on his contact information and testified that the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency never informed that he had to list a country code.

However, drug testers are not required to call athletes who do not answer their doors for random, out-of-competition tests.

Jha, who in 2016 became the first American born in the 2000s to qualify for an Olympics, lost his opening match in singles at the Rio and Tokyo Games.

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