An idea to get young people on board

Dude, those Lords of the Rings are off the hook! Skateboarding may well be added to the Olympic menu for 2012 as part of the International Olympic Committee's push to make the Games more attractive to the X Games crowd.

With snowboarding entrenched on the winter program and BMX cycling on the list for Beijing next summer, the tilt definitely is under-30.

"The IOC wants to make the program relevant for young people," said spokeswoman Emmanuelle Moreau.

The main hang-up is jurisdictional. Since the Lords don't recognize a skateboarding federation, the sport would have to be introduced as a discipline of an existing sport. Since wheels are involved, skateboarding would come under cycling, using the velodrome as the venue.

The London organizers also are skewing youthful, introducing a Cubist-like logo with four jagged pieces that form the number 2012 and comes in four colors: blue, green, orange, and pink. It's so jarring, though, that the committee took the animated version off its website after worries that it could cause epileptic seizures. It's the most controversial Olympic symbol since Atlanta presented Whatizit , its mutant insect mascot. The jigsaw, sniffs London's Design Museum founder Stephen Bayley , is "a puerile mess, an artistic flop, and a commercial scandal." The IOC loves it, though, and the organizers, who spent nearly $800,000 creating the logo, are undaunted. "It's vital that we reach out to those young people in a language that they understand and in technology that's familiar to them," says committee chief Sebastian Coe. "This brand is absolutely the world they live in." The IOC also is happy with London's progress, with coordination commission chief Denis Oswald calling it "on time and on track" and ahead of where other host cities have been five years out from the Games . . . Amanda Beard is unfazed by the stir she caused by posing without her swimsuit in the July issue of Playboy. "I'm kind of used to people not necessarily agreeing with everything that I do, and that's totally fine," says the Olympic breaststroke champion, who calls the magazine spread an "outside adventure" meant to enhance her non-swimming career. While the 25-year-old Beard isn't the first Olympic champion to pose for Playboy (skater Katarina Witt did), she's the first to appear topless on the cover. "I told my dad that I'd take like black tape and kind of mark out certain things," says Beard, "so he doesn't feel awkward looking at it." . . . Even though she lost her world record in the 1,500-meter freestyle to countrywoman Kate Ziegler, Janet Evans still owns the oldest global swimming mark in the book, the 8 minutes 16.22 seconds in the 800 free that she set in Tokyo in 1989. Ziegler's best in that event is 8:18.52.

No matter what happens at this weekend's US outdoor track and field championships in Indianapolis, 10 athletes will get free tickets to the world meet in Osaka. Jeremy Wariner (400 meters), Bershawn Jackson (400 hurdles), Adam Nelson (shot put), Dwight Phillips (long jump), Walter Davis (triple jump), Bryan Clay (decathlon), Lauryn Williams (100), Allyson Felix (200), Michelle Perry (100 hurdles), and Tianna Madison (long jump) all get wild-card berths for winning their events at the 2005 meet in Helsinki. That means the Americans get four entries in those events. If double sprint champion Justin Gatlin hadn't been banned for doping, the Americans would have had an even dozen. Not defending her national title in the 100 is Marion Jones, who hasn't competed since her February marriage and probably won't all summer. "I'm almost sure she isn't," said her coach, Steve Riddick . . . Chicago's proposed Olympic stadium -- the $366 million, 80,000-seat centerpiece venue for the 2016 bid -- will be dramatically downsized after the Games. The facility, which will be built 2 miles from Soldier Field on 100 acres in Washington Park, will be reduced to a 5,000-seat amphitheatre. That'll be a five-ringed novelty; usually the stadium is the centerpiece of all the "legacy" venues. As often as not, though, it becomes an expensive white elephant.

Ready for action again, diplomas in hand, are twins Paul and Morgan Hamm, who'll be looking to reclaim their spots on the US gymnastics team after taking time off to finish up at Ohio State. "We're ready for it," says Paul, the reigning Olympic all-around champion. "It's only a year left before the Olympics and we're ready to give it our all." Though the Hamms have been doing two-a-day workouts, it's questionable whether they'll be in elite form in time to make the team for this summer's World Championships in Stuttgart. The Americans, who finished a dispiriting 13th in last year's meet after winning silver in Athens, won't qualify for the team competition in Beijing if they can't move up a spot . . . International gymnastics federation chief Bruno Grandi , who wanted Hamm to share his gold medal with South Korea's Yang Tae Young amid the judging fiasco in Athens, acknowledges that Hamm deserved to be the sole gold medalist. "Paul Hamm is the Olympic champion without any ifs or buts," says Grandi, who is pushing for a rule change that would have independent judges in place before the London Games. "It is the last war I have against everybody," he says . . . Stunning upset at the US freestyle wrestling trials, where sixth-seeded Doug Schwab ran the table to make the world team at 66 kilograms. "It always fires you up to have people doubt you," said the 29-year-old Schwab, who had not finished higher than fifth at an Olympic or world trials. "I love proving people wrong." Schwab, who was only seventh at the April nationals, beat a group that included defending world champion Bill Zadick and former Olympic gold medalist Kendall Cross and came from behind to beat his final three rivals, including favorite Chris Bono with 15 seconds left . . . Ohio State coach Jackie Barto, who'll direct the US women's ice hockey team at next year's World Championships in China, will be the first female to hold the job since former UNH coach Karen Kay in 1994.

Next up for the US women's soccer team in its Send-off Series exhibition tour before the World Cup is a rematch of the Olympic final with the Brazilians Saturday at the Meadowlands. After that, the Americans (who are 34-0-7 under coach Greg Ryan) take on Norway July 14 at Rentschler Field in East Hartford, Conn. . . . Huge surprise at the recent US modern pentathlon championships, where 15-year-old Margaux Isaksen won the women's title and grabbed the automatic berth for this summer's world event in Berlin . . . US Rowing will have five boats in action at this weekend's second World Cup stop in Amsterdam: sculler Jonathan Burns, the men's double of Matt Hughes and Sam Stitt , the men's lightweight double of Andrew Liverman and Richard Montgomery, the women's lightweight double of Needham's Wendy Campanella and Jana Heere, and the men's quad with J. Sloan DuRoss of South Portland, Maine, aboard . . . Terrible mishaps three days apart paralyzed two promising Chinese athletes last week. After teenaged gymnast Wang Yan broke her neck in a fall from the uneven bars at the national championships, volleyball player Tang Miao broke his by slamming into a wall trying to play a ball . . . Nearly two dozen World Cup skiing events will be held in the States next season. Colorado's Beaver Creek will host the men's Alpine and Aspen the women's. Utah's Deer Valley will stage men's and women's freestyle and Lake Placid's Whiteface Mountain will be the site of both freestyle and snowboarding events . . . The US Olympic Committee will use San Jose, Calif., as its departure point for Beijing next summer. More than 600 athletes, coaches, and officials will spend two days there picking up team apparel, being measured for rings, posing for photos, and getting briefings. The last time the Games were on the far side of the international dateline (Sydney, 2000), the USOC used San Diego as a staging area.

Material from Olympic committees, sports federations, interviews, and wire services was used in this report.