Chun, who skaters said routinely insulted and humiliated them, insisted that he had done nothing of the sort but the federation last weekend placed him on administrative leave pending the outcome of its investigation.

The skaters, who include multiple medalists from the 2010 Games but not stars Katherine Reutter, Lana Gehring, and Simon Cho, said that they won’t try out for the World Cup team next week unless Chun, interim coach Jun Hyung Yeo, and Jimmy Jang are removed.

Chun, who was given a four-year contract extension after directing the squad to six medals in Vancouver, clearly has the technical savvy to produce a contending team in a sport that has come to be dominated by Asians. But he apparently doesn’t realize that the hands-on, in-your-face approach that is considered routine in China and Korea isn’t acceptable in the States.

Names gameAfter five years, two Olympic gold medals, a World Cup silver, and a 90-6-10 record, US women’s soccer coach Pia Sundhage will have her swansong in Wednesday’s friendly match against Australia in Commerce City, Colo. The former Breakers coach is returning to her homeland, where she’ll prepare the host Swedish squad for next year’s European championships. Word is that US Soccer may go domestic for Sundhage’s replacement. Among the names mentioned are assistant Erica Walsh, who coaches Penn State, and development director Jill Ellis as well as former head coaches April Heinrichs, now technical director, and Tony DiCicco, who produced the last Cup triumph in 1999 . . . McKayla Maroney’s broken leg is a cautionary tale about what can happen when you take Olympic gymnasts on an exhibition tour with decidedly less daily practice time than they had had in the months before the Games. Maroney, who competed only on vault in London, fractured her left tibia dismounting from the uneven bars at the second stop on the 40-city circuit and had two screws inserted during surgery. Aly Raisman also tumbled on bars, bruising both knees in her weakest event. If that trend continues, they’ll be using the juniors by the time the tour reaches Boston in November . . . With more doping revelations from cyclists expected to follow in the wake of Lance Armstrong’s recent lifetime ban, the international federation this week will consider offering amnesty to drug users. While there’s no provision for that in the global anti-doping code, WADA isn’t opposed to the concept. “You’re entering into uncharted territory,” observed director general David Howman, “but we wouldn’t have found the world if we didn’t bother going into uncharted territory.” And while Tyler Hamilton has come under fire for his detailed exposure of the doping culture at the sport’s elite level in his new book “The Secret Race”, Howman called it “compulsory reading.” “It’s very detailed,” he said, “something we will study closely in terms of how a sophisticated cheater is continuing to avoid detection.”

Counterpunch