Katie Hoff

BEIJING - The day the Olympics began, before the Opening Ceremony fireworks exploded, before the giant torch lit up the night sky and before Michael Phelps began blowing up world records right and left, 6,800 miles away, Emily Long sat down at her laptop and filed her dispatch. FRIDAY, AUGUST 08, 2008 Hey Every1!! I can't believe 8-8-08 is FINALLY here!! I'm SO EXCITED!! I can't wait to see the swimming plus the other sports!!... So probably I'm going to drive you all crazy with all this EXCITEMENT!

BEIJING - Katie Hoff looked exhausted when she pulled herself out of the pool yesterday inside the Water Cube. She was the last competitor in her 800-meter freestyle heat to climb onto the pool deck, and her expression was one of weary disappointment. Hoff's Olympics came to an end much sooner than expected, and she acknowledged later that she tried to do too much - five individual events and a relay in her second Olympic Games - and that she wouldn't try to do it again. The 19-year-old Towson swimmer failed to qualify for the finals of the 800-meter freestyle, a race in which she was considered a gold-medal contender.

The Sun's Olympic correspondents, Rick Maese and Kevin Van Valkenburg, are blogging back and forth to each other at baltimoresun.com/olympicsblog . An excerpt: Let's get this straight: Katie Hoff's times here are not bad. Let's get this straight, too: They aren't as good as many anticipated. I have a hard time blaming Hoff. Take Tuesday's first race, for example. She set the American record in the 200-meter free, swam the fastest she'd ever swam in the race, and finished fourth. Is that failure?

BEIJING - Katie Hoff won her third medal of the 2008 Olympics, swimming the anchor for the United States on the 800-meter freestyle relay and helping the Americans to a third-place finish today behind Australia and China. The Americans - who came into the event owning the world record - were in fourth place for much of the race after swims by Allison Schmitt and Natalie Coughlin, but Caroline Burckle and Hoff helped the U.S. rally past Italy to win bronze in a time of 7 minutes, 46.33 seconds.

The home of the North Baltimore Aquatic Club doesn't look like much. Cars overflow the parking lot and spill onto the grass in the summer. Chubby-legged children and haggard parents splash haphazardly around the outdoor pool, which could belong to any community center in any American suburb. Inside, fitness freaks pedal and pump on exercise machines overlooking more swimming lanes. The only signs of anything unusual are the Beijing 2008 flags that hang above the entry hall.

BEIJING - Maybe all this simply was too much for Katie Hoff. Talk of gold medals and a sack full of medals. Five individual events - none shorter than 200 meters - and a relay. Two finals, the 200-meter freestyle and 200 individual medley, within 58 minutes of each other this morning. No matter what she has done, it somehow hasn't been quite enough. Hoff swam slower than her personal best times in the first two events, the 400 IM and 400 freestyle, but won bronze and silver medals. Today, she broke her own U.S. record in the 200 free - and was fourth, as Italy's Federica Pellegrini won with a world-record time.

BEIJING - You can easily measure the distance between gold and silver. In heartbreaking fashion, for Katie Hoff today, it amounted to just .07 of a second. What's harder to measure is the distance Hoff traveled just to get here, to go from lying on a pool deck to becoming a regular visitor to the Olympic medal podium. So everyone can fully appreciate what she's doing in China, let's go through this one last time. Feel free to cut this out. Carry it in your pocket, if you must. Hang it on your refrigerator, even.

For now, Katie Hoff is content to be the other swimmer from Baltimore, the one not named Phelps, the one without the massive public relations machine and Olympic gold. What she's less satisfied with is the image from four years ago in Athens of a skinny little girl of 15, the youngest member of the U.S. team, who faltered under the suffocating pressure and hype of the Summer Games. Since 2004, Hoff has vacuumed up world records and titles and endorsement deals that have allowed her to drive a luxury car and buy her first home, but what Hoff really wants is to prove once and for all that she is the world's most versatile and dominant woman swimmer.

Now, the fun begins. Over the next few days, two young Maryland athletes - Michael Phelps and Katie Hoff - will be cheered by millions around the world as they surge through the pool of the Beijing National Aquatics Center in pursuit of an extraordinary achievement. Together, they aim to win more than a dozen Olympic gold medals, more gold than all but a handful of nations captured in the 2004 Olympics in Athens. We know it's not supposed to be about the medals. The thousands of athletes from more than 70 nations who have gathered in Beijing are competing for the love of their sport and the honor of representing their country.

BEIJING - If karma counts for anything, Katie Hoff deserves to win a gold medal at these Olympics. Because if that happens, she'll never again have to explain why she threw up after the 400-meter individual medley at the 2004 Olympics in Athens. It's a story that gets told and retold virtually every time the Towson native is written about, but most of the media never seem to tire of hearing it. Hoff, who used to loathe discussing the incident, has been a pretty good sport about recounting her worst moment as a swimmer, including yesterday during the first news conference for the U.S. swim team.