Lake Placid

When Kevin Neville was healthy last winter, there wasn't a 152-pound high school wrestler in the state who could stay on the mat with him.Even with a partially separated shoulder last summer, the Mount St. Joseph grappler was among the nation's best 15-year-olds, finishing ninth in the United States Wrestling Federation's Cadet Nationals last July.Beginning tomorrow, Neville, 16, will participate in a weeklong, intensive session of Greco-Roman and freestyle wrestling at the invitation of Bruce Bennett, head of the U.S. Wrestling Federation.

LANDOVER -- If it wasn't for the plaque he was holding, Trevor Christie, dressed in his brown uniform, would have easily blended into the background, the way he likes it, surrounded by other United Parcel Service drivers. He looked uncomfortable accepting the applause, handshakes and congratulations, but he is learning to adjust to the spotlight.Early yesterday morning at a UPS facility, Christie, 33, an Olympic hopeful for the U.S. bobsled team, accepted an award as the first employee to be sponsored in a winter sport by UPS' Athlete Training Assistance Program.

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. -- Russian ice skaters Maia Usova and Alexander Zhulin have become Americanized. They have credit cards. They eat pizza and french fries. They repeat phrases like "sounds good" and "cool."Zhulin even hired someone to drive his new BMW from San Diego to Lake Placid."Isn't that the American way?" he said. "Freedom of choice. Free country. Good opportunity. All is cool. If I had that car in Russia, thieves would have stolen it in five minutes. Crime is very, very bad there."

From his perch in a helicopter, New York state forest ranger Fred LaRow scanned the side of Algonquin Mountain with a sense of urgency -- below, lost in the wilderness, were a father and son from Maryland with little time to live in the subzero temperatures."

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. -- Emily Cook's aerial skiing career came full circle Saturday as she stood atop a hill and looked down to the place where her Olympic aspirations crashed in a heap four years ago. The wind gusted and the snow swirled, just as they did four years ago before Cook's horrific accident that left doubts about whether she'd ever walk normally again. But the aerial skier with the pigtails and winning smile pushed off, rocketed into the air and completed a series of twists and somersaults before landing on her own two feet.

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. - On the side of a snow-covered Adirondack mountain, in subzero temperatures, a young Iraqi is making his own statement of national pride. Far from home, with his country's future tied to this weekend's election, Faisal Ghazi Faisal tightens his helmet, pushes a tiny skeleton sled down the icy track and jumps on. During the 60-second, headfirst blast to the finish line, Faisal can shut out thoughts of war-torn Baghdad neighborhoods, worries about his parents' safety and his best friend who was killed in the conflict.

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. --Famous Ice Age mammals: woolly mammoth, mastodon, saber-toothed tiger, Anne Abernathy. While the other three are extinct, Abernathy is on her way to a sixth consecutive Winter Olympics. At 52, she'll break the record she set in 2002 as the oldest female competitor at the cold-weather Games. "Grandma Luge" - a nickname she picked up when she was a mere 40 - will put on the colors of her native U.S. Virgin Islands one more time because she has a message to send to everyone of her generation.

I HAVE WRITTEN before about our friends, Joe and Susan, and their children, Paul and Joanna, and the happy tangle of friendship, car pools, child care and sports that knots our two families together.Each member of my family has found a soul mate in this family, and we spend so much time in each other's company that we have talked wistfully about how much more efficient it would be if we lived in the same big house.The drawback would be that Susan and I share the same name, as do my son and her husband, and the comic confusion that already results would only be worse if we were all under the same roof.

With slightly more than two months remaining before the start of the Winter Olympics, athletes are deep into the competitions that will determine who will go to Salt Lake City. Also on the way to Utah is the Olympic torch, which was lighted Monday in Olympia, Greece, the site of the first Games, and will reach the United States on Dec. 4. The flame will be carried through 46 states - with a stop in Baltimore on Dec. 22 - by 11,500 volunteers, each of whom will carry the torch two-tenths of a mile.

Figure skating Meissner gets qualifying bye for next year's nationals Former world and national champion Kimmie Meissner will not have to qualify for the 2010 U.S. championships. The nationals, scheduled for Jan. 14-24 in Spokane, Wash., will determine which two women will go to the Winter Olympics. Despite being assigned to two international Grand Prix events this season, the skater from Bel Air was going to have to qualify at the South Atlantic regionals in early October in Rockville because she withdrew from the nationals earlier this year because of injury.