London

The Olympic torch came to Brixton on Thursday, and so did Amy Cohen. She lived in the South London district until recently, a job change and the continuing financial crisis sending her to live back home with her parents at age 34. Among the throngs who gathered to cheer the torch onward to its final destination, lighting the caldron to open the 2012 Games Friday night, Cohen was nothing if not characteristically British in her ambivalence when it...

It's hip these days for everyone from world leaders to the Occupy Wall Street crowd to attack free-market, limited-government capitalism as wild and in need of control because it's supposedly the cause of the world economic collapse. This is a myth. It's too much government-facilitated cronyism that's causing the mayhem wrongfully attributed to capitalism. This trend now continues in the context of the London Olympics and its private security outsourcing. Security firm G4S fell drastically short of its contractual commitments to staff the Games with 10,000 security personnel, requiring the military to step in with 3,500 troops to make up the shortfall.

For Baltimore area swimmers between the ages of 8 and 18, the last weekend of July is always an important time. It marks the end of the summer swim team season, as thousands of youngsters compete in divisional championships with trophies, ribbons and bragging rights around their respective neighborhood swim clubs at stake. This year, as the youngsters climb the blocks (or, in the case of backstroke, jump into the pool) you can bet there will be one swimmer above all in their minds: Baltimore's own Michael Phelps , the greatest swimmer and perhaps the greatest Olympic athlete of all time.

Basketball Carmelo Anthony Age: 28 From: Baltimore Schedule: Group A: vs. France, July 29; vs. Tunisia, July 31; vs. Nigeria, Aug. 2; vs. Lithuania, Aug. 4; vs. Argentina, Aug. 6 Olympic experience: This is Anthony's third Olympics appearance. He was a bench player on the U.S. team that won bronze in 2004, and played a key role on the gold-medal winning squad in 2008. What to expect: Anthony should earn significant minutes in London. He'll likely score in bunches, and could play a critical role in the U.S.'s pursuit of a second-straight Olympic gold medal.

As the Summer Olympics commence, Tom Carson and I raise a glass at the Swallow at The Hollow in Baltimore to Ray Ewry (pronounced Yew-ree), because attention must be paid: Tom's grandfather set a record in London in 1908 that the great Michael Phelps could reach in London in 2012, and such things have meaning across the ages. But before we go on, a clarification: Depending on how you count them, Ray Ewry won either eight or 10 individual gold medals as an amazing Olympic jumper — the Human Frog, they called him — early in the 20th century.

More than 10,500 athletes from 204 countries will be in London this Friday for the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Olympics. And according to a Marist College poll released Monday, Michael Phelps is the Games' runaway sensation. Fifty percent of Americans planning to watch the Olympics expect Phelps to be the biggest male star in London. That significantly trumps LeBron James, who finished second (17 percent), and Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, who came in third (8 percent).

If you knew what actually happened to Georgia Gould in 2008 as she regained consciousness on a stretcher in California, IV sticking into her arm, your first question might be a lot like Georgia's. What happened? She knew she'd blacked out on the mountain biking trail in Santa Barbara during the Santa Ynez Valley Classic professional race. She knew she'd come to at the finish line, transported there by medics. She'd been told she'd been in a bad crash. She just couldn't remember it. But if you knew what actually happened to Olympian Georgia Gould, you would know that she couldn't remember the crash because she didn't crash at all, that she'd stepped off her bike in midrace, delirious with heat stroke, and had passed out on a hill.

First, the spot she won on the Olympic team for the Beijing Games was taken away and given to a competitor. Then, after making this year's team, she learned her sport would be dropped from the Games after London. Somehow, Farrah Hall, the sole American woman in the upcoming Olympic RS:X windsurfing competition, always finds herself fighting her sport as much as her competition. And yet, if there's anything the 30-year-old Annapolis native knows how to do, it's navigating rough waters.

Et cetera Serena to miss Kastles match before London Serena Williams will not play her scheduled match with the Washington Kastles on Sunday and will be replaced by her sister, Venus Williams , when the team hosts the Kansas City Explorers. According to a news release, Williams withdrew from the match to further rest her back as she prepares for the Summer Olympics. Venus will fly to London after Sunday's match to join her sister as they go for a third gold medal in women's doubles.

Jeff Hiestand has spent the last 11 years beside the pool at McDaniel College, where he has coached five individual conference champions in eight events. In two weeks, he'll still be near a pool, but in a far different location. On Aug. 9, Hiestand will head to London for the Summer Olympic Games. He will watch proudly as former McDaniel swimmer Suzanne Stettinius represents the United States in the pentathlon. The one-day competition features five events: 200-meter freestyle swimming, fencing, pistol shooting, horse show jumping and a 3,000-meter cross country run. Hiestand coached Stettinius for three years on the McDaniel swimming and diving team.