Olympians

D'Andre Stewart, who copes with spina bifida, acts shy around strangers, smiling and ducking his head while speaking almost inaudibly to a new acquaintance.But ask him how much he can powerlift.The 17-year-old from Claremont Special School, paralyzed from the waist down, displays a quiet confidence as he speaks about winning Special Olympic powerlifting competitions, estimating he can raise 80 pounds.(Not to mention his silver medals for bowling.)Stewart's winning tradition continued in yesterday's Baltimore City Special Olympics, where he took a gold medal in a wheelchair race, defeating a competitor in an electric scooter.

BaseballAngels: Agreed to terms with OF Gary Thurman to minor-league contract.Devil Rays: Named Bill Evers manager of Triple-A Durham.Giants: Agreed to $600,000, one-year contract with club option for 1999 with SS Rey Sanchez, who had been with Yankees. Invited P Jason Brester, P Dean Hartgraves, P Chris Brock, P Jeff Darwin, P Rick Huisman, P Steve Soderstom, P Erik Plantenberg, C Guiseppe Chiaramonte, C Henry Mercedes, C Yorvit Torrealba, IF Jeff Ball, IF Matt Howard and OF Alex Diaz to major-league camp.

It began modestly enough, with 10 swimmers practicing under Tim Pierce and Murray Stephens in 1967 at the Towson YMCA.Today, the North Baltimore Aquatic Club has 130 swimmers working at Loyola High School, the renovated Meadowbrook Aquatic and Fitness Center and any other pools nearby where lane space is available.Under Stephens, NBAC's coach and the owner and operator of Meadowbrook, the club has produced five Olympians -- Theresa Andrews, Pat Kennedy, Anita Nall, Beth Botsford and Whitney Metzler -- and some near Olympians and other top-level national swimmers.

THOSE OF US with dust on our stationary bicycles and Arch Deluxes on our training table can only gape at the images flickering from our TV sets.Those female divers and gymnasts with the upper bodies of men? Those sprinters who fly like gazelles despite carrying the musculature of linebackers? How does one reconcile the shoulders of a Mary Ellen Clark, the lat muscles of a Michael Johnson, the biceps of the male gymnasts, the pre-pubescent voices of female gymnasts in their late teens?One popular running-shoe commercial has athletes proclaiming, "This is my planet."

The Olympics begin in Lillehammer, Norway, on Saturday, with CBS coverage of opening ceremonies beginning at 8 p.m. on Channel 11.Here are highlights of The Sun's coverage planned for the week leading up to the XVII Games:* Tomorrow: War-torn Sarajevo, 10 years after it played host to the Winter Olympics.* Tuesday: Donna Weinbrecht and Trace Worthington, two of America's hottest "hot dog" skiers.* Wednesday: Duncan Kennedy, the U.S. luger who stood up to skinheads in Germany.* Thursday: Speed skater Dan Jansen, still chasing his first gold medal.

Crystal Bridge, a 7-year-old horse from Severn, suspect something big is up. Owner Marie Daniels is sure of it.Marie, 16, has scrubbed and brushed her thoroughbred, fitted him with new shoes, washed his tail and clipped his whiskers. Today she'll braid his mane.Tomorrow, Crystal Bridge goes to Washington, to strut his stuff at the 1993 inaugural parade."He was excited when they put on his shoes," said Marie, an Archbishop Spalding High School junior. "He was jigging around. He wouldn't walk quietly.

The Secret Service detail at the White House operated without the services of Jim Klock for about a month this summer."I finally had to have to surgery on my shoulder," said Klock, a Columbia resident. "Whenever I threw a [bowling] ball, the pain was intense."It wasn't bowling that did the damage to my shoulder. "It was throwing a baseball that started the problem. It compounded a problem with the alignment of the arm and a shoulder that I had since I was a kid."Klock was a pitcher in high school and college and, as most pitchers do, lived with discomfort and pain in his arm."

When the officials called his name, 15-year-old Jerome Gregory "Greg" Ellis Jr. patted his father on the back and sauntered to the registration table as if he had already won a ribbon in yesterday's Basketball Skills Competition at West Middle School.Fifteen minutes later, he wore a huge grin as he stood on the first-place winners' step and received a blue ribbon."I asked him was he nervous and he just laughed," said Jerome Gregory Ellis Sr., a special education teacher at South Carroll High School.

It's called the conversation of the blade, that cold harangue of steel just after two fencers raise their weapons to their faces, point them directly at each other in salute, then lunge forward to the command "en garde!"Since the days when wooden ships and iron men ruled the seas -- and even a century and a half ago when fencing was taught at the U.S. Naval Academy as an art of war -- the idea has not changed: Whether with the flexible foil, the unyielding epee or the flashing, edged sabre, you win by taking advantage of bad movements by your opponent.

A strike in the ninth frame left Carl Bogart with a good lead over his nearest competition. But he wanted one more, just for good measure.He didn't get it, however. Missed by one pin. But that pin wasn't enough to keep him from picking up a gold medal yesterday in the Special Olympics Bowling tournament at the Severna Park Lanes."When I stepped up to the lane my leg was really starting to bother me," Mr. Bogart said. "But I tried to just forget about it and roll the ball. I got all but one. Now, my leg was really bothering me. I just couldn't get that last pin."

This one's pretty easy to deduce, even though it's a shame to have to diminish one person's accomplishments to elevate another's. Nevertheless ... If Cal Ripken Jr. had done what he did in the same year Michael Phelps won his eight Olympic gold medals, who would earn the SI Sportsman of the Year honors? The answer is as simple as the answer to this: Which is bigger, major league baseball or the Olympics? There is no grander stage than the Olympics, and doing what Phelps did on that stage, against the best in his sport, with the eyes of the world on him, eclipses even Ripken's record.

CHICAGO - Before Michael Phelps could finally return home to Baltimore, the Olympian needed to visit a fan in Chicago. Appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Phelps was the guest of the hour yesterday as Winfrey played host to 176 Olympians at Millennium Park during a special welcome-back taping in front of thousands of fans. The winner of eight gold medals in Beijing was asked about everything from his love life - to which he replied, "My private life is something I want to keep a little private" - to his bulldog, whom Phelps said he missed terribly while competing at the Games.

Let's take a break from counting Michael Phelps' medals at the Summer Olympics, shall we? Instead, let's count teenagers. Of the 596 athletes representing the U.S. this month in Beijing, 30 were teenagers. The youngest Americans are synchronized diving partners Haley Ishimatsu and Mary Beth Dunnichay, both 15, and swimmer Elizabeth Beisel, who turns 16 tomorrow. Four of the six women's gymnasts are teens, as are five members of the women's swim team, including Baltimore native Katie Hoff, who is 19. The youngest male U.S. athletes are a diver, a cyclist, a boxer, a wrestler and a canoe paddler, all 18. The youngest Olympian of all those gathered in Beijing?

Plenty of Olympians have already peaked by age 20. Some have retired. Jamie Schroeder? Well, you couldn't have even called him an athlete until then. He was a gangly teenager, always too busy perfecting a biology experiment or playing the tuba to do much more than flail around on the basketball court or behind a volleyball net. He seemed on track to be great at something, but no one imagined that it would involve picking up an oar. He did so for fun during his sophomore year at Northwestern University.

Michael Phelps showed up at the Meadowbrook Aquatic Center last night and climbed into the pool. But instead of a Speedo, he wore a tuxedo. The club's outdoor pool, which had been drained and covered by a tent, was the site of the North Baltimore Aquatic Club's Countdown to Beijing, a catered black-tie fundraising event that might represent Phelps' last stop in Baltimore before the 2008 Olympics. Katie Hoff sat next to him, wearing a purple dress, and two swimmers - perhaps the best male and female swimmers in the world - began the evening with a brief news conference attended by a small horde of media, some of whom had traveled from as far away as China.

From the cover It seems as if we've known her forever: the Olympic gold medal, the wedge haircut, the sweet smile telegraphing a message that life couldn't be better for Dorothy Hamill. But now, at 51, this most private of champions has decided to let us into her life just a little bit with a new autobiography, A Skating Life: My Story. And we learn that being the star girls adored and boys wanted to date wasn't as rosy as her complexion. An alcoholic father. A distant mother. Two divorces.

If the average person were to walk up to Katie Hoff tomorrow and explain in a calm and rational voice that, at age 16, after the year she has had, Hoff might have earned the right to call herself the best female swimmer in the world, her reaction would likely be something like this: nervous laughter, some significant eye rolling, plenty of blushing, then most importantly, denial, denial, denial. The affable Hoff - who lives in Towson and trains at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club - doesn't do cocky, which is just fine, because her accomplishments do all the boasting necessary.

Special Olympics athletes from across Baltimore dribbled, shot and scored at the citywide Special Olympics Adult Basketball Championships last Monday. Nearly 80 adult Special Olympians competed in three events: basketball skills, which tested passing, dribbling and shooting; a 3-on-3 basketball game; and a 3-on-3 game that paired Olympians and their mentors. About 50 Coppin State University students volunteered and cheered on the athletes in the school's third year hosting the championships.

Jeret "Speedy" Peterson, the aerial skier, was among the American Olympians being considered for next season's Apprentice. However, Peterson had a bit of a dustup in Turin. The question, then, is whether allegedly punching someone out - and perhaps being drunk when you do it - makes you more or less qualified for The Apprentice. And does it depend on whether Omarosa is coming back? ray.frager@baltsun.com Read Ray Frager's blog at baltimoresun.com/mediumwell

With flashy backhands and grunts that would make Monica Seles blush, pingpong enthusiasts from all over the world battled at the Baltimore Convention Center yesterday for glory and fame in one of the United States' unappreciated sports. For decades, most Americans have dismissed table tennis, viewing it as a nerdy stepchild to football, basketball and baseball - a sport for kids and the poor few who never graduated to the grown-up version, tennis. But this weekend, for the North American Teams Table Tennis Championships at the convention center, there were no snickers - only the pitter-patter of players hitting balls across 144 tables.