Summer Games

Special Olympics Maryland will host its annual Summer Games at Towson University, June 8-10. The games include more than 1,400 athletes and 200 partners, as well as 800 volunteers who come to help run the event. Athletes compete in aquatics, athletics, bocce, cheerleading and softball. Residents are invited to join the festivities and the celebration — all events are open and free of charge. Highlights include a pep rally Friday, June 8, 5 to 7 p.m., at the university's Auburn House Pavilion, followed by an opening ceremony, 7:30-8:45 p.m., at the Towson Center.

Every two years, the Olympics roll around and amazing specimens of humanity like Michael Phelps make the rest of us feel like tree sloths. The Winter Olympics are bad enough -- downhill racers streaking like rockets, snowboarders and ski jumpers defying gravity, skaters making ice look like a dance floor instead of something hard, cold and dangerously slick -- but the Summer Games have the added element of athletes competing with their bodies on...

Hotel rooms stand at 68,000 and rising. Three sports complexes have sprouted in the past year alone. And with its airports and Beltway road systems in place, Washington and Baltimore already handle millions of tourists each year.So what obstacle lies ahead for luring the Olympic Games to the region? An ingredient strangely foreign to cities existing less than 50 miles apart for close to two centuries: teamwork.Much as in a sporting event, winning the right to play host to the 2012 Summer Olympic Games requires clearing political, financial and logistical hurdles, ranging from providing a supportive "sports culture" to corraling corporate backers.

While Olympic swimmers in London have the eyes of the world upon them this week, the young boys and girls of the Columbia Neighborhood Swim League put on a competitive meet of their own in the annual All-City championship meet July 27 and 28, at the Phelps Luck Pool. The meet featured five record-breaking performances, including the besting of a 23-year-old mark. Phelps Luck's Casey West won the 15-18 girls' 50-yard fly in 27.06, breaking the previous record of 27.18 set by Owen Brown's Jennifer Atkins in 1989.

EXPULSION of six International Olympic Committee members, joining four who quit, is one step out of the pit the IOC has dug for itself. But alone it does not end the scandal by proving the IOC is purging itself of corruption. Nor does it restore the credibility the Olympic movement requires.The Justice Department is investigating reported bribery in the selection of Salt Lake City for the 2002 Winter Games. Bills before the U.S. Senate would strip tax exemption from Olympic activities.In fairness, the IOC promises to do more, including cooperate with a U.S. Senate investigation and create an outside ethics commission and a commission to plan structural reform.

Days until opening ceremonies: 28.Torch update: Louise Logan, a volunteer worker at a Prince George's County hospital, carried the torch up the Capitol steps in Washington.Update: Several thousand tickets to the opening and closing ceremonies of the Summer Games go on sale at 9 a.m. today. The tickets, which cost $636 apiece, can be obtained by calling the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (404-744-1996) and through ACOG's Internet site. There is a limit of two tickets per customer, and a Visa card is the only form of payment accepted.

PRAGUE, Czech Republic - In a surprisingly tight election yesterday, the International Olympic Committee awarded Vancouver, British Columbia, the 2010 Winter Games. Vancouver, long the front-runner, defeated Pyeongchang, South Korea, in the second round of balloting, 56-53. Salzburg, Austria, was eliminated in the first round. Pyeongchang, a resort about two hours east of Seoul, made a strong presentation yesterday before the full IOC membership, suggesting that the games could help promote prospects for peace on the divided Korean peninsula, and led the voting after the first round.

For Americans, the opportunity to combine European travel and the Olympics won't get any better than 1992, when the winter games will be held in the French Alps and the summer games in Barcelona, Spain.It will be the last year in which both the summer and winter games are staged the same year. The winter games then will move to the alternate biennials, starting in 1994 in Lillehammer, Norway. The next stop for the summer games will be in Atlanta in 1996.Both the French Alps and the Mediterranean seaport of Barcelona are tourist destinations of their own; the addition of the Olympic Games either adds to their lure or detracts from it, depending on your affinity for competition and congestion.

Baltimore will compete with four other cities for the 2000 U.S. Olympic Media Summit to be held shortly before the Sydney Games.Houston, Dallas, Raleigh, N.C., and Seattle have joined the race to play host to the planned three days of news conferences, interviews, photo sessions and social events. The event brings together top athletes in 28 sports, 400 media outlets, the United States Olympic Committee, Olympic sponsors and the national governing bodies -- the administrative bodies for Olympic sports.

THE INTERNATIONAL Olympic Committee faces a tough enough job July 13 in Moscow deciding - on Olympic merits - which city should host the 2008 Summer Games. The IOC itself is a flawed institution. But governments trying to push the IOC one way or another for their own power-politics agendas will make matters worse. The White House is wise to have no position. Congress would be foolish to adopt a resolution, approved by the House International Relations Committee, telling the IOC to hold the games anywhere but Beijing.

No one plays a larger hands-on role than Bucky Gunts in shaping what tens of millions of Americans are seeing each night of the London Summer Olympics. As head of production and director of the opening ceremonies and the nightly prime-time show for NBC, the Baltimore Friends School graduate largely determines the major story lines and images that will form the shared memory of the games - not just in 2012 but possibly for generations to come. A four-time Emmy Award winner for previous Olympics direction, Gunts is at the center of a media strategy that has resulted in record ratings for NBC - as well as some angry criticism primarily in social media.

NBC's Friday-night coverage of the opening ceremonies of the London Olympics drew the largest TV audience on record for a kickoff of the summer games. According to Nielsen figures provided by NBC, 40.7 million average viewers watched the four-hour-plus telecast, outpacing the Atlanta game by 900,000 viewers while topping Beijing by 6 million and Athens by 15 million. NBC's coverage was the highest-rated Friday night on any U.S. network in a decade. Read my review calling the coverage a "winner" here . Meanwhile, a mostly-media-made mini-flap flared when some in the British press criticized NBC for cutting three minutes of opening ceremonies out of the taped-delay version shown to American viewers in favor of an NBC interview with Michael Phelps.

A little more than a decade ago, a group of business executives and civic leaders envisioned a moment when the world's eyes would be riveted by events in the Baltimore-Washington area: the lighting of a cauldron followed by two weeks of elite athletic competition. The group hoped to bring the 2012 Summer Olympics to the region — and with it, billions of dollars in revenue and tens of thousands of new jobs. Baltimore would be the scene for soccer, gymnastics, triathlon, cycling and field hockey.

There was a time when John Worley could keep up with his boys. They'd run together and as Worley slowed with age, his twin boys, Mark and Bruce, kept on running, accelerating out of the back of the pack, striding on to Special Olympics Maryland medals and into manhood. It's been a while since those days, twelve years now. And as Mark and Bruce train for another Special Olympics Maryland Summer Games, John has taken on what he calls more of a "transportation and inspiration" role.

Special Olympics Maryland will host its annual Summer Games at Towson University, June 8-10. The games include more than 1,400 athletes and 200 partners, as well as 800 volunteers who come to help run the event. Athletes compete in aquatics, athletics, bocce, cheerleading and softball. Residents are invited to join the festivities and the celebration — all events are open and free of charge. Highlights include a pep rally Friday, June 8, 5 to 7 p.m., at the university's Auburn House Pavilion, followed by an opening ceremony, 7:30-8:45 p.m., at the Towson Center.

WEATHER Today's forecast calls for highs in the lower 60s and a chance for afternoon showers. Lows are expected to be in the upper 40s tonight. TRAFFIC Check our traffic map for this morning's issues as you plan your commute. FROM LAST NIGHT... Three arrested in May 2011 shooting of 12-year-old boy : Police said Danyae Robinson, 29; Antwan Mosley, 21; and Derrick E. Brown, 17, have each been charged with murder and three counts of attempted murder after being arrested by the warrant apprehension task force.

Baltimore will play host to the 2002 JCC Maccabi Games, a yearly international Jewish youth summer games competition, from Aug. 11 to Aug. 15. About 460 local athletes ages 13 to 16 have signed up to participate, staff organizers from the Jewish Community Center of Greater Baltimore said, as have about 650 host families in Baltimore. Los Angeles, Houston and Chicago are sending teams, as are Israel, England, Mexico, Venezuela, Poland and Russia, JCC organizers said. The five-day event will feature about 2,000 athletes of both genders competing in 13 sports, including soccer, track and field, tennis, golf, swimming, volleyball, baseball, softball, basketball, table tennis, roller hockey and dance.

Rudolph Goines has been a part of Special Olympics for 21 years, yet his enthusiasm for the competition hasn't changed one bit."It's wholesome," he said. "These kids are out there giving 200 percent."You see these kids fall into the finish line because they'd die to win. I would go watch even if I weren't coaching."Goines has seven athletes, ages 16 to 20, participating in 25 track and field events at the Maryland Special Olympics Summer Games today and tomorrow at Towson State.With 1,300 athletes, it is the largest of the state's five Special Olympics events.

BEIJING -- The interior of the metallic and shiny Beijing Organizing Committee office building feels torn from a futuristic science fiction movie. In here, there's one set of numbers that everyone seems to know: 102-93-63. You would think that those numbers were a code, a confidential string of digits that perhaps unlocks a room, safe or state secret. Though it's not quite that clandestine, make no mistakes, it is a code of sorts. The final medal tally at the 2004 Summer Games: United States 102, Russia 93, China, 63. Depending on what you choose to believe or to whom you choose to listen, those numbers are a driving force behind the Summer Games, as China looks to flex its political and economic muscle on a global sporting stage.

XINYAN, China -- Zhang Huimin, 8, skips, walks and jogs along National Highway 107, an impish girl in an undersized red track suit. She has been running since 2 a.m. and it's close to noon, but she's keeping a steady pace, driven by a goal: to complete the 2,150-mile trip from her hometown in southern Hainan province to Beijing's Tiananmen Square, the political heart of China. Her quest has caught the attention of a nation filled with pride at hosting the 2008 Summer Olympics, which open a year from today.