AURORA — I covered Missy Franklin’s dual meet against Highlands Ranch High Tuesday and I couldn’t tell if the four-time Olympic gold medalist was more excited about qualifying for two events and two relays for the state meet or meeting Justin Bieber at the Pepsi Center the night before. Her friend gave her tickets for her birthday and they managed to arrange a meet and greet before his concert.

“He came back and it was one on one and he was so nice,” Franklin said. “He told me how to ride a Segway. He offered to show us the stage. I thought he’d be super nice, just come out, get his picture and get ready. But he hung out for us for, like, 15 minutes. He took us up on stage, showed us all the wardrobe. It was absolutely incredible.”

AURORA — I never thought I’d enjoy a high school swim meet as much as I did Tuesday when I saw a four-time gold medal winner face a bunch of suburban girls in a dual meet. I thought of this in London last July when I covered Missy Franklin, who just completed her junior year at Regis Jesuit High, break the world record in the 200 backstroke, the national age-group record in the 100 backstroke and swim legs on the gold-medal winning 400 medley relay (for another world record) and the 400 freestyle relay.

But there she was Tuesday, hopping up and down with her teammates in a pre-meet rally cry (“OLE! OLE-OLE-OLE! RE-GIS! RE-GIS!), cheering on teammates on the JV team, then taking pictures with Highlands Ranch girls whom she blew out of the pool. She smiled so much I wondered if she was smiling underwater.

She had many offers to go pro and make deep into seven figures. But she kept her amateur status and signed to swim at California next season.

“One of the best parts about staying amateur is I’m still able to do things like this,” Franklin said. “I still have these opportunities. At this point I want to take them. I’ve given up so much for that. The support I got after I made my decision was huge. So I’ve just been going off that.

“I’m so happy. The second I made the decision I felt 100 times better. Being able to come work out with my friends and spend time with them, you get so close to a team. You do so much together and to be with them my senior year, my last year at Regis, oh, my gosh, we have senior night next week! I’m going to ball my eyes out. But to be part of that, I’m so happy I did it.”

She qualified for state in the 500 freestyle, 200 individual medley, the 50 freestyle (while swimming the opening leg of the 200 relay) and the 100 freestyle (as part of the 400 relay). She’ll likely swim another dual meet to qualify for other events to give Regis plenty of options on how to use her at state.

She’s basically training through the high school in preparation for the World Swimming Championships in Barcelona in July. Her next Grand Prix meet is in Austin a wee

Mike Alvarado, right, and Brandon Rios fought the fight of the year in 2012.

Denver’s Mike Alvarado may have lost a bombarding bout against Brandon Rios in October — after the two traded non-stop blows for more than six rounds — but he can take some solace in knowing it was well-received.

The Alvarado-Rios bout, at the Home Depot Center near Los Angeles, on Wednesday was named the Fight of the Year for 2012 by Sports Illustrated.

Read more…

Michael Sears, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel via The Associated Press

In this photo taken July 17, 2012 Suzy Favor Hamilton poses for a portrait at her home in Shorewood Hills a suburb of Madison, Wis. The three-time Olympian has admitted leading a double life as an escort. She apologized Thursday, Dec. 20, 2012, after a report by The Smoking Gun website said she had been working as a prostitute in Las Vegas.

Suzy Favor Hamilton, a middle distance running three-time Olympian, former U.S. record holder and one of the most decorated NCAA track and field athletes in history, admitted on Thursday to leading a double life as a $600-an-hour escort out of Las Vegas.

On Thursday, Favor Hamilton took to her Twitter account to address a story first reported by “The Smoking Gun” website that detailed the married mother’s double life as a Las Vegas call girl for a high-priced escort service.

“I was drawn to escorting in large part because it provided many coping mechanisms for me when I was going through a very challenging time with my marriage and my life,” Favor Hamilton said in a series of tweets. “It provided an escape from a life that I was struggling in. It was a double life.”

She said that she was drawn into the business after suffering from depression, adding that she is seeing a psychologist to help her get through the issues.

Read more…

Rope drop junkshow @ Mary Jane Dec 19 2012 from Jason Blevins on Vimeo.

With 15 inches out of the latest storm cycle, Winter Park ski patrollers started dropping ropes. The feeding frenzy Wednesday morning at Mary Jane saw a couple hundred powder pirates working hard to beat down the fresh.

I just got official word that the 2013 USA Pro Challenge bike race in August will start in Aspen.

It’s no real surprise. The official announcement comes at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday from Aspen’s Little Nell hotel. But the big news is Aspen is a spectacular spot to host what has become the biggest stage race in the U.S. Aspen has had fabulous success with two dramatic finishes down Independence Pass and a start to Beaver Creek in the two previous races.

It has the money to back the venture and the amenities to attract the riders, the American cycling community and merely fans of the city. It’s also where a rooming snafu bumped me this year to the Little Nell, merely one of the top hotels in the United States.

The race begins Monday Aug. 19 but Aspen’s festivities will be all weekend.

Shaun White left Breckenridge and went straight to the salon to have his red locks removed.

White, whose trademark long red hair has long promoted “The Flying Tomato” nickname he picked up early in his career, posted video Tuesday morning of getting his long ponytail cut off.

He said he has been thinking about it for a “long while” and wanted to donate it to Locks of Love.

Read more…

NEW YORK — Colorado Mines senior punter Taylor Accardi, who set an NCAA Division II record this season by averaging 51 yards per kick, made AP’s Little All-America first team.

CSU-Pueblo senior offensive lineman Ryan Jensen made the second team.

On the third team: CSU-Pueblo sophomore defensive back C.J. Roberts.

Little All-Americans come from Division II, D-III and NAIA teams.

Mike Alvarado, right, and Brandon Rios in their October fight at Carson, Calif. (Reuters)

The fallout from Juan Manuel Marquez’s stunning knockout of Manny Pacquiao in Las Vegas on Saturday reached all the way to Denver on Monday.

Mike Alvarado, a junior welterweight from Denver, now may fight Brandon Rios in a rematch in March, promoter Bob Arum told the Los Angeles Times.

Rios’ seventh-round TKO of Alvarado in a thrilling October bout near Los Angeles was immediately considered a leading fight of the year contender by reporters and fans.

Rios was slotted to go against Pacquiao in his next bout, Arum said in September — assuming Pacquiao would beat Marquez last weekend. But Marquez’s upset of Pacquiao — now considered the best fight of the year — threw out those plans.

Instead, it could be Alvarado-Rios in a rematch and Pacquiao-Marquez for a fifth time sometime later in the year.

Before Saturday, Top Rank offered Timothy Bradley a matchup with Alvarado, Bradley said. But Bradley turned it down, saying that after his win over Pacquiao earlier this year, he deserved a fight with Rios.

Nick Groke: ngroke@denverpost.com or twitter.com/nickgroke

Brad Torchia

A downhill mountain biker races in one of five enduro stages at the Colorado Freeride Festival at Winter Park’s Trestle Bike Park last July. (Special to The Denver Post by Brad Torchia.)

Winter Park’s Trestle Bike Park will host the only U.S. stop of the first-ever Enduro World Series next summer, buttressing its position as the nation’s top bike park.

With enduro riding exploding, the Enduro Mountain Bike Association in October announced the creation of its own, UCI-free World Series, a seven-stop international tour tying together the largest events in enduro racing – France’s Enduro Series, Italy’s Superenduro races and the Whistler-born Crankworx contests. The group released the series’ race stops and dates last week.

Winter Park’s Colorado Freeride Festival – July 27-28 – will be the fourth stop of the international tour. This year’s festival featured a five-stage contest that drew dozens of enduro racers. They raced long downhill courses traversing Trestle’s biggest features and singletrack in contests that required some uphill. Enduro – while popular in Europe – is surging stateside and especially in Colorado, where the Mountain States Cup launched its inaugural enduro races last summer.

2013 Enduro World Series
May 18-19: Superenduro PRO – Punta Ala, Italy
June 29-30: Enduro Series – Val d’Allos, France
July 6-7: Crankworx Les 2 Alpes – Les 2 Alpes, France
July 27-28: Colorado Freeride Festival – Winter Park, United States
August 10-11: Crankworx Whistler – Whistler, Canada
August 24-25: Enduro Des Nations – Val d’Isere, France
October 19-20: Superenduro PRO – Finale Ligure, Italy

The Furniture Row Racing pit crew with Kurt Busch in the cockpit at Charlotte Motor Speedway in October. That crew will be in-house in 2013, headed by Mike “Tiny” Houston. (FRR)

First they hired firebrand Kurt Busch. And on Tuesday, Denver’s Furniture Row Racing added the Minister of Pain.

Mike “Tiny” Houston — a former professional wrestler named Mike Mayhem who went by that nickname — will head the newly-formed pit crew for Busch and NASCAR’s No. 78 Chevy of Furniture Row.

The Denver team in recent seasons had farmed out their pit crew from the Stewart-Haas Racing team. But now, FRR will have its own over-the-wall crew for Busch. The six-man crew will work out of Mooresville, N.C.

Read more…

Mikaela Shiffrin. (Daniel Petty, The Denver Post)

Beaver Creek — Lindsey Vonn didn’t get to race downhill against the men last week because the International Ski Federation denied her request, but Mikaela Shiffrin got to be a forerunner before Sunday’s men’s giant slalom.

There’s nothing against the rules about that. Forerunners are chosen by the ski team of the home country and are used to test the course before a race. Shiffrin, who also foreran here last year, lives just down the road in Eagle-Vail.

“It was sick,” Shiffrin said after skiing the second run course. “So fun. It’s going to be a good course. The hill just really lends itself to making turns, just arcing everything. It’s so fun to get on a hill and turn around a gate and feel like, ‘That was sick.’ I just felt it every single turn.”

Shiffrin, 17, passed her driver’s test last week. She leaves Wednesday for Europe and will spend the rest of the winter racing there.

Beaver Creek — American Ted Ligety will take a significant lead into the second run of today’s World Cup giant slalom at Beaver Creek.

After the first run, Ligety holds a lead of 0.78 seconds over the second man the leaderboard, Marcel Hirscher of Austria. Hirscher won the World Cup GS season title last season and Ligety was second. Ligety won the GS title three of the four seasons preceding last year.

Ligety won the season’s first GS race at Soelden, Austria. The second run today, which starts at 12:45 p.m., will be covered live by NBC Sports Network.

Beaver Creek — Stacey Cook had never been on the World Cup podium before Friday, but Friday and Saturday she finished second behind teammate Lindsey Vonn in downhills at Lake Louise.

Reasons include momentum from some top 10s last season and hard work this summer. But there’s another reason: She got lots of downhill training this month at Copper Mountain.

As I have mentioned before, the US Ski Team Speed Center there, now in its second year, has given the team’s downhillers a chance to get lots of downhill training at a time of year when other teams are hard-pressed to find anything remotely resembling downhill conditions.

This isn’t a very good analogy but imagine if, before a major golf tournament, a player got to play the course several times before the tournament, but the rest of the field could only practice on the par 3 course down the street. Cook and Vonn went to Lake Louise ready to rock, and they came through, going 1-2 two days in a row.

European media outlets have reported rumors that Lindsey Vonn is dating Tiger Woods, but Vonn says there’s nothing to it

“We are just friends,” Vonn told me Saturday after winning her second World Cup downhill in two days at Lake Louise, Alberta. “My brother was the ski instructor for his kids this November in Vail. Guessing that’s where it came from.”

Last year there were rumors in the European media that Vonn was dating Tim Tebow. That was untrue as well.

Beaver Creek –American Ted Ligety finished fourth in a World Cup super-G here Saturday, just 0.04 of a second off the podium. Last week Ligety was 0.01 off the podium in a super-G at Lake Louise, Alberta.

Italian Matteo Marsaglia claimed his first World Cup win. World Cup leader Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway was second and Hannes Reichelt of Austria was third.

Lindsey Vonn is leading in a downhill at Lake Louise after the top 30 have finished. She won there Friday.

It looks like Lindsey Vonn is feeling better.

Through the top 25 racers at Lake Louise, Alberta, Vonn leads a World Cup downhill by an incredible 1.73 seconds. If it holds up, it will be her fifth straight downhill victory there and 12th win at that Canadian resort.

But since the 25th racer came down, there has been a course hold because of fog. Under FIS rules, at least 30 racers must finish in order for a race to be official.

In the past few minutes, forerunners have returned to the course, so Vonn may get her victory.

Teammate Stacey Cook is sitting in second place.

Vonn missed nearly two weeks of training this month with an intestinal illness and finished 21st in a giant slalom at Aspen last weekend, but she crushed the Lake Louise course with flat light and light snow falling.

Beaver Creek — Marco Sullivan’s third-place finish in a downhill at Lake Louise last weekend got a lot of attention going into downhill training this week at Beaver Creek, but one of the team’s young racers has been creating a buzz as well.

Travis Ganong, 24, won Wednesday’s downhill training run and was fourth Thursday. So how does he approach Friday’s race?

“I’m going to do the same exact things I did in the training runs,” said Ganong, who is from Squaw Valley, Calif. “I’ve been fast all summer long in training, and it’s really cool to see on a World Cup hill I can be fast training here, too. The skiing is there, the speed is there, so I’ll just stick with the plan, have fun and enjoy it.”

If Ganong needs any advice, he can turn to Daron Rahlves, the man who was his idol growing up. Rahlves, also from the Squaw Valley area, was one of the team’s most successful downhillers before retiring in 2006. Rahlves won here twice and was on the podium three other times.

“He actually called me (Thursday) morning when I was on the chairlift, going up for inspection,” Ganong said. “We talked a bit about a couple sections on the course. It’s good to have that as a resource.”

John Meyer | The Denver Post

Sunrise Thursday morning from Jay’s Cabin, near Shrine Pass

But there was a full moon. And when I cover the Beaver Creek World Cup, I like to spend one night at Jay’s Cabin, a backcountry hut three miles west of Vail Pass.

I knew my overnight backcountry ski trip Wednesday might well be a backcountry hiking trip, but I was undeterred. And I’m glad I was.

It wound up being two miles of hiking and a mile of cross country skiing, but the moon was beautiful. I had the hut to myself, made myself some hot apple cider, went out on the deck and admired the moonlit landscape, made a nice fire in the fireplace and watched it flicker until I fell asleep. I got to see a nice sunrise Thursday morning and then headed back to Beaver Creek.

It certainly wasn’t like last year when I had plenty of snow to ski upon, and the surrounding hills shone white in the moonlight. But it was a rewarding mountaineering experience, and I’m glad I did it.

Even with limited snow, we need to count our blessings. Our mountains are always beautiful, even when they’re not as white as they’re supposed to be.

Beaver Creek — Even as Beaver Creek hosts men’s World Cup racing this week, many are thinking about the world alpine ski championships coming here Feb. 3-15, 2015.

The trail for a new women’s downhill — visible to the left of the men’s course in the attached photo — was cleared last summer. It figures to be tough and demanding, as it should be. The men’s course is considered one of the most technical tracks in the world.

“Thank God Beaver Creek wanted to do that and develop the hill,” former Canadian downhill great Todd Brooker said. “This will be the premier downhill for women. Like Cortina (Italy) is premier because it’s beautiful, but not because it’s particularly testing. This one will be testing. It will be amazing.”

Vail previously hosted world championships in 1989 and 1999. The world championships have been held in the U.S. only one other time, at Aspen in 1950.

I will have more on Vail 2015 in Thursday’s Denver Post.