Despite the year’s postponement six Olympic champions are returning for the US track and field trials in Eugene, Ore., along with a dozen other individual Rio medalists.
Matt Centrowitz (1,500), Jeff Henderson (long jump), and Ryan Crouser (shot put) return on the men’s side and Dalilah Muhammad (400 hurdles), Michelle Carter (shot put), and Brianna Rollins-McNeal (100 hurdles, pending her appeal of a five-year doping ban) on the women’s.
The most intriguing story line will be Allyson Felix, the nine-time sprint medalist (and mother of a toddler) who’s trying to make her fifth team at 35.
The best event could be Sunday’s men’s 100, which will feature former champion Justin Gatlin, going for his fourth Games at 39, top-ranked Trayvon Bromell (the year’s world best 9.77), Noah Lyles, the world 200 titlist, Rio semifinalist Marvin Bracy, and Fred Kerley, a global medalist. Christian Coleman, the reigning world champ who would have been favored, is sitting out a suspension for missing a drug test.
Paying for the meal
Shelby Houlihan, the American record-holder in the women’s 1,500 and 5,000, paid a heavy price for eating a pork burrito from a local food truck that she says was tainted with a steroid.
She’s been banned from the next two Olympics plus two world meets for what may have been a trace amount of nandrolone, which often is found in pork and which the World Anti-Doping Agency says can produce a false positive.
“I feel completely devastated, lost, broken, angry, confused, and betrayed,” said Houlihan, who would have been a medal contender in Tokyo but whose appeal was denied by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Ledecky in cruise control
Katie Ledecky wasn’t even close to full speed at the US Olympic swimming trials and she still won four freestyle races going away.
Ledecky claimed the 200 by 1.68 seconds, the 400 by nearly four, the 1,500 by more than 10, and the 800 by almost six. If she wins five events in Tokyo (including the 4 x 200 relay) she’ll have a career 10 golds, breaking Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina’s record.
Coming together
Going into this week’s Olympic gymnastics trials in St. Louis the men’s and women’s teams are coming into clearer focus.
Simone Biles, who easily won her seventh national crown, and runner-up Sunisa Lee are looking like locks, as is Biles’s clubmate Jordan Chiles plus Jade Carey, who already has earned a spot as a specialist.
Rio veteran Lolo Hernandez, who hurt her knee at nationals, won’t compete, nor will former world champion Morgan Hurd, who is coming off elbow surgery and had her injury petition turned down.
On the men’s side, Stanford’s Brody Malone, who knocked off six-time champion Sam Mikulak, appears solid as does runner-up Yul Moldauer. While Mikulak still should make his third Olympic squad at 28, if only as a high-bar specialist, the 21-year-old Malone is the rising star.
“That kid’s the future,” acknowledged Mikulak. “I’m just this old guy trying to keep up with him now.”
Malone’s college teammate Brandon Briones also should contend for a place while Worcester’s Stephen Nedoroscik, a Penn State grad, could make it as a pommel horse specialist in what has traditionally been the team’s weakest event.
Fighting chance
The US men’s boxing team received a huge bonus when featherweight Duke Ragan, lightweight Keyshawn Davis, and middleweight Troy Isley were awarded Olympic entries based on global rankings.
After the Americas regional qualifying tournament was canceled welterweight Delante Johnson and super heavyweight Richard Torrez Jr. were going to be the only two American competitors in Tokyo. Now they’ll have three potential medalists, all of whom have made world podiums.
Deeper dive
Amherst native Michael Hixon, a Rio silver medalist in synchronized springboard, earned a return ticket to the Games at the recent US diving trials, this time with Andrew Capobianco.
Hixon is only one of three returnees from the 2016 team along with Jessica Parratto of Dover, N.H., and Katrina Young in women’s platform.
Falling short in his bid for a fourth Olympics was David Boudia, who’d won four platform medals before switching over to springboard this time. The 32-year-old led the event going into the final but ended up third as 17-year-old Tyler Downs took the top spot.
Close but not enough
The US artistic swimmers came painfully close to making the Olympic team competition for the first time since 2008 at last weekend’s Barcelona qualifier, missing the final spot by just two-10ths of a point behind Greece.
They did earn a duet spot, though, with Rio veteran Anita Alvarez and Andover’s Lindi Schroeder. Credit Andover’s Ruby Remati for the save, coming off the bench to partner with Schroeder in the free final after Alvarez had to sit out after briefly losing consciousness in the free prelims the previous day.
Though Alvarez returned for the technical routine she appeared woozy so Remati, her partner at the 2019 world championships, hooked up with Schroeder and they held on to fifth place in their international debut together.
Last surviving Soviet liberator dead at 98
David Dushman, the last surviving Soviet liberator of the Auschwitz concentration camp who died recently at 98, coached the USSR’s women’s fencing team from 1952 through 1988, producing the powerhouse foil team that won four gold medals.
Dushman, a Jew whose father had been sent to a Siberian gulag by dictator Josef Stalin, was the tank driver who knocked down the electrified camp gate.
John Powers can be reached at john.powers@globe.com. Material from Olympic committees, sports federations, interviews, and wire services was used in this report.
John Powers can be reached at john.powers@globe.com.