Philip Hersh

CHICAGO -- For figure skater Alissa Czisny, every past season had ended in a winter of her discontent.

And that inevitably turned into a summer of equal unease.

After her first two podium finishes at senior nationals came dismal performances at worlds that lingered like a bad hangover the next season.

CHICAGO -- Jillian Schwartz is trying to learn Hebrew, but it might be a good thing her knowledge remains limited.

That way, the 31-year-old pole vaulter and Lake Forest (Ill.) High School graduate couldn't know whether the Israeli papers ripped her for a subpar performance at the country's national championships in July.

CHICAGO -- While a U.S. bid for the 2020 Summer Olympics still seems very unlikely, USOC chief executive Scott Blackmun didn't completely rule it out this week.

Blackmun's point was nothing had changed since the issue came up three weeks ago, when International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge seemed to be begging the U.S. to bid. That was in the immediate aftermath of Comcast / NBC having put $4.38 billion in the IOC's lap for U.S. broadcast rights to the 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2020 Olympics.

So here we are for my 24th annual international sports awards, at the end of another year, finding ourselves looking back at an Olympics with tragedy and triumph, with good sports and sore losers (you know who you are, Evgeny Plushenko), a year with stirring achievements and the taint of doping charges on yet another Tour de France winner.

CHICAGO -- One hundred and two days. They are a blip in a productive lifetime, a period so relatively short anyone would be thrilled to fit a single significant accomplishment into them.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Jamie Moriarty got the itch when he was watching the 2006 Olympics on television at his home in Winnetka, Ill.

Moriarty, a Cleveland native who had moved to Chicago's north suburbs after college, wanted somehow to extend a competitive sports career that apparently had ended two years earlier when he fractured an elbow in training camp with an Arena Football League team.

CHICAGO -- When Chicago's business-like 2016 Olympic bid team makes it final presentation in Copenhagen on Friday, expect to hear its purposeful pitch softened by emotional chords, with first lady Michelle Obama, and perhaps her husband, President Barack Obama, bringing the appeal to its crescendo.