RIO DE JANEIRO -- Kristin Armstrong had just put together another golden effort in an Olympic time trial, this time slicing through driving wind and rain, when her 5-year-old son approached her at the finish.Mama, Lucas asked, why are you crying? You won!Once again.The American cyclist made it three consecutive gold medals on Wednesday, the ageless wonder conquering a brutal course at the Rio Games. Her time of 44 minutes, 26.42 seconds topped reigning bronze medalist Olga Zabelinskaya of Russia by the slimmest of margins: 5.55 seconds.As for the tears, well, thats a great question from a 5-year-old, Armstrong said with her now-familiar grin. Thats what we do, we cry when were happy.Im going to have to explain that one to him a little later.Zabelinskaya earned silver just days after she was cleared to compete by the Court of Arbitration, while Dutch rider Anna van der Breggen added bronze to her gold from the road race.Dutch rider Ellen van Dijk slid off the wet road along the southern coast of Rio de Janeiro and finished fourth, the miscue likely costing her a medal. Road race bronze medalist Elisa Longo Borghini of Italy was fifth and world champion Linda Villumsen of New Zealand sixth.It was very hard today. The roads on the downhills were very slick, Villumsen said. I didnt want to take chances and that cost me some time. The race didnt go the way I wanted.Despite her pedigree, Armstrong was a controversial selection for the U.S. team.She retired for a second time shortly after the London Olympics, then decided earlier this year to pursue a third gold medal. But she eschewed competing in the toughest races in Europe to spend more time with her family, much to the chagrin of rival riders who made the sacrifices of racing abroad.Then there were the accusations of bias: Her longtime coach, Jim Miller, also directs the national team for USA Cycling, though he recused himself from all deliberations over her selection.Ultimately, two Americans filed for arbitration to try to make the team. One of the riders had beaten Armstrong in the national championships, putting her place on the team in doubt.It wasnt until a week before she departed for Brazil that Armstrongs place was confirmed.When youve already been two times at the pinnacle of the sport, why risk coming back for the gold medal? The best answer I can give is that I can, she said. Today the stars aligned.Her latest gold medal was almost certainly her toughest.Ive had the hardest journey this Olympics that Ive ever had, Armstrong said. There was a lot of pressure, and I didnt realize this until this year but third place was a really bad result for me. I had to win everything. ... But I knew how to get it done on one day.Armstrong led by nearly 5 seconds after 10 kilometers but dropped 3 seconds back of Zabelinskaya by the second time check. She made up the difference over the final, flat run to the finish, precisely the kind of terrain that suits her riding style perfectly.(My coach) kept on telling me, This is it, she said. And about 5k to go, he said, `Here we go. Its up to you what color of medal you want. And I was like, Well, its up to me?She was embraced at the finish by Zabelinskaya, a controversial figure coming into the race.The Russian tested positive for the substance octopamine in July 2014 and accepted an 18-month ban, and that doping violation was poised to keep her from the Rio Games when the International Olympic Committee set in place rules that barred Russian athletes for previous doping offenses.In the morning they told us we could participate. In the evening, they said we wont. It was two weeks like this, she said. I had my ticket to go back to Russia.Last week, the CAS ruled the IOCs rules were unenforceable, allowing Zabelinskaya to compete in Saturdays road race and ride down the starting ramp in Wednesdays rainy time trial.Im not the only cyclist that has a doping problem in the past, said Zabelinskaya, who has always maintained her innocence. I believe all athletes that they are clean. Air Max 97 Off White Blanche Pas Cher . 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Air Max Pas Cher Chine Paypal .S District Court against Major League Baseball, the Office of the Commissioner and his own union, the MLBPA. SIMI VALLEY, Calif. -- Hes made 18,000 parachute jumps, helped train some of the worlds most elite skydivers, done some of the stunts for Ironman 3. But the plunge Luke Aikins knows hell be remembered for is the one hes making without a parachute. Or a wingsuit.Or anything, really, other than the clothes hell be wearing when he jumps out of an airplane at 25,000 feet this weekend, attempting to become the first person to land safely on the ground in a net.The Fox network will broadcast the two-minute jump live at 8 p.m. EDT (5 p.m. PDT) Saturday as part of an hour-long TV special called Heaven Sent.And, no, you dont have to tell Aikins it sounds crazy. He knows that.He said as much to his wife after a couple Hollywood guys looking to create the all-time-greatest reality TV stunt floated the idea by him a couple years ago.I said, `You wont believe these guys, the affable skydiver recalls with a robust laugh. They want me to jump out without a parachute. She said, `Oh, with a wingsuit. I said, `No, they want me to do it with nothing. We both had a good laugh about that.But in the weeks that followed he couldnt shake one persistent thought: Could anybody actually do this and live to tell the tale?Because if anyone could, Aikins wanted to be that guy.After all, the 42-year-old daredevil has practically lived his life in the sky. He made his first tandem jump when he was 12, following with his first solo leap four years later. Hes been racking them up at about 800 a year ever since.He took his wife, Monica, on her first jump when they were dating and shes up to 2,000 now. The couple lives with a 4-year-old son, Logan, in Washington, where Aikins family owns Skydive Kapowsin near Tacoma.Over the years Aikins has taught skydiving, taught others to teach skydiving, even participated in world-record stacking events, those exercises where skydivers line up atop one another as they fly their open chutes across the sky.He tells of having his chute tangle with others on a couple of those efforts and having to come down under his reserve parachute. In all, hes used his reserve 30 times, not a bad number for 18,000 jumps.This time, though, he wont have any parachute.If I wasnt nervous I would be stupid, the compact, muscular athlete says with a grin as he sits under a canopy near Saturdays drop zone.Were talking about jumping without a parachute, and I take that very seriously. Its not a joke, he adds.Nearby, a pair of huge cranes defines the bboundaries where the net in which Aikins expects to land is being erected.dddddddddddd It will be about one-third the size of a football field and 20 stories high, providing enough space to cushion his fall, he says, without allowing him to bounce out of it. The landing target, which has been described as similar to a fishing trawler net, has been tested repeatedly using dummies.One of those 200-pound (91-kilogram) dummies didnt bounce out. It crashed right through.That was not a good thing to see, recalled Jimmy Smith, the veteran Hollywood public relations man who, with his partner Bobby Ware, sold Fox on the idea of having someone skydive without a parachute.Chris Talley, who had worked with Aikins on other projects and helped train him for this one, proposed the parachute -free idea to Smith, creative director for Amusement Park Entertainment, telling him Aikins was arguably the only guy who was not only good enough but also smart enough and careful enough to survive such a feat.Smith recalled how the three men gazed at each other with a look of foreboding after that dummy crashed through the net. Then they looked over at Aikins.Luke just said, `No biggie, thats why we test.Fox has had little to say about the stunt other than it will be broadcast on a tape delay, as is the case with all its live broadcasts, says network spokesman Les Eisner. It contains a warning not to try this at home.That would seemingly be difficult, as Smith and Ware had to scour a good part of the world, from Arizona Indian land to Dubai real estate, before they found what everyone agreed was the best place for Aikins to land.Hell come down in a dry, dusty, desolate-looking section of an old movie ranch north of Los Angeles where not that long ago Shia LaBeouf was battling Transformers.The drop zone, surrounded by rolling hills, presents some challenges, Aikins said, noting hell be constantly fighting shifting winds as he falls 120 mph (193 kph).Other skydivers have jumped from planes without parachutes and had someone hand them one in midair. But Aikins wont even have that.Why?To me, Im proving that we can do stuff that we dont think we can do if we approach it the right way, he answers.Ive got 18,000 jumps with a parachute, so why not wear one this time? he muses almost to himself. But Im trying to show that it can be done. ' ' '
