Medalist

LONDON -- After twice finishing second in the 200 meters at the Olympics, Allyson Felix of Los Angeles has a gold medal to call her own. Wearing a ferocious expression and displaying blazing speed, Felix won in 21.88 seconds. Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce of Jamaica, the 100-meter champion here, was second in a personal-best 22.09 seconds, and Carmelita Jeter added a bronze medal to the silver she won in the 100 by taking third in 22.14 seconds. Jamaica's Veronica Campbell-Brown, who had won gold at Athens and Beijing, was fourth in 22.38 seconds.

At its birth, mixed martial arts were a competition of fighters from different disciplines — boxing, wrestling, karate, kickboxing, jiujitsu — battling to establish which version of combat was best. Now, the sport of MMA can encompass all of those skills in one fight. In one fighter. "Guys have trained now in MMA from a younger age. They weren't a high school wrestler like me who had to learn the other aspects one by one," said veteran MMA fighter Dan Henderson, 41. One of the sport's latest advancements is personified by the new Strikeforce women's bantamweight champion, Ronda Rousey of Venice.

LONDON - There's not much left for Kim Rhode to do in her Olympic career. She's the only U.S. athlete to win five medals in five consecutive Games. The shooter from El Monte is also the first female to compete in all three shotgun disciplines at the Olympics. And moments after finishing ninth in the women's trap event, with her gold medal in women's skeet secured days earlier, she indicated she intends to compete in Rio four years from now. PHOTOS: 2012 London Olympics, Day 8 She'll be 37 then.

LONDON -- Jennie Reed got her silver medal in the women's team pursuit Saturday. What she did not get was a chance to stand on the podium. Each team in this particular cycling event has four members, but uses only three at a time. Because the U.S. women were underdogs to the likes of Great Britain, Australia and Canada, they needed to keep fresh legs on the track. So after Reed teamed with Sarah Hammer and Dotsie Bausch to edge Australia in the first round, coaches replaced her with another American -- Lauren Tamayo -- for the gold-medal race.

Dominique Moceanu captured the world's attention as the youngest member of the 1996 U.S. women's Olympic gymnastics team, the first American women's team to ever win gold for the United States. Moceanu was just 14 when she competed that year in Atlanta and quickly became the new face of the sport. But in her new book, "Off Balance" (Touchstone), the now 30-year-old mother of two describes as cruel the legendary coaches Bela and Martha Karolyi and criticizes the methods they used to create champions.

LONDON - Defending Olympic beach volleyball gold medalists Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser were unceremoniously eliminated by a seemingly overmatched Italian team on Friday. Paolo Nicolai and Daniele Lupo of Italy were in command most of the match, winning, 21-17, 21-19. Rogers and Dalhausser fell behind, 12-7 in the second set before tying the score, 19-19, but lost the next two points. "It's a little bit different when you win," Dalhausser said. "It takes about a month to sink in. When you lose, it smacks you right in the face the second the ball hits the sand.

LONDON - It was a little like watching Willie Mays strike out in his last at-bat or Michael Jordan miss his final two field-goal attempts. Because Tony Gunawan, the greatest doubles badminton player of all time, didn't so much walk off the court for the final time Monday - he and partner Howard Bach were swept off it. The pair played three matches and six games in three days at the London Olympics and lost them all, stumbling over Japan's Naoki Kawamae...

LONDON -- Sometimes starting over is a disadvantage. The U.S. men's gymnastics team finished first Saturday in the qualifying competition that selected eight team finalists. And Americans Danell Leyva and John Orozco qualified first and fourth in the all-around scoring, both ahead of three-time defending world all-around champion Kohei Uchimura of Japan. He fell twice Saturday. But all those scores are erased and everything begins when the medal rounds start Monday. "We're going to do everything we can to make it finish like that," said Jonathan Horton, who is the only American left from the men's team that won bronze in Beijing in 2008.

Valley native and four-time ice hockey Olympic medalist Angela Ruggiero - one gold, two silvers, one bronze - was elected in 2010 by her fellow Olympians to the Athletes Commission of the International Olympic Committee. She's one of 12 athletes designated to speak for the wrestlers, runners, swimmers, skaters and all the other competitors in the hierarchy that governs the Games. Next week's London Olympics are her first as a member of the IOC, but she's already working far ahead: on the 2018 Winter Games in South Korea, on the 2016 youth Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, and on her MBA at Harvard, her alma mater.