Trainers

The poster boys for fleeting fame are about to get back on the horse. For one of them, that expression could not be more apt. Horse trainer Doug O'Neill and boxer Timothy Bradley have now lived the Frank Sinatra song. Riding high in April, shot down in May. For these two totally disconnected sports people in two totally disconnected sports, the huge headlines they made in 48 hours in June joined them at the hip in the strangest of ways. They became huge names and the subjects of constant crawls along the bottom of the TV screen on ESPN, which has somehow become a measurement of sports story importance.

Picture this: As the USC football team finishes its morning practice a few days before the UCLA game, quarterback Matt Barkley rolls right and twists his knee, falling in a heap. Trainers rush to his side, waving for a cart to transport him to the locker room. A dozen reporters watch from the sideline but, according to strict new policies at USC, they must pretend it never happened. Welcome to the Pac-12 Conference's version of the post-Information Age, where coaches across this traditionally open and accessible conference are treating injuries like a national secret.

HOUSTON -- The latest development in the unfolding sex scandal at San Antonio's Lackland Air Force Base: An instructor was acquitted of sexually assaulting a boot camp graduate and now awaits a verdict on a lesser charge, a military spokesman said. A military judge ruled Tuesday that military prosecutors lacked sufficient evidence to support the original sexual assault charge, and the charge against the instructor, Staff Sgt. Kwinton Estacio, was reduced to one of wrongful sexual contact, according to Lackland spokesman Brent Boller.

MEXICO CITY - The first time Mexico's star Olympic diver Paola Espinosa met her Chinese coach, it was more than language that put them on opposite sides of the springboard. Ma Jin had a totally different approach to diving, Espinosa recalled. "As Mexicans, we do a lot from the heart," Espinosa said. Ma, on the other hand, was all about technique, precision and strength. "She had another culture, different customs. " The year of that first encounter was 2005, and over time Espinosa leaped from being one of Mexico's many good divers to a world champion ranked among the top five female divers on the planet.

The affecting documentary "Wild Horse, Wild Ride," directed by husband-and-wife team Greg Gricus and Alex Dawson, follows a diverse group of equine enthusiasts as they prepare to participate in the 2009 Extreme Mustang Makeover. This annual event is a contest of sorts in which 100 professional and amateur trainers present the results of their 100 days of work taming wild mustangs. The animals are then put up for auction and adoption - thus avoiding federal corrals. The committed and patient entrants here include an intrepid Arizona cowgirl and single mom, a Mexican émigré working as a Wisconsin roofer, a Navajo ex-rodeo champ and his son, a bearish Texan and his seventh wife, a PhD in biomedical engineering, and a pair of soulful New Hampshire brothers.

PITTSBURGH — Tests on Jerry Hairston Jr.'s sore left hip showed "no glaring tear, nothing big" and the utility man is feeling "a lot better," Dodgers head trainer Sue Falsone said Thursday. Hairston, 36, was put on the 15-day disabled list Monday after the hip problem, which had been bothering him for several weeks, grew considerably worse. The test results were "definitely encouraging," but the Dodgers were sending the results to two hip specialists "so they can take a second and third look at it, just to make sure we're not missing anything," Falsone said.

Barbara Jean Carnegie Berwald Ex-wife of former Lakers owner Barbara Jean Carnegie Berwald, 94, the first wife of media and sports mogul Jack Kent Cooke whose record divorce settlement precipitated his sale of the Lakers, the Kings and the Forum to Jerry Buss, died of heart failure Friday at her home in Purchase, N.Y., her grandson John Kent Cooke Jr. said. She was born in 1917 in Port Perry, Canada, and soon after moved with her family to St. Catharines, also in the province of Ontario.

The NFL said Friday that it has not fired nine officiating trainers who refused to train replacement officials, but the league confirmed it did take back the computers and system access of those trainers. "The officiating trainers have not been fired," league spokesman Brian McCarthy said in an email. "They are seasonal employees who have decided not to work at this time. We asked for their NFL-issued laptops back so that those who are working right now can use them. " That statement was a response to what trainer Jerry Markbreit, a highly respected retired NFL referee, told The Times earlier Friday.

Jerry Markbreit was an NFL official for 33 years, the referee in eight conference championships and four Super Bowls. This week, the league essentially showed him the door. Markbreit, along with eight other former prominent game officials, were apparently fired for refusing to train replacements to take the jobs of locked-out officials. The replacements, many of them high school and junior college officials, met Friday for training in Dallas. “The NFL never actually told us in writing we were fired,” said Markbreit, 77, who retired in 1999 as a game official and has spent the past decade as an officiating trainer.

Del Mar is celebrating its 75th anniversary of horse racing by increasing purses in 10 stakes races, a move aimed at keeping California horses at home so they can race on the seaside venue's synthetic surface. The season opens Wednesday, highlighted by the two-division $100,000 Oceanside Stakes for 3-year-olds on turf. Wednesday-through-Sunday racing continues through Sept. 5, including a Labor Day card. Majestic City, winner of last year's Hollywood Juvenile Championship, is scheduled to race in the second division of the Oceanside Stakes.