ed States.There was so much at stake, Bolton said. We didnt want another feeling of sadness, agony and defeat. We made sure that didnt happen. Tara was preparing us to have a state of mind that was abo

Seven-time British champion and Belle Vue Aces captain Scott Nicholls gives us his verdict on the opening weeks of the new season. Nicholls returns to action in Wednesday nights clash with Lakeside, live on Sky Sports 2 HD from 7.30pm, and he offers a behind-the-scenes view into the Aces preparations...Its been a frustrating start to the season not being able to ride at our new home, but there was a problem with the base which was having an effect on the track and it just wasnt settling in. Combine that with the fact theyve had an awful winter and theyve just run out of time getting it done. I guess hindsight is a wonderful thing and if they could turn back time maybe they would have done things differently, but obviously they desperately wanted to get the track and the stadium ready for grand opening. It should have been an amazing event but the track wasnt right. Weather had got the better of them, the material was wet and they desperately tried to get the meeting on but it just wasnt right. Subsequently since then theyve worked on the track continuously. There had been too much damage done in trying to get things ready for the opener and they had to re-group a little bit. Theyve re-laid half the track again and that went down last Wednesday morning and they completed the track and the guys were out practicing on it in the afternoon. I personally have not ridden on it but Ive heard good reports and the track has held up well. There are a couple of ripples but considering the track was only laid that morning thats great. For us it will be awesome to have a home meeting soon because its May and weve had no home meeting yet! Belle Vues new National Stadium It has been important to think about the long term rather than looking for a short-term fix. They had made a couple of attempts to try and patch things together so that we can try and race but Im glad theyve done the right thing and started it fresh. With stadiums its one thing that part of the grandstand is not totally finished but with a track if you start with it wrong its only going to go one way and you cant afford for that to happen. The fact that we have two huge bends there magnifies that but the simple fact is that you want a good race track for the fans and the riders. If you start with it wrong its never going to be right. With that in mind, the right decision was made and personally Id rather wait until our first meeting even though its going to be in May than rush it through and have a track you dont look forward to riding every week.Having a National Stadium is huge for the sport, the economy as a whole has been tough so certain aspects financially are tough but for speedway to have a massive boost like having a National Stadium is a great sign for the sport. It sends out a good picture to the media and the sponsors and potential business interests and things like that. To have a stadium purely dominated to speedway is also phenomenal, they can have a number of practice sessions there, testing and training schools and thats great. With the Poultec system happening with Kings Lynn trying to bring a wealth of younger riders through, its what we need so its come at a good time. Nicholls says having a National Stadium is huge for the sport I think its a track that is going to change as the dirt builds up and the material changes. In some respects at first when we had the initial practice on it, it was really slick. It was a similar shape in a way to Peterborough but then it has the banking and the banking changes it. As the dirt builds up and the material binds together I think it will ride a lot differently. Theres no question it will be a fast track when it settles down. At the moment with it being so fresh, when I had the practice on it all they had done was desperately tried to get the track done, so there was barely any proper material on there and it was very slick on the turns but when that develops you will see the racing lines appear.With the sporadic start to the season for everyone, its kind of nice in a weird frustrating way that were only two or three fixtures behind which is bizarre as we are in May now and we have not had a home meeting! We can take a positive out of the fixtures really, as it has fallen in our favour a little bit with it being quite restrained so far for everyone at the start of the season with all of the rain offs, weve not got too much to catch up on. Nicholls has been pleased with his early season form (picture credit Hayley Bromely) Ive been happy with how Ive started but it has been very frustrating being stop-start but its still very early in the season. You just want to race back-to-back and get meetings in just to get comfortable on the bike and to think less about it. At the moment its a couple back-to-back then nothing for ten days and thats a long time off the bike when youve not ridden all winter but I know there will come a point when Im wishing there was a break later in the season, so I wont moan too much!On Wednesday, we visit Lakeside in front of the Sky cameras. I like all the tracks and Lakeside is a cool little technical track which is not necessarily the fastest but you have to use your head. They have a strong side on paper and we know they will be strong at home. In the past, we have struggled there but generally I think a few of our boys have stepped things up this year and I think with more experience in the side we can go there and be more of a threat in front of the Sky cameras. Weve had a good run away from home, Swindon wasnt so good for us but we managed to pull some points back to make it more respectable. Out of three so far on the road to win two is a decent start.You can watch Scott and his Belle Vue side take on Lakeside Hammers, live on Sky Sports 2 on Wednesday from 7.30pm. Andre Miller Jersey . Having already announced that the race will start May 9 with three stages in Northern Ireland and Ireland and finish in Trieste on June 1, the rest of the route was unveiled Monday. Craig Ehlo Jersey . Hargreaves began his career in 2008 with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and has played with the Edmonton Eskimos and last season with the Saskatchewan Roughriders. https://www.cheapcavaliers.com/1192q-shaquille-oneal-jersey-cavaliers.html . Now that hes hitting streaking teammates with pin-point passes for easy layups, Love is asserting himself as one of the true superstars in the league. Cavaliers Jerseys 2021 . By having more great seasons. Manning was the only unanimous choice for the 2013 Associated Press NFL All-Pro team Friday. Kyrie Irving Jersey .ca NBA Power Rankings, ahead of the Miami Heat and San Antonio Spurs. Jennifer Azzi couldnt eat. The 1996 Atlanta Games were about to open for the U.S. womens basketball team, and food was the last thing on her mind as she sat next to Lisa Leslie for breakfast in the Olympic Village.I just had this nervous excitement, and then I look over, and Lisa couldnt eat either, Azzi said. We were all just so over-the-top excited.U.S. national team director Carol Callans memory drifts to a different point that day, when the teams bus pulled into the parking lot of the Georgia Dome.It was a school-girl level of excitement, Callan recalled. People were screaming on the bus. Theyd been playing and training together for a year, and it was time to see the end result.As the U.S. womens team prepares to begin its quest for a sixth consecutive gold medal in womens basketball in Rio, the groundwork laid by the groundbreaking team of 1996 has never been more evident.That team readjusted the balance of power in the world, USA Basketball coach Geno Auriemma said. Starting 20 years ago to today, theres never been a more dominant team in the Olympics in any sport than the U.S. womens national team.The 1996 Olympic womens basketball team accomplished things that had never been done by preparing in a way that had never been done. For the first time in program history, the womens USA Basketball team trained and played together for nearly a year in preparation for the Olympics. In the end, that group made more than history, going 60-0 (52-0 in pre-Olympic competition and 8-0 in the Games) and capturing one of the most visible gold medals in an Olympics that was a marking point because of the overwhelming success of female athletes.The 1996 team created stars in players such as Leslie and Sheryl Swoopes, set a new bar for the level of play in womens basketball, and launched two professional leagues, including the WNBA, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this season.Callan calls the creation of the 1996 team, and in a way, all that came after, a perfect storm.The womens college game was growing in popularity, as Connecticut won its first national championship in 1995 and had a burgeoning rivalry with Tennessee. The NBA was exploring a business model for professional womens basketball in the United States and was willing to put some money behind the USA womens team as a marketing project.The U.S. team was coming off a pair of disappointing performances, finishing with bronze at the 1992 Barcelona Games and at the 1994 world championship.We knew we had to make some changes, Callan said. We created a program that allowed the team to train together over a sustained period, like the rest of the world does.USA Basketball convinced Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer to leave her program for a year to coach the team. It assembled a roster mixed with veteran players such as Teresa Edwards, who had been playing for years in anonymity overseas, and young guns such as Leslie and Dawn Staley, who were best known for their NCAA résumés and were about to break through on a different level.USA Basketball scheduled a years worth of exhibitions, a 22-game college tour that introduced the team to the country, and a full slate of international games to prepare the U.S. womens basketball team for international competition. A handful of those games were on national television.The college tour began in Atlanta, with VanDerveer taking the players to the Georgia Dome and asking them to visualize their place on the medal stand.In between games and trips, there were autograph sessions, photo shoots and media interviews. There was no social media. The players were tightly bonded and exceedingly focused.It was almost like we were still girls waiting to become grown women, Edwards said. We grew up really fast, and the grown-up part of us allowed us to be great basketball players.But the kid part of us really enjoyed each others company. We laughed so much. We messed up each others hair and fixed it back. We paid for each others dinners. Wed send room service to the wrong rooms. We had fun. But when it was time to play, we killed each other. We brought the best out of each other.Azzi remembers a day when the U.S. women practiced at Georgetown while legendary coach John Thompson stood on the sideline and watched. Thompson came into the huddle at the end of practice to address the team.You are making people respect you, he told them, and the compliment stuck with Azzi and her teammates.We showed peoplee a different level of basketball, Azzi said.dddddddddddd. No one had seen professional womens basketball in the States. We would go into college arenas, and teams thought they were going to be able to beat us. We were beating national championship teams by a significant margin. It was the first time for people to see the game played by women at that level.Once-in-a-lifetime opportunityThe legacy of the 1996 team goes beyond the history that was written, the ripples of that seminal experience casting off in all directions. They established professional basketball in the United States, cementing a place for pro womens team sports in the landscape. To the players on that team who eventually would go on to coaching careers, such as Staley (South Carolina), Azzi (San Francisco), Swoopes (formerly of Loyola) and Katy Steding (Boston University). To the influence over the U.S. teams current batch of stalwarts such as Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird and Tamika Catchings. To the other side of the country to the coach who cemented her own Hall of Fame legacy without taking home a medal.Coaches dont receive medals in the Olympics, so while the players stood on the platform after beating Brazil in the final in front of nearly 33,000 fans that last day, VanDerveer stood just off to the side. She didnt need a medal to realize shed created a gold standard.VanDerveer was demanding, unrelenting. She had the most talented roster in the history of the game, and she wanted those players to give her everything, from the first game to the last. After all, she was giving significantly as well.VanDerveer had resigned from her head-coaching job at Stanford, taking the year away to not only lead the U.S. women back to the gold-medal stand, but to prime the country for professional womens basketball and to alter the culture of the womens national team program.It was a really difficult decision, said VanDerveer, who turned her program over to longtime assistant coach Amy Tucker and brought old friend Marianne Stanley in as co-head coach for one season. You put so much into your own program. The hardest part of it was having to resign for that year. But I recognized it as an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.People told VanDerveer she was never going to be able to go back to the college game after her experience coaching the best team in the world. Her name came up as a coaching candidate for the WNBA and the American Basketball League, which was going to have a team in San Jose and feature Azzi as its founding player. But VanDerveer never wavered about her commitment to return to Stanford.I was excited about going back, she said. I had learned things from the Olympic experience that I wanted to take back to my team.Twenty years later, VanDerveer is a member of the Naismith Hall of Fame and is on the cusp of reaching 1,000 career wins as a college coach. Many players on that 1996 team regard her as the best coach they ever played for.Ruthie Bolton knew that playing the Olympics on home soil had the potential to make or break womens basketball in the United States.There was so much at stake, Bolton said. We didnt want another feeling of sadness, agony and defeat. We made sure that didnt happen. Tara was preparing us to have a state of mind that was above and beyond. It was like going overboard a little, but we didnt want to leave any questions of whether we were ready.Azzi said that experience challenged everybody to the core.At one point, everybody had a meltdown, she said. But we were all in it together, in a very professional way. It was a sisterhood with a level of trust and respect that I had never experienced before.The legacy of the 1996 womens basketball team is one that changed the landscape of the sport, setting a tone for everything that came after.Players like Lisa and Dawn and Sheryl taught Diana Taurasi and Sue Bird what it mean to be on the national team, Callan said, and those players have taught the next generation.Seimone Augustus, who helped the United States win gold medals in 2008 and 12 and is in Rio for her third Olympics, had a poster in her room as a kid of the 1996 team.My dream, my goal, was to be like those strong women I saw in that poster, Augustus said. To be able to be a part of that legacy and tradition thats so rich in success and winning means a lot. ' ' '