“NO BIG THING”
ACROSS
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46 47
Stairway segment
Goes for a stroll
___ du jour (restaurant special) Slightly singe
Agent Ness
Per unit
Constellation or mythical ship Curriculum ___ (brief resume) Active European volcano
Future lobsters, perhaps
In fine ___ (fit)
As soon as
Enrico the physicist
Run out, as a subscription Some films, briefly
Salon solution
Orchid named for part of a bird Dish for serving soup Trafficking amount, perhaps Sign up for more issues
Right on the map
Old-style call to arms
Company once known for its typewriters
Works behind the bar
Strong strings 48 50 54 57 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Moth-___ (timeworn)
More than desires
Touched in the head Counteract
Yeoman’s yes
“Rigoletto” highlight
___ subpoena on (summon) Look through a swimsuit issue Provider of a pick-me-up? Andean stimulants
Harsh criticism
Adam’s offspring
Unable to sit still
Kind of column, in math
DOWN
Complement to earmuffs Painful pang
Keen
Debate position
Contraction for more than one Hit terra firma
Good trivia entry
Arboreal marsupials
Make tea
Legendary Dodgers shortstop Wooden strip
Part of a breakout 13 21 24 26 28 29 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 40 43 45 47 49 51 52 53 54 55 56 58 59 63
“Easier said ___ ...”
Literary Huck
Oft-overlooked thing
Moo ___ pork
Prefix meaning “skin”
Water one can walk on
Straight up at the bar Hatchling’s home
“Climactic” lead-in
Game with a 32-card deck Strategem meant to fool President Arthur’s middle name Minnesota player
Biblical judge and priest
1994 World Cup host
Air duct
Skillet coating
Puccini masterpiece
It’s always below par
Big name in rock history
Looks for
Holdings of some banks
Iraqi, e.g.
Prix ___ (menu phrase) Therapeutic spots
Like taking candy from a baby Time and again, to Whitman
FIVE-TIME Olympic gold medallist Katie Ledecky is powering through the uncertainties of the Covid-19 pandemic, her sights still firmly set on making history at the rescheduled Tokyo Games.
The US freestyle great, whose 15 world titles are the most of any woman swimmer, adapted and adjusted along with the rest of the world in 2020, but she isn’t giving any ground when it comes to her goals in the pool.
“I feel very good about those goals and feel like they still are in place for this year,” Ledecky said in a video conference as she prepared to tavel to a swim meet this week in San Antonio, Texas, her first such trip in a year.
It’s another step on the road to Tokyo, where Ledecky is eying an ambitious programme that she hopes will see her claim the first women’s 1,500m gold medal ever awarded at the Games.
“I’m really excited that the 1,500m free is in the Olympics for the first time for women and that there’s parity in the schedule between the men’s and women’s schedules,” she said. “It’s been a long time coming.
“I know the history of US women’s freestyle swimmers and I know there’s a lot of women’s freestylers that haven’t had those opportunities that I’ve had and didn’t have the opportunity to swim the 1,500 or even other events in the Olympics,” said Ledecky, who will also be targeting the 200m, 400m and 800m freestyle and the 4x200m free relay.
“So I’m going to take up the opportunity and hopefully get Team USA started on the right note for that event moving forward.”
The odds are certainly in the world record-holder’s favor, and Ledecky said she feels wellprepared despite the upheaval of the early coronavirus lockdown in California last March and the continuing changes to health protocols.
For three months she made do swimming in a backyard pool and lifting weights in her apartment as facilities at Stanford University were shut down.
“Since the middle of last June is when Stanford opened back up. We have a lot of different protocols, one per lane or one per household so I live by myself so I’ve been one per lane for the past year,” she said.
She and her training partners are tested three times a week, and Ledecky thinks she’s well prepared for whatever health and safety protocols she’ll have to follow both at the US trials now scheduled for June and at the Olympics now scheduled to start on July 23.
“It’ll be a different Olympics,” said Ledecky a veteran of the 2012 London Games and the 2016 Rio Olympics. “It’ll look and feel different.
“I’m trying to learn as much as I can bout the protocols that will be in place so that nothing will catch me by surprise and I can have the best performances that I can have.”
Preparing amid uncertainty
Ledecky is hoping she and other US team members will have been vaccinated against Covid by then, but she won’t jump the queue to be vaccinated.
“I feel pretty strongly that we all have to get it when it’s our turn,” she said. “I really hope that’s soon for all of us.”
And vaccine status notwithstanding, “we’re going to have to do the exact same things, the mask-wearing, the distancing, the testing.”
Ledecky is also trying hard not to get caught up in any speculation that the Games might not come off.
Coronavirus cases surged in Japan in January, when polls showed some 80 percent of people in the country thought the event should be cancelled or postponed again.
“I’m preparing as though the Games are on and I’m trying not to think about all the speculation,” Ledecky said. “It’s difficult to block everything out, but I’m very focused.
“I don’t want to get to Tokyo and have any regrets about my training or preparation.”
CHRIS Froome’s bid for a recordequalling fifth Tour de France in June took another “small step” forwards this week as he finished “comfortably in the peloton” in his first race with new team Israel Start-up Nation.
Froome insisted ahead of the sevenday UAE Tour last Friday he was there to work towards full fitness and had no ambitions of winning the race.
Cycling’s former No.1 was blown into a wall by a gust of wind two years ago suffering career-threatening injuries. But the steel that made him a champion has driven Froome to dig deep, and target the top once more.
The journey has seen him quit mega-team Ineos and join Israel StartUp Nation, where he professes to be happier.
He has undergone a recent spell of rehab in California, and embarked on his new role as ISN team leader on an upbeat note while thinking of the Tour de France.
“There’s nothing holding me back any more so I’d love to give it my best shot and win a fifth. A lot of it is mind over matter so I hope the body will follow,” he told British daily the Guardian this week.
In Froome’s last race for Ineos he completed the Vuelta a Espana but finished way down the rankings last October. The UAE Tour was a fresh start.
“This is my first race with ISN and I’m here to start my progression towards the Tour de France,” he told a pre-race press conference. “This is the beginning of my campaign to be ready for the Tour de France.”
During the opening stage desert winds forced the peloton to dig deep.
“Nothing like a windy day in the desert to blow out those cobwebs,” Froome said beneath an Instagram photo that evening. He had finished with the main peloton.
‘Freak things’
Stage two was an individual timetrial. The Froome of old would pulverise his rivals. This time he again held on, finishing 1min 36sec off the pace. A good performance all thing considered.
Stage three however was a tough climbing stage where the gloves came off as UAE Tour challengers Tadej Pogacar and Adam Yates, who is now with Ineos, attacked on the last hillside. Froome came in around five minutes behind.
It was a similar story on stage five, another hill, but Froome had declared before the race that “it would be nice to feel comfortable in the peloton,” and he achieved that goal, even if he was a long way off a winning performance.
“I need more races like these to get ready,” Froome told a camera crew outside his team bus after stage five.
“But step by step things are coming together for me.”
Froome is signed up to compete in several more “races like these”, including the Criterium du Dauphine in early June, the event in which he suffered his terrible crash.
That accident was described by Ineos guru Dave Brailsford “as potentially life changing.” Froome suffered a compound fracture, a collapsed lung and lost two litres of blood. He was still in a wheelchair two months later.
Asked this week if he was worried about returning to that race, Froome replied in champion style.
“If I’d overshot a corner I’d probably have more doubt over my abilities. But this happened on a perfectly straight road. A big gust of wind took my front wheel when I had one hand on the handlebars and directed me into somebody’s driveway wall. It’s one of those freak things,” he said.