If Chicago wins the 2016 Olympics -- the decision comes in October -- preliminary soccer games might come to FedEx Field. See Steve Goff's Soccer Insider for more.

Boxer Gary Russell Jr. of Capitol Heights, Md., will make his professional debut Friday on Showtime's "Shobox: The Next Generation."

Russell, 20, will fight Antonio Reyes (3-2) of Dallas in a featherweight division bout at the Million Dollar Elm Casino in Tulsa, Okla. The fight is on the undercard of a featherweight contest between Leonilo Miranda and Orlando Cruz.

"I have been waiting for this day for a long time," Russell said. "Having my pro debut showcased on Showtime is outstanding exposure, and I plan to put on a good show."

Russell, known as an outstanding puncher, was on the 2008 Olympic team but collapsed before his weigh-in and was unable to compete.

From the Associated Press:

Steve Roush resigned from the U.S. Olympic Committee on Tuesday, leaving a post in which he played a key role in organizing logistics for American athletes at the last three games.

He was the USOC's chief of sport performance since 2003. For the three years before that, he worked as sports partnership director.

His duties were expected to be curtailed in a reorganization dividing the sports performance division into two sections: one for operations and logistics and another for athletes and national governing bodies.

"While the decision to leave the USOC is not easy, I am confident the time is right," Roush said.

The USOC said his resignation is "effective this month."

Roush will be leaving five months after the Beijing Olympics, where he got entangled in a controversy involving cyclists who wore masks upon their arrival at the Beijing airport.

The cyclists complained they were treated rudely by Roush, who they said threatened to revoke their Olympic eligibility if they didn't issue an apology for offending their hosts.

The USOC drafted a letter of apology, acknowledging that parts of the meeting with Roush were handled poorly. But the athletes weren't satisfied, and held a news conference in which they called for his firing.

Roush, 50, was not fired, but instead resigned to pursue other opportunities.

The cycling episode aside, Roush was widely considered one of the most active advocates of athletes in the American Olympic movement. In the six years leading to the Beijing Olympics, he made more than two dozen trips to China to ensure optimal conditions -- everything from living quarters, to the food they ate, to their training facilities.

He did the same thing for the athletes when they trained at home.

In the halls of the USOC, he is given huge credit for the team's ability to hold off China in the medal count at last year's Olympics, 110-100 -- something chief executive officer Jim Scherr and former USOC chairman Peter Ueberroth predicted would not happen.

"Steve's unwavering commitment to excellence on the field of play will be the hallmark of his tenure at the USOC," Scherr said. "He has been tireless in making certain our athletes and NGBs (national governing bodies) have the resources and support they need to excel."

On Roush's watch, the U.S. won 102 medals in Athens, 25 in Turin -- a record for an American team in a Winter Olympics not held on home turf -- then the 110 in Beijing.

Before coming to the USOC, Roush was a top executive at USA Swimming for six years, and before that had been an assistant swim coach at Northwestern and Wisconsin.

Roush's departure leaves the USOC with two high-level positions to fill. Chief marketing officer Rick Burton left the agency in November.

It's doubtful either has a future on the stage, but Olympic gold medallists Nastia Liukin and Michael Phelps have speaking roles in the final installment of BarneyCam, the annual video that features the First Dog giving viewers a peek at the White House Christmas decorations.

This season's five minute, 39 second video includes a dream sequence, in which Barney falls asleep on his dog bed and imagines he is competing at the 2008 Beijing Games. Barney, it turns out, is quite an athlete Scottish Terrier. He sticks his landing on a difficult vault, teams with Miss Beazley for a perfectly executed synchronized dive and swims to a gold medal in the pool, out-touching the nearest competitor by a paw. To top it off, Barney sinks the putt that clinches the Ryder Cup for his country, with the U.S. team cheering him on.

Olympic gold medallists Shawn Johnson and Garrett Weber-Gale have cameos, as does the U.S. Ryder Cup team.

Two Vienna 10-year-olds selected into USA Diving's Talent Development Program will participate in a three-day training session with Wenbo Chen, head coach of USA Diving's National Training Center and a 2008 U.S. Olympic team coach.

Grayson Campbell, who trains with Dominion Dive Club, and Ian Shelton of Patriot Dive Club will be joined by Bradley Buchter, 10, of East Berlin, Pa., at the training camp that begins Friday at George Mason University.

In its second year, USA Diving's Talent Development Program (TDP) identifies 20 potentially exceptional divers between the ages of 7-13 and provides them with a number of opportunities to aid in training and development.

Part of the program includes a visit from an elite level coach - in this case, Wenbo Chen - to the diver's home pool (or nearby facility), allowing the young athletes and their coaches to work side-by-side with some of the top coaches in the country. The athletes were also invited to a five-day training camp at the National Training Center in Indianapolis last month.

The group will work out from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Friday at George Mason. On Saturday, they will work out at the Oak Marr Recreation Center from 9-11 a.m. and again from 1-3 p.m.

On Sunday, Wenbo Chen and Roland McDonald will host a USA Diving Outreach Clinic from 9-5 at George Mason as part of a series of coaching clinics the National Training Center coaches are doing throughout the country. The clinics offer a combination of classroom education and activity sessions (pool/dryland) to teach some of the basics of the National Training Center.

The three Talent Development Program divers will also participate in the clinic to assist in the activity sessions. The clinics are free to USA Diving coach members and $25 for non-members. Registration forms are available at www.usadiving.org.

Langley High's Armin Mahbanoozadeh, 17, won a silver medal a the International Skating Union's Junior Grand Prix Final this weekend in Goyang City, South Korea, earning his second straight medal in the event and headlining a weekend of success for skaters from the Washington Figure Skating Club in international and national competitions.

Great Falls's Mahbanoozadeh, who won the bronze medal last year, earned 193.49 points to finish second in both the short and long programs behind France's Florent Amodio, who claimed 199.58 points. Silver Spring's Kristine Musademba, 16, finished sixth overall in the ladies event with 122.86 points, earning eighth place in the short program and sixth in the free skate.

Local ice dance teams, meantime, won two medals and earned three of the top six placements in the intermediate and juvenile categories at the U.S. junior figure skating championships in Lake Placid, N.Y.

Rachel Parsons (Derwood) and Kyle MacMillan (Washington), both 11, won the gold medal in the juvenile ice dance event, finishing first in all three segments of the competition and tallying 83.29 points. Katherine Gourianova and Andrew Hickey (Silver Spring) finished 15th.

The brother-sister team of Danvi and Vu Pham (ages nine and 11, respectively) of Silver Spring won the silver medal in the intermediate ice-dance category (93.66), with Quinn Carpenter (Wheaton) and Lorraine McNamara (Germantown) claiming fourth (87.40) and Kristina Rexford (Silver Spring) and Michael Parsons (Derwood, Md.) landing in fifth (84.45).

Haley Mulera, 12, of Rockville placed highest among a trio of locals in the intermediate ladies competition, finishing seventh, as Taylor Hoover, 14, of Ashburn finished 16th in the qualifying round and Molly Crawford, 14, of Germantown finished 20th. Mulera will compete again in this category next year. Kathryn (Kit) Albaugh, 11, of Arlington finished 15th in qualifying in the juvenile category.

Mulera had won silver in the juvenile category of last year's U.S. junior championships and has been selected to the U.S. Figure Skating Association's developmental team. Mahbanoozadeh and Musademba will skate in a Jan. 4 exhibition at the Fort Dupont Ice Arena before heading to the Jan. 18-25 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Cleveland.

All of the skaters compete for the Washington Figure Skating Club, based in Rockville. The club has the second largest skating club in the nation with more than 750 members and eight affiliated rinks in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia.

From the Associated Press:

Two Belarusian hammer throwers were stripped Thursday of their silver and bronze medals from the Beijing Olympics because of high levels of testosterone.

A Polish canoeist also was disqualified for drug use. The three cases bring to nine the number of athletes caught for doping in Beijing.

The International Olympic Committee executive board ruled against Vadim Devyatovskiy and Ivan Tsikhan, who tested positive for abnormal levels of testosterone after the hammer final on Aug. 17 at the Bird's Nest stadium.

The silver will go to Krisztian Pars of Hungary and the bronze to Koji Murofushi of Japan. Primoz Kozmus of Slovenia won the gold medal.

The IOC asked the International Association of Athletics Federations to officially modify the results and ordered the Belarus national Olympic committee to return the medals.

The IOC also imposed a lifetime Olympic ban on the 31-year-old Devyatovskiy because it was his second doping offense. He served a two-year drug suspension from 2000-02.

Under IAAF rules, Devyatovskiy faces a lifetime ban from the sport for two doping violations.

It was the first violation for 32-year-old Tsikhan, a three-time world champion and silver medalist at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Tsikhan, however, faces a likely two-year ban from the IAAF. Under new IOC rules, any athlete suspended for six months or more for doping is banned from the next Olympics.

Langley High's Armin Mahbanoozadeh, 17, stood in second place Thursday with 67.05 points after the short program of the International Skating Union's Junior Grand Prix Final in Goyang City, South Korea. Mahbanoozadeh, who put forth a nearly mistake-free performance, trails only France's Florent Amodio, who had 68.20, entering the deciding long program.

"I'm really happy," said Mahbanoozadeh, who lives in Alexandria and trains in Reston with the Washington Figure Skating Club. "It's a new personal best and I skated how I've been training."

Silver Spring's Kristine Musademba, 16, will compete in the ladies event at the junior grand prix final.

From Les Carpenter:

Capitol Heights boxer Gary Russell Jr., whose collapse before his weigh-in at the Olympics cost him a chance to fight in Beijing, said he has signed with manager Al Hayman and is scheduled to fight for the first time as a professional on Jan . 17. A location and opponent have yet to be determined.

Russell, who appeared too muscle-bound for his 119-pound weight class in Beijing, will move up to featherweight.

"It's definitely not forgotten," Russell said of his Beijing experience. "People go through things in life and they have to deal with certain things that will motivate them. This was my thing."

Though some, including famed promoter Don King, speculated that Russell's collapse while trying to shed two pounds before the weigh-in might not help him land a professional contract, Russell and his father and trainer, Gary Russell Sr., said they had offers from several promoters and spent much of the fall sifting through them.

"It's been a completely different kind of training as far as the punch output," Gary Jr. said. "As an amateur you are trying to throw a whole lot of punches because everything is based on a punch count. Now we're more conservative with the punches we're throwing. I always thought I would be a better pro than amateur anyway."

Gary Sr. said he briefly considered having Gary Jr. remain an amateur so he could compete in the 2012 Games in London, as two-time Olympian Rau'Shee Warren and national team member Michael Hunter have done. Two of Russell's sons, Allan and Antonio, are ranked among the top 13 in the world at their age and weight classes and could be contenders for the next Olympics.

From the Associated Press:

The International Olympic Committee is prepared to postpone the bidding on lucrative U.S. broadcast rights until after next year's selection of the 2016 host city due to the economic downturn, the IOC's top TV negotiator said Wednesday.

"In this economic climate, I don't see us moving forward quickly because all the prognostications we are seeing are that advertising will be down," IOC finance commission chairman Richard Carrion said. "I doubt very much this is a good time to begin talking. ... I don't see us being very active on this right now."

Carrion said it's quite possible the IOC will hold off until after the Oct. 2, 2009, vote in Copenhagen, Denmark, on the host city for the 2016 Summer Games. The four candidates are Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro, and Tokyo.

"In that sense, it removes some of the uncertainty which may work to our advantage or not," Carrion, a banker from Puerto Rico, said during a break at IOC executive board meetings.

The International Olympic Committee will use two recently perfected drug tests to retest about 500 urine or blood samples taken from Olympic athletes during the August Summer Games in Beijing, the IOC announced today.

About 400 samples will be re-examined beginning in January using a blood test for a variant of the endurance-boosting EPO (erythropoietin) known commercially as CERA. French laboratory officials caught several cyclists in last summer's Tour de France using CERA, but because the test had not been validated, it was not used at the Olympic Games.

Another 100 samples will be examined using an improved urine test for insulin, which was recently improved by a laboratory in Cologne, Germany.

The IOC said it would target athletes in endurance sports such as cycling, swimming and track and field. There were 4,770 drug tests were carried out in Beijing, including 3,801 urine and 969 blood tests, the IOC said. Urine tests included 817 EPO tests, and blood tests covered 471 human Growth Hormone (hGH) tests.