Yoshida returns focus to Olympic three-peat after rare defeat

Unexpected: Russia's Valeria Zholobova celebrates after ending Saori Yoshida's 58-match winning streak on Sunday in the 55-kg final at the World Cup meet in Tokyo. AFP-JIJI

Incredibly long winning streaks come as natural to Saori Yoshida as enjoying ice cream cones on hot summer days for the rest of us.

For the record, freestyle wrestler Yoshida's 58-match winning streak came to an end on Sunday at the World Cup meet in Tokyo. Russia's Valeria Zholobova, just 19 years old, was the better grappler in their match. For anyone else, 58 straight wins would seem like an out-of-this-world accomplishment. For Yoshida, however, the bar is set so high, that a loss, any loss, is a jaw-dropping, stop-the-presses shocker.

"Going to London will mean nothing if I don't three-peat, so I have to fix the problems which need addressing," Yoshida was quoted as saying by Kyodo News after Sunday's defeat at Yoyogi National Gymnasium.

She is, after all, a two-time gold medalist, and one of Japan's biggest medal hopefuls for the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Nobody likes to lose, but who says this is a bad time for Yodida to taste defeat? In fact, it probably came at the best possible time. It may even lessen the pressure of having to keep the streak alive in order to attain gold; at least those were my initial thoughts on Sunday after watching a replay of the Yoshida-Zholobova match on TV.

The 29-year-old Mie Prefecture native probably didn't need any additional motivation to be fired up for her third Olympics, but this will surely push her to be more focused on her techniques and conditioning in the weeks before the competition commences in London.

And no one can excuse her of fearing the spotlight, as evidenced by her decade of dominance in national (10 consecutive titles) and international (victories at nine straight world championship since 2002) competitions.

You can argue that Yoshida doesn't face the wealth of talent that athletes must contend with in other sports, but that doesn't cheapen her accomplishment. The sport may not appear to have as many elite-level competitors as, say, figure skating or tennis, but there are skilled practitioners throughout the world who have what it takes for greatness.

In addition, she has been so good for so long that any loss is a major headline. Which takes us back to January 2008, when Yoshida's 119-match winning streak ended against American Marcie Van Dusen in Taiyuan, China.

It wasn't the end of the world, of course.

"It is a big shock to lose my first match at an international meet," she told reporters after the match. "I realize I have to train even harder."

That loss, too, arguably came at the right time. Yoshida diligently prepared for the Beijing Games and, as stated above, collected another gold medal.

Don't expect Sunday's setback to decrease Yoshida's workload or preparations for London. Instead, expect tackling, as noted by AFP-Jiji in its story after Yoshida's Sunday defeat, to be the key area of emphasis she works on with her coach, Kazuhito Sakae.

"After losing, I really struggled for six months to get back on my feet, and today I couldn't help but feel anxious," Yoshida was quoted as saying after winning the gold in 2008. "I went for two straight titles, but compared to Athens there was so much more built up inside me this time. I aim to three-peat in London in 2012."

As they say in Hollywood and beyond, the plot thickens.

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Focus shifts to condensed schedule after Rose, Shumpert suffer injuries

Tough break: Derrick Rose is attended to by team doctors during the Bulls' game against the Sixers on Saturday. AP

NEW YORK — The NBA's compressed schedule, with 66 games in four months followed by one day off before the playoffs, was tough on everyone.

Did it cause more injuries?

"Yeah, probably," Chicago's Joakim Noah said. "Probably."

What about the torn ACLs that ended the season for Derrick Rose and Iman Shumpert on Saturday?

Unlikely, said a surgeon.

"There is no evidence that wear and tear, or that kind of issue, playing too much, really has any correlation with ACL injuries in any sport that we've ever studied," Dr. David Altchek from the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York said Sunday.

Rose, last season's MVP, was hurt in the final minutes of Chicago's Game 1 victory over Philadelphia, and the Knicks' Shumpert went down a short while later. The blame game started soon after, with many pointing the finger at the hectic post-lockout schedule.

Boston center Jermaine O'Neal, whose season ended early after wrist surgery, wrote on his Twitter page that it was a "clear sign" of fatigued bodies from a condensed season, writing "(two) torn acl injuries to key players!"

But Altchek argues that too much playing could actually make a player less susceptible to the injuries that Rose and Shumpert sustained, because they might lack the type of explosiveness it takes to blow out a knee ligament.

"In fact, I think if you're tired, you're a lot less likely to tear your ACL because you're not going to be as explosive," said Altchek, who has operated on players such as Josh Howard, David West and Purdue's Robbie Hummel, and been a consultant for the NBA.

NBA players and owners settled on a 66-game schedule starting on Christmas when they settled the lockout during Thanksgiving weekend. Though perhaps ambitious, both sides saw it as a way to make back as much lost revenue as possible.

Spokesman Tim Frank said that with respect to the season, the league had "ongoing discussions with team doctors and athletic trainers about best practices and planning for injuries."

The revised schedule amounted to about two extra games a month for teams, from 14 to 16. Though the league said the injury rate was about the same as in a normal 82-game season, players say they felt a difference.

"This has been a compressed season, a lot more games, a lot less practice time, a lot less recovery time," Knicks guard Baron Davis said. "You can definitely look at the season and just look at the schedule and say that guys really never got the ample amount of time to rest and heal their bones because you're fighting for playoff position. It's game after game after game. So, you know, it's tough. But there's injuries, there's freak injuries in basketball that's always happening."

Both players battled injuries during the season, with Rose missing 27 games for groin, back, toe, foot and ankle problems. Bulls general manager Gar Forman said Rose's previous injuries or the schedule did not lead to the ACL tear. But players don't seem so certain.

"There's a lot of speculation. And it doesn't matter. We're in this season, we played the games, we're in the playoffs now. Hopefully no one else goes down with these type of injuries," Miami's Dwyane Wade said. "It's not anything that we want to see, for none of our players to go down with injuries. So you don't know. You don't know if it was because of the condensed season. You don't know what the case may be. The biggest thing is that them guys get healthy."

Twitter became a forum for debate about the schedule's role even before Rose and Shumpert were in their hospital rooms. Former player and ESPN analyst Jalen Rose listed some players that had gone down, putting the blame on the schedule.

For some injuries, it may have been. Just not the two from Saturday.

"There really is no evidence of that, in any athlete, that wear and tear, like gradual wearing away of the ACL, is an issue in terms of the injury," Altchek said.

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