In the Rocky Mountain News
Published Sunday, August 22, 2004

ATHENS -- Runner after runner crossed the finish line and fell to his knees. One fell further and collapsed into a heap under the relentless Sacramento sun. More than one lost his lunch in a lurid display of exercise-induced nausea.

And all of them gratefully, if somewhat numbly, accepted the icy towels volunteers draped over their necks, shoulders and heads.

But it wasn't the heat alone that pulled these men down at the U.S. Track and Field trials last month. It was the distance. To read more...

Aspen Adventurer Tells Harrowing Tale of Survival
In the ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS

GRAND JUNCTION -- The first time Aron Ralston tried to sever his arm, his knife was too dull to slice the blond hairs barely visible on his skin.

"It was the kind of knife you'd get if you bought a $15 flashlight and they gave you a free multiuse tool," the 27-year-old Aspen climber said.

Ralston, who gained international attention after spending five days trapped in a remote Utah canyon, held a news conference Thursday at St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Junction. In the six days since his rescue, he's been besieged by media requests, including calls from Japanese and German television crews, Katie Couric and Oprah Winfrey.

Everyone wanted the story of how he freed himself from an 800-pound boulder. And Ralston looked eager to tell it. The upper part of his right arm was in a sling and his 6-foot-2-inch frame looked as if it could carry a few more pounds, but generally, he looked healthy. To read more...

And Looks For His Next Project
From Colorado Public Radio

Last spring, Adam Lipsius was celebrating the success of “16–Love,” a tender teen story the Denver-based filmmaker had produced and directed.   

Jumping to the disaster genre wasn’t necessarily top of mind when he met Micho Rutare, development director for The Asylum, a Burbank, California-based film studio.   

Rutare tapped Lipsius to make “Asteroid vs Earth,” a film involving a head-on intergalactic collision, which will be released on April 29. Read more...

In ESPN Magazine

​The boat is humming. Four bodies are reaching and rowing in unison on an early New Jersey morning. Beneath them, the boat appears to fly. Four oars swinging and slicing a rhythmic 28 strokes a minute. Perfect. Except to the coach. He sees a tiny hitch after each stroke, a millisecond of hesitation. And its killing him. It burns his insides, rips a hole in his heart. He steers his launch until its nearly on top of the rowers. He peers at Chris Ahrens, the strongman in the stroke seat, then at Jamie Koven, Tom Welsh and Bryan Volpenhein, all sucking air in cadence. The coach brings his boat left for a side view. Then he explodes.

Its not brain surgery! he bellows through his megaphone. You lock the oar in the water and you push it. Lock it and push it. Its pretty simple. Like everything that comes out of his mouth, the rant is punctuated with a word road crews hear more often than rowing crews. The four pull on. Youre making this Vchopping it in and yanking it out. Theres no sweep, he continues, demonstrating by cutting the air with his gloved hand. Youre not helping me out here. I want to put you in the boat. I want to put you on the team but, dammit, why cant you just do this?

To read more, go to ESPN archives. 

Jayson Williams went from class jerk to head of his class
​In ESPN Magazine

Get out of New York, out of Manhattan. Blow through Newark and head west into New Jersey. Drive and drive and drive until you're on a two-lane highway slicing cow-dotted fields. Turn left and right and left and left. And when you're pretty convinced you're lost, you'll see it. A wood chip of a sign signaling the driveway. Take it and 10 yards in, you see gates bearing a plaque emblazoned with Jayson Williams mug with his hands in the air. "Who knew?" it asks.
Ten years ago, Jayson Williams was a loudmouth from New York City's Lower East Side burning through life at St. John's. Then to the Philadelphia 76ers, where he was Charles Barkley's drinking buddy and Jim Lynam's pain in the rear. Now, he's one of the most-wanted men in the NBA, looking at a contract well into eight figures. As soon as the lockout ends, owners start the bidding. To read more...

From ESPN Magazine

Katrina Price seemed to have all the answers-until she left friends and family with one unfathomable question

There are things no one will ever know-not fully anyway-and things no one should have to see. But still we feel compelled to know, and so we force ourselves to look.

Not long ago, in Oakwood, Texas, more than 500 people packed a nondescript, peach-brick building, many of them struggling to make sense of the unknowable. Between rocking hymns and passionate speeches, urgent wails of anguish went up as, one after another, they realized it was impossible. They would never understand why this woman they loved put a shotgun to her right temple and pulled the trigger. They would never be able to reconcile the facts of her life-the MVP awards, the academic honors, the smiles and high fives-with the ugly reality of her death. In fact, they might have refused to believe she was dead if not for the open casket.
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