crews are out on the field with scissors, clipping any uneven fibers.Above the field, however, is Rusts biggest accomplishment. Its called Colossus: a four-sided, 700-ton video board that is th

RIO DE JANEIRO -- Swimmer Yusra Mardini, who survived a harrowing sea crossing a year ago and is now among 10 refugees competing under the Olympic flag in Rio, won her preliminary heat in the 100-meter butterfly Saturday. But the result wasnt enough to advance her to the semifinals.Mardinis time of 1:9.21 put her 41st overall in the preliminary round, and only the top 16 swimmers moved on to the late-night semifinals. Sarah Sjostrom of Sweden had the top qualifying time of 56.26 seconds.Mardini will compete is a second individual event Wednesday when she swims the womens 100-meter freestyle.Mardini was a competitive swimmer in Syria until she fled the war with her sister last August and survived a hazardous crossing on the Aegean Sea to reach Europe. The Mardini sisters had been among Syrias brightest swimming stars and their family had been moving around to avoid the fighting so they could continue swimming. But the war intensified and eventually the decision was made to leave altogether.The sisters joined a wave of Syrian refugees who left Damascus last summer. They made their way to Lebanon and then Turkey, where they paid smugglers to take them to Greece. Their first attempt was thwarted when Turkish coastguards drove their boat back so they tried again, boarding a small inflatable dinghy at dusk.All but three of the 20 people crowded on the dinghy couldnt swim. Within half an hour, the boat was taking on water.The passengers bags were thrown overboard in an effort to stay afloat as wind churned up the Aegean Sea. But it wasnt enough. As a last resort, the Mardini sisters and another strong swimmer jumped into the water to give the boat more buoyancy.For 3 1/2 hours they clung to the side of the small boat until it reached the Greek island of Lesbos. A weekslong overland trek followed through Macedonia, Serbia and Hungary. They had to hide from police in cornfields to reach Hungary.Eventually, the sisters made it to Austria and then Germany, where they have since been joined by the rest of their family in Berlin.---Learn more about the refugee Olympians competing in Rio: http://interactives.ap.org/2016/refugee-olympians/#syria Cheap Air Max 90 Free Shipping . Rob Manfred, baseballs chief operating officer, testified last week during the grievance filed by the players union to overturn Rodriguezs 211-game suspension. A person familiar with the hearing, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press on Saturday that Manfred testified the sport wasnt concerned whether Bosch distributed performance-enhancing drugs to minors because MLBs interest was his relationship with players under investigation. Nike Air Max 90 China . Now, with Game 6 set for Fenway Park and an 8:07 p.m. ET first pitch, the Detroit Tigers face the unenviable task of having to beat the Boston Red Sox twice, on the road, to advance to the World Series. http://www.airmax90wholesale.com/ . Breaking three of his own world records on his way to winning in Paris, Chan silenced the critics and left the audiences standing in appreciation and awe. Cheap Nike Air Max 90 Shoes China .J. Jefferson has been charged with assaulting his girlfriend. Air Max 90 For Sale Cheap .C. - The Carolina Hurricanes have placed backup goalie Anton Khudobin on injured reserve with an unspecified lower-body injury. BRISTOL, Tenn. -- Dave and Dana Sparrow pulled their RV into the campground off Volunteer Parkway on Tuesday, raised their Virginia Tech flag and cracked open a few beers. Theyd spent a week camping in Hillsville, Virginia, then made their way to Bristol with their dog, Ziggy, and a pair of tickets for the biggest game -- in terms of attendance, at least -- in college football history when their Hokies take on Tennessee at Bristol Motor Speedway on Saturday (8 p.m. ET on ABC).Theyre Virginia Tech lifers. The met there in 1971, and when they found out about the game, Dave paid the entry fee for eight of his friends in hopes of hitting the ticket lottery. One did, and now theyre here.But none of that is why they arrived five days early.I wanted to see the show, Dave Sparrow said.That show has slowly coalesced around them. Down on Volunteer Parkway, a parade of vendors has set up shop. Theres a mobile cocktail bar, a shop selling alligator heads and a food tent whose sign features a pink donkeys exposed posterior between the words Big and Tacos.Down the hill from the Sparrows, three campers from New Jersey are sipping beers. Theyre not rooting for Tennessee or Virginia Tech. They just wanted to see a football game played at a NASCAR track. Some NASCAR fans, Sparrow said, had simply left their campers here since the race three weeks ago and paid the extra storage fees. Most of them have Tennessee flags flying above their RVs and orange and white checkerboard awnings sprawling out over their campsite.But the star of the show, at least at this campsite, is the garbage truck.Donald Greene got the idea about eight years ago. The company he works for, Waste Connections, had retired a fleet of residential recycling trucks, and he thought it would be fun to retrofit the whole thing to serve as a tailgating vehicle. They sandblasted the interior, stripped down the exterior and painted it bright orange. Inside the rear, theres bench seating with a TV hanging on the back wall and air conditioning throughout. Outside there are kegs for beer, a steam table and grill for food and giant goal posts attached to the roof.Price tag on the renovation?Unknown, Greene said.In other words, its best not to ask.Its been a smart investment though. The company takes the truck to every Tennessee home game and hosts clients for tailgates. Fans passing by always want to stop and take a look, and Greene is happy to give tours. Its a show-stopper, which makes for good advertising for the company. Their locations in Oregon and Nebraska are building similar vehicles now, too.In the circus that is the Battle at Bristol, Greenes Tennessee trash truck fits right in.Holston River Brewing, a rustic building tucked between two churches, behind a mountain and adjacent to a campground, just a quarter-mile from the racetrack, has been here for two years. The building used to be a garage for monster trucks, but it was ramshackle and covered in dirt and grease when Sue Doherty bought it in 2013.Doherty has always loved beer, and she liked the history of the building, so she decided to open the brewery here. Now all that remains of the garage are the oversized doors rolled up to create an open-air feel. Theres a stage in the far corner -- karaoke on Wednesday was a hit, and multiple bands are playing through the weekend -- a pingpong table and shuffleboard in the back room. Given its humble beginnings, its a rather upscale affair.Building a customer base has been an ongoing project, though. Disputes over signage make the place tough to find from the highway, and in truth, NASCAR fans havent quite caught on to the burgeoning craft beer experience.They tend to be more of a Bud Light and Mich Ultra crowd, said Deanna Cole, co-owner of the brewery.For those folks, theres the Ale Jr.: a light pilsner named after one of NASCARs most popular drivers, which Cole says is a good gateway beer for the uninitiated. But for the college football fans here this week, theres no need for training wheels.This group is predominantly craft beer drinkers, Cole said of the incoming college football crowds.Thats actually what drew Christian Laourdakis here. He snagged tickets for the game and put his friend in charge of finding a campsite. The campground with the craft brewery was the logical choice.My uncle is coming from Michigan, and he loves microbrews, and we love microbrews, Laourdakis said. So this is a great place to camp for the weekend and get some beers.Thats a boon for Doherty and Cole. The crowds for NASCAR events at the track have dwindled in recent years, but an influx of 150,000 or more college football fans is a needed injection of money into the coffers. Cole guesses this weekends take at Holston River Brewing will exceed the two race weekends combined.Its not just good for us, she said, Its good for all of Bristol.Marla Edwards has been zipping her golf cart up and down the rolling hills surrounding the speedway for 16 years.She gives a quizzical look when asked for her job title, as if its never occurred to her that her role required definition. She started volunteering here 25 years ago and has been an employee overseeing the Medallion Motorcoach Community since 2000, and her job simply boils down to being a veteran of the experience.Ive just been here long enough to answer a lot of things, she said.Edwards was in a bluegrass band when she moved to Tennessee, and the lead singer hooked her up with her first job at the track and she never left. Away from the track, she farms 20 acres of cattle, and her hands are blistered and cut from putting up fence wire last week.This is a break to me, she said. The joke we have is, were ripping the speedway off because wed all work here for free. We love our jobs.Edwards is old-school. She calls NASCARs top circuit the Winston Cup Series, even if that sponsorship has changed twice since 2003, and she prefers to hire older volunteers for race weekends because the kids spend too much time glued to their cellphones. She takes the job seriously, and its easy to see why. As she zooms around the Medallion lot in her golf cart, theres not a guest she doesnt know by name.Theres Beverly Stewart, decked out in Tennessee colors, here to see her team play in personn for just the third time in her life.dddddddddddd She comes up from North Carolina for every race though, and she keeps Tootsie Rolls in her RV because she knows Edwards loves them.Edwards stops to pat the heads of the dogs staying with Pam and Dave Norton and their friends. Theyre not college football fans, but theyd made a deal with friends to attend the game in exchange for the rest of the group coming to a NASCAR race. Because their friends have split allegiances, one dog will spend the weekend wearing a Virginia Tech bandanna, the other Tennessee.She makes plans with Don Reynolds, whos been cooking for the Food City hospitality center on race days for 32 years. Hes the real deal, Edwards said, and before she pulls away in her golf cart she reminds him to check in with her when the ribs are ready Saturday.The lot offers space for 200 RVs, but for Edwards, this is like family, and Saturdays game is a unique reunion.Adam Rust has been here since 2005 in myriad roles with the speedway.Ive had no other job, he said. Ive just kind of evolved here.His job now is head of purchasing, which means if the track spends money on something, hes had a hand in acquiring it.For Saturdays game, more than half-million beers were purchased -- a few hundred thousand bottles of water, too. There were custom stools for the locker rooms, mobile showers for the players, tents for VIPs and a few thousand other details that had to be just right.And then there were the really tough items.The infield seating was particularly problematic. The permanent seating capacity is 150,000, but Rust wasnt interested in simply beating the current college football attendance record. He wanted to demolish it, so the quest to install temporary accommodations began. They did sightline studies and crunched the numbers and the plans wavered from as many as 15,000 extra seats down to the current footprint of 5,000 seats. We tweaked it until it couldnt be tweaked anymore, Rust said.The field itself was a feat of engineering, too. For NASCAR races, the infield slopes inward to drain water. That needed to be filled with rocks and leveled off before the turf could go down for the field. At its midpoint, more than 3 feet of rocks were deposited. More than 450 dump trucks were required to deliver the full payload. When Tennessee sent out its engineering crew to finally inspect the field, it measured to within a millimeter of perfection for field quality. Even now, crews are out on the field with scissors, clipping any uneven fibers.Above the field, however, is Rusts biggest accomplishment. Its called Colossus: a four-sided, 700-ton video board that is the rough equivalent of a 13,000 square foot, three-story house hoisted over the playing field by cables as thick as a linebackers arms.Its the center of our universe, Rust said.Given the size of the track, creating a video board capable of bringing fans in the worst seats close to the action was a priority, but it took nearly three full years for the project to come together.Up in the tower along the front stretch, Adam Vahl is monitoring the Colossus technology. Hes actually spent a bit of time inside Colossus itself, hoisted up in a basket 200 feet into a structure he said is actually pretty homey. His company, GoVision, created Colossus, with about 75 percent of it being built on premises at the racetrack, but its the upkeep in the control room that was the real chore. Wires run from one box to another, and lights blink frenetically along a wall of servers and processors. Somehow Vahl keeps track of it all.Its higher than HD, so we had hurdles on the technical side to get through, Vahl said. Its 72 fibers, making sure everything is plugged in correctly. Theres over 3 miles of cable inside there.On game day, a GoVision employee will be up inside Colossus, in constant communication with Vahl to make adjustments or repairs as needed, and the eyes of more than 150,000 fans will be fixated on their work.Fifteen miles away, at a biker bar called Tulips in Johnson City, Tennessee, Robert Hardin sits at the bar and wonders about the prospects for his beloved Tennessee Volunteers after a sloppy Week 1 performance, a 20-13 win over Appalachian State. Hes not planning to attend the game. Its more comfortable to watch from his couch at home. But as the speedway has transformed from racetrack to football stadium, hes tracked the progress online, just to see what it all looks like.Of all the massive accomplishments, this might be the most impressive. The die-hards and the race fans, the tailgaters and the bikers -- theyre all excited just to see how this all turns out.Marcus Smith and Jerry Caldwell have been here nearly their whole lives. Smith is the son of Bruton Smith, who started pushing this idea 20 years ago. Caldwell is the GM of the speedway, whos led the charge on what this game could become.Back in the 1960s, the Eagles and Redskins played an exhibition game at the speedway, and the idea of putting on another football game here has existed in some form ever since.In the mid-1990s, Smith pushed for the game, but the schools werent interested. By the early 2000s, the roles had reversed, but the track couldnt accommodate the game at the time. But the dream never dissipated.The fans wouldnt let us forget it, Smith said. They wouldnt let it die.Now, the campgrounds are filled with RVs. The streets are lined with souvenir shops selling Hokies and Vols gear. Downtown Bristol has been a constant party. Colossus looms over a football field that, for two decades, seemed like a pipe dream.This is Super Bowl-esque, Smith said.Theyre in the business of big events, Smith said, but this one was a little different. It took a little more time, a lot more engineering, a will to make it happen from the fans and the schools and the volunteers around the track and the contractors doing the work to get every little detail just right.After so many years of waiting and planning and dreaming, its a little surreal, Caldwell said, to finally see a finished product.For 20 years its been talked about, he said. 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