eagues MVP, and Candace Parker, a two-time MVP playing minutes from where she grew up -- had been a force this series. On Sunday, Ogwumike

Its hard to know what world-class swimmers are feeling from looking at them power through their races lap after lap. Most of them betray so little when they hit the final wall, other than urgency to see their time and where they finished. The same goes for reading the expressions of plenty of other Olympic athletes. Boxers and judoka understandably grimace when hit, weightlifters scream when they hoist bar-bending weights, and plenty of distance runners faces betray the agony theyre in.But other athletes are the picture of serenity or stoicism as they compete. You know it cant be that easy, right? The poker-faced endurance of pain is the Big Lie of sports.At a news conference earlier this year, a handful of U.S. Olympic swimmers were asked to describe what theyre thinking as muscle-burning fatigue overtakes them during a race. Four-time Olympic medalist Missy Franklin joked lifeguard? Defending gold medalist Ryan Lochte squeaked help!But many athletes say absorbing pain and fatigue -- or refusing to acknowledge they exist at all -- is something thats practiced, not just inherent.Sixteen-year-old American gymnast Laurie Hernandez, a first-time Olympian, said the six-hour daily workouts that elite gymnasts endure are grueling, bone-rattling, muscle-searing and all the rest. Their hands are callused, and their shins hurt.But the bottom line is, if you want to go to the Olympics, youre going to do the training, Hernandez said with a nonchalant shrug.End of story.Still, its hard to not be amazed at the sight of Greg Louganis cutting his head on the edge of the diving board but coming back to win the 3-meter springboard gold medal at the 1988 Olympics, or by the memory of 4-foot-9 gymnast Kerri Strug making her dramatic second vault on an injured ankle at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics because she thought the U.S. had to have a strong score from her to win its first team gold medal.Twenty years before Strugs feat, Japanese gymnast Shun Fujimoto made a similar decision. He kept competing after he broke his kneecap in the floor exercise, his second of five events in the team competition at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. Fujimoto decided to not tell his teammates about the injury because they were in a tight race against Russia for the gold medal. For years, ABC Sports ran a replay of him in its thrill of victory, agony of defeat mashups. It showed Fujimoto nailing the landing of his triple-somersault dismount on his last event, the rings, then buckling over in pain and willing himself to stand up straight.Remarkably, his score of 9.7 was his best ever on the rings, and Japan won the gold medal.The stakes were thought to be similarly high for Strug in 96, after American teammate Dominique Moceanu performed her two vaults just before Strug.When Dom fell the first time, I thought, No, I cant believe it. She never falls, Strug recalled that night. Then she fell a second time, and it was like, Forget this. This is a nightmare. My heart was beating like crazy, knowing that it was now up to me.The pressure got worse when Strug fell on her first vault, landing on her butt and badly spraining her ankle. The .897-point lead over Russia that the U.S. took into the final event really seemed in jeopardy as Strug hobbled back to the starting position. Most of the Russian team stopped to watch. No one -- including Strug -- was sure she could run down the 75-foot runway to do her second attempt. But she never considered not trying.As I started running toward the vault, my ankle felt displaced and unstable [and] I remember thinking I was going to trip and fall on my face, Strug recalled to espnW a few weeks ago. I dont remember the vault itself, but when I landed, I didnt think Id done anything special. I was supposed to land the vault. Anything else would have been unacceptable.She stuck the landing but later learned that the sound she heard were two ligaments in her ankle snapping. Nonetheless, her score of 9.712 allowed the U.S. to break Russias stranglehold on the womens team gold medal that dated to 1948 and left the crowd at the Georgia Dome chanting her first name.In that moment, all the years of doing one more vault when I was too tired or sick or didnt want to perform another rep paid off, she said.Plenty of athletes -- not just gymnasts -- talk openly about taking risks such as that and about how their sports can result in injury, paralysis or even death. (On Saturday at the Olympics, French gymnast Samir Ait Said broke his left leg while attempting a vault in qualifying and was carried off on a stretcher; several reporters in the arena tweeted that they heard his bone snap.)Jillion Potter, a member of the U.S. sevens Olympic rugby team, wasnt thinking in such fatalistic terms before she took a hit and felt something had gone grievously wrong in a test match against Canada six years ago.It was a freak accident, really, she insisted.She later found out she had broken her neck.Once I was hit, my neck popped so many times -- pop, pop, pop, really loud -- I just remember laying there on the field. I could move and everything seemed fine, but I just remember telling my teammate, Jane, somethings really wrong with my neck. Im scared. I dont know what to do, Potter said at the U.S. Olympic Media Summit this spring.As it turned out, she needed spinal fusion surgery on her C-5 vertebrae. Doctors eventually told her she could play again, but her rehab took more than a year. Even then, her suffering wasnt over. In August 2014, she was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. She underwent chemotherapy and treatment until March 2015 and lost all her hair.Still, Potter made it back in time for Rio and was voted team captain by her peers.Its so much more about the psychological piece, not just the physical piece, she said of her comebacks.With cancer, she said, the toughest thing was telling her mom about her diagnosis. With rugby, it was grappling with the fear that rugby sevens has potentially higher velocity collisions than the 15-person-per-side version of the sport because theres more open space.I had to get confident in my tackling and contact during play again and not play tentatively because that can be dangerous, Potter said.Dwelling on such things is to be avoided. Scientists who study pain seem to agree on that.?One of the more oft-quoted findings on athletes and pain was done by University of Heidelberg researchers who looked at 15 studies that examined pain thresholds in athletes and non-athletes for an article that appeared in a 2012 edition of the journal Pain. Two of their conclusions: Contact sport athletes tend to have a higher tolerance than other athletes, and athletes, as a group, often rely on cognitive strategies, including big doses of association/disassociation,?to help them deal with pain.Jackie Galloway, who will compete for the U.S. in the +73kg taekwondo competition in Rio, joked that she has the disassociation part down.Its very funny because outside of a match, Im like, Oh no, I tripped and bruised my leg! Ugh! or well be training ,and Ill be like, Owwww! You hit my leg! she said with a laugh. Im such a baby sometimes.She changes into a different person during a match.I think my pain tolerance is just really higher during the match because thats not what Im really focusing on. My mind is in other places, she said. I already know going in theres a possibility and a great probability that Im going to get hit on my arms, on my legs. As far as feeling pain, probably one of the worst times was during one of my matches when I broke my hand. There was like a minute and a half left. I got it kicked, and yeah, it hurt. But I didnt even know it was broken til afterward. I wasnt even thinking about it til then.Judoka Kayla Harrison and 100-meter hurdler Dawn Harper-Nelson, a two-time Olympic medalist who just missed making her third Olympic team this year, have a slightly different pain coping mechanism: They reframe what the discomfort means when it hits them in wave after wave, day after day, and use it as motivation.Harper-Nelson, who trains in Los Angeles under legendary taskmaster Bobby Kersee, said, Last year, when I took a tumble at worlds [and didnt finish], I was sitting there crying. But pretty soon I was also [yelling], USE IT! USE IT! ... I think, as an athlete, you have to do that. I mean, you didnt train for nothing, right? So cry. Let it out. Ruin your clothes. Rip your shirt up. Do what you gotta do.Harper-Nelson decided to put her bib from that race on her wall as a reminder that, Pain is just part of the journey you go through, you know?Has that helped?It helps when youre out there on the track training, and you have to remind yourself of that because you are hurting, she said. Your legs are shaking. You literally cant feel them. Youre tripping over yourself because your legs have literally gone numb, and your coach is still like, I dont care. Get on the line. If you want to win a medal, get on the damn line.And youre like, Thats right. Thats right. The pain doesnt matter. I have to do it up here, she said while tapping a finger to her temple.But you know, Harper-Nelson added with a smile, thats why when you do get on the [medal] podium, those are the moments you think about: My legs were numb. ... I cried at night. ... I didnt eat ice cream for three years! You know? You think about all of that. And thats why you break down. Thats why you cry. The way I look at it is Im so excited to have this ability that I have to go charging at 10 hurdles and look up at the end and say, Who got it? Who won? The feeling is like, God, track and field is amazing! The Olympics are about amazingness!Harrison agrees. Shes the only American to ever win a judo gold medal, and shes a favorite in Rio in the 78kg weight class. But like Harper-Nelsons, Harrisons journey hasnt been easy.Four months before the 2012 London Olympics, Harrison tore the medial collateral ligament in her right knee and still won. Earlier this year, she separated her shoulder a week before a Grand Slam meet in Tokyo, one of the toughest events in the world, and had to decide what to do.I wasnt sure I was going to fight. I didnt want to fight. I didnt need to fight, she said. But my coach looked at me and said, This is about you. Your legacy. Are you tough enough? Are you willing to go out there? Youre not going to make it worse, but youre going to be in pain. What if this were the Olympics?I would be fighting! Harrison answered. This is my one day every four years. You dont get another shot.She competed in Tokyo after that conversation. She won her event.Shes proud to be the first American to capture a title at that prestigious competition, and she expects that pushing herself like that will help her overcome anything she might encounter in Rio.If I wake up on Aug. 11 with a separated shoulder, I know Im still going to win because I did it in Tokyo, she said. And thats the kind of thing that makes me realize pain is just a feeling. Its just like feeling fat. Its just pain, you know?That said, even battle-toughened Olympians such as Harrison have their limits.When asked if she might hang on for the 2020 Summer Games, Harrison burst out laughing and said, Im crazy, but Im not a masochist. Jason Kidd Jersey Large . 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The Sky had lost two straight games in the WNBA semifinals and were on the ride from OHare to practice Monday after a four-hour red-eye flight from Los Angeles.Can we talk? Sky rookie Imani Boyette texted coach Pokey Chatman. I promise, I dont want to suck this bad.The sixth-year Sky coach smiled as she relayed the story Sunday night, minutes after her teams 70-66 Game 3 victory over the Sparks at Allstate Arena.Thats difficult for anyone to do, to admit when theyre not up to the level they expect for themselves, Chatman said. But for a rookie in crunch time, that was the first thing on her mind. We only talked for three or four minutes, and it wasnt about the message I gave her because it didnt change.It was just about that moment for her, and I just reminded her, Listen, we trust. We believe. Relax. Dont overthink it. Be instinctive. And do what youre capable of doing.Boyette did exactly that by tallying 13 points and 11 rebounds to force Game 4 (ESPN2, 8 p.m. ET Tuesday) in the best-of-five series. She had six points and five rebounds in the fourth quarter and six points, three rebounds and a block in the final 2:18 of regulation.I just felt I hadnt shown up in this series yet. The lights have been kind of bright, said the 6-foot-7 center, who was named to the WNBAs all-rookie team last week. Ive been guarding two of the best players, so yeah, I was very much a rookie this series.Those two players -- Nneka Ogwumike, the leagues MVP, and Candace Parker, a two-time MVP playing minutes from where she grew up -- had been a force this series. On Sunday, Ogwumike scored 14 of her 22 points in the first quarter as the Sparks charged to a 13-point lead five minutes into the game.Thats when the Skys zone defense kicked in and shaved the deficit to nine points at the half. Chicago took its first lead since 2-0 on a driving layup by Courtney Vandersloot with 2:11 left in the period and held Los Angeles to just eight points in the third quarter.That is just unheard of for a team that skilled and with that many offensive threats, said Vandersloot, who led the Sky in scoring with 17 points on 6-of-13 shooting and five assists. Thats going to be the key. Offense has kind of been our thing all season, and this game was low-scoring for us, but we got it done on the defensive end.ddddddddddddor the second consecutive season, Chicago led the WNBA in scoring. But playing without Elena Delle Donne the last five games of the regular season and all of the playoffs, after she suffered a thumb injury that required surgery Sept. 13, the Sky had to look for various sources to extend their season.Boyette was the difference-maker on Sunday.Chatman praised Boyettes aggressiveness in the paint. After picking up her fifth foul while trying to block a shot from Ogwumike with 4:46 remaining, Boyette blocked Parkers layup a little more than 2 minutes later with the Sky up 60-59. Five points from Kristi Toliver helped stretch the Sparks lead to 64-62 with 1:30 left in regulation. Then back-to-back putbacks by Boyette gave the Sky a lead they would not relinquish.Shes a body down there, and she cant go ignored. And I think that we werent prepared for that, Ogwumike said. I think this is the first time were really seeing her in the series, and someone has to be on her at all times, especially when the shot goes up. Thats a huge adjustment were going to have to make.For Boyette, pep talks by teammates and coaches were instrumental.My coaches were just kind of like, Dont worry about it. Youre playing timid because youre scared of foul trouble. Weve got somebody to replace you. Just go out there, be aggressive and play your game. If you foul out, you foul out, she said. Its a lot easier to play that way.The Sparks, who lost for the first time in six games against the Sky this season, had to endure hearing their coach praise Chicago for its spirited play.Not that I like to be on the other side of it, Sparks coach Brian Agler said, but its good to see a team compete like that.The Sparks said they will be ready for Game 4 on Tuesday in Chicago, especially after a motivating speech from Toliver in the locker room.This is what champions strive for. Youre not going to sweep everybody. This is the semifinals, Ogwumike said in echoing Tolivers sentiment. And I think thats a little bit reflective of how we responded today. We got up by a lot, and we got a little frazzled. We need to relax, calm down and understand that in games, there are going to be ups and downs. ' ' '