“I want to tell Jamaica: Happy 50th anniversary,” Fraser-Pryce said.

Later this month, at trials in Calgary for Canada’s Olympic track and field team, athletes will even wear Twitter handles on their bibs _ encouraging fans to send messages of support as they race.

The sponsor is being sought to help cover the 95 million pound ($149 million) cost of converting the 80,000-seat stadium to a 60,000-seat venue after the Olympics.

Still, GE executives said the high-profile event had ratings that were 14 percent better than the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, for which NBC paid $613 million.

The new sports center includes a gymnasium and fitness center, two basketball and volleyball courts, two indoor soccer pitches, a sports cafe and covered seating for 400 fans.

Skicross was added to the Olympic program following the overwhelming popularity of snowboardcross, which made a splash at the 2006 Turin Games. The men race on Sunday, with the women hitting Cypress Mountain on Tuesday.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia _ Final agreement is expected within weeks on a cost-saving change in venue for two sports at the 2012 London Games. London organizers proposed last year that badminton and rhythmic gymnastics be moved to Wembley Arena in northwest London rather than be held at a planned temporary venue near the Olympic Park [...]

VANCOUVER, British Columbia _ Curling, an ancient ice sport that originated in Scotland, is making its quadrennial slide back into the public consciousness at the Vancouver Olympics. Here is some information on the sport that made its Olympic debut in Chamonix, France, in 1924 but then disappeared again until Nagano, Japan, in 1998, where it [...]

They knew they were long shots to get into the Vancouver Games, but still, the notion of another team from the tiny island nation competing in these Olympics _ 22 years after the first Jamaican sled raced in the Calgary Games and sparked the idea for the movie “Cool Runnings” _ was enough to create a buzz.