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In the weeks leading up to the 2016 Olympics, Rio de Janeiros sailing venue was not a pretty picture. Despite the host citys successes in clearing away a significant quantity of sewage from the Marina da Gloria, competitors continued to report large flotillas of trash -- made up of everything from Coke cans to items of household furniture -- obstructing their practice runs in Guanabara Bay.Organizers insisted that plans were in place to remove such obstacles during the Games, with spotters in helicopters providing the GPS coordinates of debris to garbage-clearing ships below.If the sailors themselves remained skeptical, it was because they knew this would not be the first time floating detritus had found its way onto an Olympic course. In fact, a variety of athletes over the course of Olympic history -- from runners to swimmers to gymnasts -- have had to endure less-than-ideal conditions during the most prestigious competition in sports.Dirty little secretAsk American windsurfer Mike Gebhardt about his experience at Barcelona in 1992.Oh yeah, he says with a laugh. I sailed right by a dead cow!Although Spanish authorities commissioned four ships to clear the Port Olímpic venue on a daily basis, competitors still found themselves navigating garbage drifts and animal carcasses. During one race, a plastic bag got caught on Gebhardts board. He lost six places before he was able to remove it.I kept looking and looking because I was going slow as s---, he recalls. I thought maybe I had weeds, but Id look down and, because the plastic was clear, I couldnt see it. Finally, I noticed just a little bitty air bubble coming up off the edge.That incident might have cost Gebhardt a gold medal. In the 1992 windsurfing event, points based on finishing position were compiled over 10 races. Gebhardt finished just a fraction behind the winner, Franck David, and far ahead of bronze medalist Lars Kleppich.Not that Gebhardt feels bitter about his experience.Theres two ways to look at it, he says. You can get mad and make up a nice story -- Oh, you know, garbage cost me my medal -- or you can empower yourself and say, Hey, the other guy was a little more consistent. I could have recognized that problem more quickly.The polluted water that surrounds major coastal cities is, for Gebhardt, the worlds dirty little secret. If trash impedes sailors in Rio, it wont be anything new.Crazy old GamesQuite possibly the most chaotic Games of all time took place on American soil, in St. Louis, back in 1904. The event had originally been awarded to Chicago, but a combination of political pressure and funding issues saw it relocated to the city that was already hosting the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (commonly known as the St. Louis Worlds Fair) the same year.The 1904 marathon remains one of the most bizarre and brutal events in Olympic history. Commencing in 90-degree heat, it featured seven hills -- some as high as 300 feet -- and only two opportunities for the competitors to get a drink of water, the last of those at a well 12 miles from the finish.Runners were forced to dodge traffic on public roads, and historic accounts suggest a South African runner was chased off course and across a cornfield by wild dogs. Fewer than half of those competing made it to the finish line, and the man who got there first, Fred Lorz, had hitched a ride in a car for 11 miles.Yet the marathon runners got off easy compared to those competing in the aquatic events. Swimming, diving and water polo were conducted at the Life Saving Exhibition Lake, whose title would later take on a cruel irony, following reports that several athletes who competed there died within a year of the Games.The venue, named to highlight the U.S. Coast Guard demonstrations it hosted during the Worlds Fair, was created by diverting water from the Mississippi into a man-made reservoir. By the time the Olympics began, it had been sitting stagnant, with no filtration system, for months. Worse, it had likely been contaminated with manure from the livestock that grazed outside the Worlds Fairs nearby agricultural exhibition.The longer you were exposed to those waters, the more risk you assumed, says Olympic historian Robert K. Barney, co-author of a paper on the 1904 aquatic events. With water polo, you were in there a lot. Its possible that these stories are apocryphal, but there is some strong suggestion that two or three of the U.S. water polo players died because of their exposure to that E. coli-infested water.In a more immediate sense, swimmers in St. Louis were hindered by the absence of such modern aides as starting blocks and lane lines. That, though, was hardly surprising. The Olympics in the early part of the 20th century were routinely haphazard in organization, and the history books are thick with stories of similarly poor planning.At the 1900 Games in Paris, the discus event took place in a narrow space between two rows of trees, whose limbs caught some of the throws. Twelve years later, the cycling time trial in Stockholm extended for a wildly ambitious 196 miles. Cross-country running was taken off the Olympic schedule altogether after a 1924 debacle in which fewer than half the entrants made it to the end of a course that featured knee-high thistles and a close encounter with a power plant belching fumes.Modern mishapMore recent examples of inadequate Olympic venues are harder to come by and generally less dramatic. Even host nations who struggled to complete building works on time -- such as Montreal in 1976 and Athens in 2004 -- managed to ensure the events themselves were not compromised.Besides sailing, there have been only occasional instances of venues failing to provide athletes with good conditions for competing. The most glaring such case came at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, where the vault apparatus was set 5 centimeters too low for the final of the womens all-around gymnastics competition.This mistake might have gone unnoticed if not for Australias Allana Slater. Two groups of gymnasts had completed their rotations on the vault and committed an unusually high number of errors?before Slater got ready to compete with the third group. She had been too focused on herself to notice her rivals struggles, but as soon as she lined up for a practice run, she noticed that something was not right.I was standing at the end of the vault run, and I remember saying to some of the girls, Does the vault look low to you? Slater says. I dont know if they didnt understand me, speaking in English, or they just werent sure, but as I did my one warm-up turn, I knew.I was quite a short gymnast, so I was always going up onto the vault. All of a sudden, Im going down onto into it instead. As soon as I landed, I tried to tell my coach, and hes like, Allana, get off the mat! I just remember thinking, Im not getting off here until theyve measured it because theres no way this is right.Officials were summoned and quickly confirmed the mistake. The vault was adjusted to its proper height, and all athletes who had been affected were offered the chance for a do-over. For some, though, the damage had already been done. Great Britains Annika Reeder was forced to withdraw after she got injured on a bad landing, and others had gone on to make further mistakes as they tried to compensate for their poor vault scores.I really do feel for the athletes for whom that was the first apparatus, Slater says. It may have totally spun them out for the rest of the final. I know that Svetlana Khorkina was a front-runner at the 2000 Olympics, going for the gold medal in the all-around. She made an error due to the vault height being wrong, and that unfortunately led to another error on the next apparatus.A subsequent investigation by the governing body of gymnastics found that the vault had been set too low as a result of human error. Additional controls were put in place to make sure that could not be repeated at future events.In the grand scheme of Olympic history, such a story is no great scandal. Officials in Sydney were neither as negligent as those in St Louis 112 years ago nor as slow in reacting to criticism as those in Rio have been with this summers sailing event. But for the likes of Khorkina and Reeder, those 5 centimeters made all the difference in the world. Cheap Air Max 270 . -- New England Revolution goalkeeper Matt Reis is retiring after a 16-year career to become the goalie coach for the Los Angeles Galaxy. Nike Air Max Sale . Newcastle dominated in the early stages but City weathered the storm and then raised its game in extra time. Negredo broke the deadlock from close range after a simple move in the 99th minute before Dzeko took the ball round goalkeeper Tim Krul to seal the victory in the 105th. https://www.wholesalenikeairmaxshoes.com/ . 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Garnett was dealt -- along with Paul Pierce -- to Brooklyn during the off-season. Teams in the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament have at least one thing in common: theyre all trying to replace a lot of production after losing their best scorer from last season.The tournament begins Wednesday in Paradise Island, Bahamas, with No. 10 Louisville, No. 20 Baylor and No. 24 Michigan State headlining the eight-team field. And after players such as the Spartans Denzel Valentine and the Cardinals Damion Lee now gone, each team is sorting out how their offenses run and whether the guy they pegged as their new go-to scorer can handle that role now that hes atop the defensive scouting report.Early in the year, the big thing for us is just seeing what chemistry, what rotations, and trying to get a flow, Baylor coach Scott Drew said. Its tough on players and coaches early in the year, because a lot of times in practice people might be good and in the games they might be great, or they might be great in practice and just average in the games.So youve got to give them experience and see what they can do when the lights come on.The Atlantis field includes LSU, Old Dominion, St. Johns, VCU and Wichita State. Each team plays three games in three days, with the championship set for Friday.---Some other things to know about this weeks Battle 4 Atlantis:TOUGHEN UP: Michigan State coach Tom Izzo wants more from his Spartans (2-2) after a bumpy start that includes losing on a last-second shot to Arizona, managing just 48 points in a 21-point loss to current No. 1 Kentucky, then hanging on to beat Florida Gulf Coast by one at home Sunday. The Spartans open against St. Johns (2-1) in the first meeting between the programs since 1979. I want to figure out whether Im going to start a different lineup to get what I want, Izzo said. Maybe different guys have got to come off the bench and then Ive got to do a better job. So dont anyone blame a player. Ive got to do a better job of making them tougher.PLAYERS TO WATCH: St. John redshirt freshman Marcus LoVett and Baylor junior college transfer Jo Lual-Acuil Jr. are putting up some big numbers. The 6-foot LoVett ranks in the top 20 nationally in scoring at 24.3 points wwhile playing alongside fellow freshman Shamorie Ponds (17.dddddddddddd points) in the Red Storms backcourt. Meanwhile, the 7-foot Lual-Acuil ranks among the national leaders in rebounding (10 per game) and blocked shots (5.3) for the Bears (3-0).VIRGINIAN FOES: VCU (3-0) and Old Dominion (2-0) are separated by roughly 90 miles in the state of Virginia, but they could end up traveling more than 800 miles south just to bump into each other in the Bahamas. While theyre on opposite sides of the bracket, the Rams and Monarchs could play then have a rematch roughly two weeks later with an already scheduled meeting Dec. 10 at Old Dominion.KEEPING IT GOING: Wichita State (4-0) might be in the biggest transition of all the Battle 4 Atlantis teams after losing Ron Baker and Fred VanFleet, two mainstays who were part of the 2013 Final Four team and a run of five straight NCAA Tournaments. So far, the Shockers are showing a lot of balance with Zach Brown, Markis McDuffie and Darral Willis Jr. each averaging around 11 points to lead an offense coming off a 116-point showing -- the programs best in a game since 1988 -- against Maryland-Eastern Shore. The Shockers face LSU (3-0) on Wednesday.BIG NAMES: Theres a couple of Naismith Hall of Fame coaches roaming the sideline with Izzo and Louisvilles Rick Pitino, two men with approaching 1,300 career wins and three NCAA championships. And there will be a third Hall of Famer arriving after the tournament in Kentucky coach John Calipari, whose top-ranked Wildcats appear in the separate Atlantis Showcase game against Arizona State on Monday night to wrap up a big week at the Atlantis resort.---AP Basketball Writer Stephen Hawkins in Dallas; AP Sports Writer Dave Skretta in Kansas City, Kansas; and AP freelancer Tim Robinson in East Lansing, Michigan, contributed to this report.---Follow Aaron Beard on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/aaronbeardap---More AP college basketball at http://collegebasketball.ap.org and http://www.twitter.com/AP-Top25 ' ' '