Tom de la Hunty took Dutch bobsledder Edwin van Calker to the Whistler Sliding Center track one last time Tuesday and asked his driver if he could do it.

He wasn’t asking him to win; he was asking him whether he could compete. The coach and his pilot walked the course, and de la Hunty told van Calker to think about it, giving him an hour to make a decision.

Time offered no healing. Van Calker told his coach he just couldn’t drive this track and so on Wednesday the four-man No. 1 sled from the Netherlands pulled out of the Olympics.

Because their driver was terrified.

“I’ve never seen someone get to a major event and not compete because they’re scared. You keep your inner fears to yourself and do it,” de la Hunty told reporters at a news conference. “That’s why it’s such a popular sport in the military. It’s that kind of macho sport. You go over the top together.”

Van Calker, ranked 11th on the World Cup four-man tour, crashed on his first run during two-man practice on Saturday. That and the memories of other crashes, including one that resulted in two teammates in the hospital, were too much for van Calker.

He never felt comfortable on the track during the two-man competition when he and teammate Sybren Jansma finished 14th. He and the rest of the four-man team were absent from two training runs on Tuesday, as he struggled with what to do. It didn’t help that eight sleds crashed on that first day of training.

And so that night, he made the decision to give up.

“I have to look after my boys and can’t close my eyes to that,” he told reporters. “For me, it’s not about performing. It’s about surviving.”

It was a split decision among the team to quit the games, said de la Hunty, who talked about how he told his driver he was making a choice he would regret forever.

For Timothy Beck, who wanted to continue, it was a heart-wrenching outcome to his last Olympics. The man who carried the Dutch flag in the opening ceremonies said there was no tension on the team, but he was upset that he had come to his third Olympics and would not get a chance to compete.

“This was my last chance to do something special,” said the 33-year-old, who competed in the 2002 Winter Olympics and the 2004 Summer Olympics on the track team.

Jansma said he was frustrated because he wanted to show the world the progress the Netherlands has made in bobsled, but safety was paramount.

Arnold van Calker, the fourth member of the team, supported his brother’s decision, pointing to the difference in the size of the two- and four-man sleds. The two-man sled is smaller and easier to control. Arnold van Calker, who had his doubts about the safety of the track, worried his brother had lost his nerve and wouldn’t be able to steer the big sled through turns 11, 12 and 13.

Not even changes to the track on Tuesday could help reassure the brothers.

“It was a lot better, but for us it was maybe too late,” Arnold van Calker said.

De la Hunty pinned some of the blame on Arnold’s wife, saying that she had been worried about her husband’s safety ever since Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili had crashed and died on the same track during the first day of the games.

“When Arnold is scared and upset, obviously it has influence,” he said.

But Arnold van Calker said the death had no influence, and Edwin van Calker agreed that the track was not to blame for his decision.

“It’s a challenging and exciting track. You have to deal with it as a pilot. That comes with the job. Sometimes you deal with it less good,” he said. “It’s nothing to do with the track, just my lack of confidence at the moment.”

Joannie Rochette performed in the first phase of the Olympic women’s figure skating competition two days after her mom died

Things were good for Canadian figure skater Joannie Rochette in the weeks before the Winter Olympics. She had a 2009 world silver medal. Training was going well. And, she told her agent, she had her confidante and source of strength by her side.

“‘I have my mom,’” agent Dave Baden recalled Rochette saying to him at the time. “‘At this point, I know what to do, and I have my mother.’”

“She’s been training for this all her life, so the only thing she needed to get to that next level was the strength she got from her mother,” Baden said.

That strength, he said, is helping her pull through the Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia, even though her mother is now gone.

Therese Rochette died Sunday of a heart attack in Vancouver at age 55, Canadian Olympic officials said. Joannie Rochette opted to stay in the games, and two days later stirred a crowd with a courageous performance that earned the third best score in the women’s short program.

On Thursday, the 24-year-old will finish her drive for her first Olympic medal during the free skate program at Pacific Coliseum.

Rochette, of Ile Dupas, Quebec, “shared everything with her mother,” said Mike Slipchuk, high performance director for Skate Canada.

“You could say it was like a sister-sister relationship rather than just mother-daughter. They talked all the time,” Slipchuk said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

Therese Rochette herself wrote of the bond she had with her daughter in an e-mail interview with The Christian Science Monitor in January. She said that she was the first person her daughter called whenever a problem occurred, though Joannie didn’t need a great amount of support, the Monitor reported this week.

“The hurdles she faces motivate her to rise above them,” Therese Rochette wrote to the Monitor. “Joannie has always been naturally determined and persevering.”

Supporting her love of skating, Rochette’s parents sent their only child to a sports training center about an hour from home when she was 13, with her father, Normand, working overtime to get the money needed, according to Baden and the biography on her Web site.

In the early years at the training center, she lived with a sponsor family for most of the week. Later, she would get her own apartment near the center, visiting her parents on weekends, IMG agent Baden said by phone Wednesday.

Joannie Rochette rose through the ranks, winning novice and junior national titles before winning six straight senior Canadian championships from 2005 to 2010. In 2006, she placed fifth at the Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy, and last year she finished second at the World Figure Skating Championships in Los Angeles, California.

“We’re in a sport when skaters can come in at 15 or 16, win a medal and leave. Joannie has continued to develop and get stronger, and now, in her 20s, she’s hitting her peak,” said Slipchuk, himself a 1992 Olympic figure skater for Canada. “She’s put herself in the upper echelon.”

Rochette aspires to more than just skating excellence. A science student at Quebec’s College Andre-Grasset, she “loves and wants to give back to [skating] but wants eventually to go on and do something in a different field,” perhaps something medical, Baden said.

Last summer, she went to Peru with World Vision, in part to record material promoting the relief agency’s programs. While there, she visited women and children living in poverty, Baden said.

“She spent days with kids, going to their schools, learning about nutritional needs, learning what is needed to get better education and living conditions and improve health,” Baden said. “She’s a shy person, but she was able to relate to the kids and hug them and show affection. She’s strong and caring.”

Now she’s back on ice, aiming for a medal — this time without her mom. Her father, who’d traveled with Therese to Vancouver to watch their daughter, told Joannie of her mother’s death Sunday morning. Supported by a close circle of people — including her father, her boyfriend and her longtime coach — she practiced that day.

At the end of Tuesday’s performance, Rochette wept in the arms of her coach, Manon Perron. Rochette and Perron don’t plan to address the media until after Thursday’s performance, Slipchuk said.

“She handled [Tuesday] well,” Slipchuk said. “The crowd was so supportive, and at the end of the program you saw the release of what was inside of her.”

Rochette’s comment to Baden about her mother a couple months ago struck him at the time as poignant. He said he remembered it upon hearing of Therese Rochette’s death.

“Her mother is inside her heart and soul, so she’ll be there for her,” he said, “and [Joannie] will draw from that strength.”

Sachin Tendulkar created history by firing the first double century in one-day internationals as India put South Africa to the sword in Gwalior.

The 36-year-old was in indomitable form as he bludgeoned 25 fours and three sixes in a stunning 200 off 147 balls.

It passed the previous best of 194, set by Pakistan’s Saeed Anwar in 1997 and Zimbabwe’s Charles Coventry last year.

And it led India, aided by a fabulous cameo of 68 off 35 balls from Mahendra Dhoni, to a superb 401-3 from 50 overs.

Tendulkar, whose previous best one-day knock was the 186 not out he scored against New Zealand in 1999, is already the leading run-scorer in Test and ODI cricket.

But to have reached such a landmark, with a single in the final over, only serves to underline his class and add to the legacy that already surrounds arguably the finest batsman to have played the game.

His innings was typified by wristy strokes, trademark boundary shots and, above all, stamina as he batted through the entire innings.

He passed the previous best score in ODIs off 140 deliveries before taking his time over the final six runs, completing his double century with a single off Charl Langeveldt four balls from the end of the innings.

Despite clearly suffering with cramp towards the end, Tendulkar was not to be denied and the packed Gwalior crowd were in raptures as he brought up the record.

Around him, Dinesh Karthik and Dhoni provided able support.

Karthik, who came to the crease in just the fourth over after sending a high catch down to Dale Steyn at third man off Wayne Parnell, struck four fours and three sixes on his way to an 85-ball knock of 79.

He departed when he mistimed a pull shot to Herschelle Gibbs at mid-wicket but Yusuf Pathan upped the pace with 36 off 23 balls, including two huge sixes.

However, not even he could match Dhoni’s remarkable strokeplay, the India captain providing a staggering display of power hitting with four sixes and seven fours that allowed Tendulkar to calmly build his record-breaking innings at the other end.

It’s more than two hours before snowboard practice begins, two hours before Robert Beck will take his first picture, and he is trudging up the steep icy slope that is one lip of the halfpipe.

Temperatures are just above freezing on Cypress Mountain, and Beck, a Sports Illustrated photographer for 24 years, is steadily ambling up the hill to stake out his position near the top. The climb is just 160 meters, but try doing it with a 50- or 60-pound pack on your back and a bad knee repaired just three weeks ago.

It’s going to be worth it; Beck knows precisely where he needs to be to get the perfect picture when the overwhelming gold medal favorite Shaun White performs.

For the next nine hours Beck won’t leave his spot — he’s not allowed to come back down until the competition is over — so he has a bag full of equipment and provisions. He carries three camera bodies, four lenses, several radios to remotely trigger cameras and a bunch of Cliff bars. (McDonald’s might sponsor these Games, but there’s no Golden Arches on the hill).

He knows where to be to get the shot he wants because Beck and his assistant, Kohjiro “Kojo” Kinno have been photographing White for months, learning his every move and tendency.

For instance, Beck knows the best time to shoot a close-up of White is during his first practice run because the snowboarder doesn’t go as high then.

They went to three World Cup events and the X Games, shooting White and his competitors in preparation for the Olympics. Then once in Vancouver it was off to every practice to test out different angles to shoot.

“We’re trying to frame it just right,” Beck said on the drive from his hotel to the venue. “On their tricks, snowboarders are spinning so fast. Sometimes you never see their faces. You don’t want to get pictures of rear ends or the bottom of the board. We want to get their faces if we can.”

Beck, who has more than 50 Sports Illustrated covers to his credit, is frustrated even before he climbs the hill. Kinno is an important part of the “we” he talks about. Kinno has been there for him for nearly seven years, handing him the right equipment, fixing things when they go wonky, running cards back to the work area and often being the voice of reason. But that won’t happen today because officials wouldn’t give Kinno a photographer’s armband. He’s not even allowed to shoot pictures from a lower area of the venue.

It’s almost like a pitcher without his catcher, though the understated Kinno often is the one who shakes Beck off. And then there’s the eye roll. They have this way of disagreeing that only longtime friends can have. There’s often disagreement, Kinno says, but they always come to an understanding.

On this Wednesday at the halfpipe, Kinno will have to stay in front of a laptop all day, trying patiently to wait for runners to bring him the cards from the cameras. At least he has company. John Birk, photographer Al Tielemans’ assistant, can’t go with his photographer either. Tielemans will spot up on the other side of the pipe while photographer Bob Martin will be positioned at the bottom.

Just before setting off for the hill, Beck gets a call from Steve Fine, SI’s director of photography. Fine has a request for Beck to get White at a certain angle. Beck’s sure he can’t and tells Fine that he has a great shot in mind, looking up the pipe as White soars into action. Fine likes that but wants to have one with the crowd in the background. Beck and Kinno agree; it’s not a clean shot from where Beck will be, but they can try and see what Fine says.

You’d think that Beck can call the shots, so to speak, and send in his favorites from the 1,400 images he will take this day, but that’s not the way it works. He lets the photo editors pick the ones they want.

“I don’t suggest anything to those guys,” Beck said. “I can’t control it. I make the best pictures I can, send them, in and it’s out of my hands.’

He seems cool with that. He’s much more concerned with getting a shot that is different from other photogs. It’s difficult — well, almost impossible really — to be inventive with this assignment, though. There are going to be several other photographers in the same area, and dozens all over the pipe. He’ll try to nail it the best he can by using a different lens than others near him (maybe a 35 mm while lying down in the snow) and also through the use of a camera on a 12-foot stick he’ll hold up. There’s one big issue, though, with White.

Beck says when he has used a remote-fired camera, he’s able to get other snowboarders in the frame perfectly, but White soars so high that much of the time he’s at the top of the frame, if he’s even in the picture.

Beck’s assignment is not solely White; it’s just that the 23-year-old budding legend is such a prohibitive favorite it makes sense to Beck that’s his main target. He’s shooting for the magazine, but he also hopes the Web site can use his photos. In fact, the Web is much more of a sure thing this time. Sports Illustrated’s deadlines aren’t until the weekend, and the magazine won’t arrive at subscribers’ homes until a week after the event, so Beck figures it’s unlikely this gig has cover potential. And with Lindsey Vonn such a compelling story, too, he’s not sure that he’ll even get one image in the magazine.

Celebration photos always play well, but only the photographers at the bottom will have White right in front of them. Beck halfway wishes he could shoot those photos instead of Martin.

“We’re all basically competitive,” he says wistfully. “But you can’t be both places.”

White did the expected and easily won gold. Back in the work area, Beck says not everything went well. Counting practice, each rider who made the final made nine runs. Beck says he solved a problem with one of the remote cameras in time to shoot the first practice session, but at some point he accidentally hit the focus.

“Everything looked like Mr. Magoo [took them],” he said.

At least 75 percent of photography is problem solving, he said. (Two-and-half percent of photography is skill, he joked). It’s knowing where to set up, knowing your equipment and knowing how to fix that equipment when it breaks. But while you’re fixing things, you’re missing pictures, and it’s frustrating.

And then there’s just plain bad luck. Beck says that during one practice run a TV cameraman ran in front of him, snapping pictures on his phone. But these are the things you deal with, he says.

He’s a little down at dinner afterward because he caught a glimpse of the some of the other photographers’ pictures. As he had predicted, a bunch of shots with White, his face one big smile, holding the U.S. flag.

But later his mood changes when back at the hotel suite he logs onto the SI.com Web site. There is a picture, looking up the pipe of White, cast against a clear night sky, soaring through the air, on his way to a gold medal.

As for the magazine, he’ll be waiting, just like the rest of us

Golfer Tiger Woods will break his silence Friday, more than 80 days after his infamous car crash that spiraled into a sex scandal.

Woods will apologize for his behavior at a news conference at 11 a.m. (ET) in front of a small hand-picked crowd that will not be allowed to ask questions, according to his agent Mark Steinberg.

The Golf Writers Association of America has confirmed it will boycott the event even though the group was supposed to have three members there, said Jim Gray, a correspondent for the Golf Channel. The group was upset about the ban on reporters’ questions, Gray added.

Blog: No apologies Tiger, just be real

Despite the controlled atmosphere, Gray said many have been waiting to hear from Woods directly.

“I think it’s good that he’s finally having something to say instead of releasing another statement on his Web site,” he said.

Former sportscaster Pat O’Brien criticized the way Woods seemed to be controlling the news conference.

“He might as well have done this on YouTube,” O’Brien said Thursday on CNN’s Larry King Live. “But I do think that he’s got to subject himself to some sort of question and answer at some point, otherwise people are just going to — it’s already a disaster.”

“If you listened to sports talk radio, he’s just getting ripped to shreds,” O’Brien added.

Panelists weigh in on Woods’ expected apology

Steinberg said the golfer feels many of the issues he is dealing with are private, but he still owes his fans an explanation.

“While Tiger feels that what happened is fundamentally a matter between him and his wife, he also recognizes that he has hurt and let down a lot of other people who were close to him. He also let down his fans. He wants to begin the process of making amends, and that’s what he’s going to discuss,” Steinberg said.

The news conference is scheduled as many of the world’s top golfers are competing at the WGC Match Play in Arizona — a competition sponsored by Accenture, one of the companies that ended their relationship with Woods following allegations of infidelity.

“He [Woods] has got to come out at some point and I suppose he might want to get something back against the sponsors that dropped him,” British player and world number eight Rory McIlroy said in a press conference at the Arizona course.

Fellow European Sergio Garcia added: “To tell you the truth I’m not really interested because I think it is in the past already — I’m looking forward to seeing him back on tour and see him playing. We all love watching the best player in the world play golf.”

Tim Finchem, the commissioner of the PGA Tour, told reporters: “I don’t know what he is going to say or do after his rehabilitation … [Everyone] will have to make up their own minds.”

On November 27, Woods crashed his black Cadillac Escalade into a fire hydrant and a tree just a few days after the National Enquirer reported he was having an affair with New York nightclub hostess Rachel Uchitel. Uchitel has denied having an affair with Woods.

A day after he paid his $164 traffic ticket, Woods’ seemingly perfect world began to crumble under what would eventually become an avalanche of allegations of infidelity threatening his 5-year marriage to Elin Nordegren.

The couple have two children, 2-year-old Sam and 1-year-old Charlie.

Woods issued an apology for “transgressions” that had let his family down, as several women reported they had affairs with the golfer. One woman, Jaimee Grubbs, allegedly had Woods on a voicemail asking her to take his name off her cell phone because “my wife went through my phone and may be calling you.”

Several of Woods’ major sponsors, including AT&T and Accenture, ended their business relationships with Woods following the crash and the exposure of his marriage troubles.

But other companies, including Nike and Gatorade, continue to sponsor Woods, who has taken a break from professional golf. Procter & Gamble’s Gillette said it would stop airing commercials featuring the golfer for a while.