Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers made his first Olympic appearance in Beijing, helping team USA to the gold medal. The 2008 NBA MVP, 29, has said that winning a gold medal would be more important than the NBA title. "When you put on a USA uniform, you're playing for something bigger than all that," he said. "You're representing your country, and our country is going up against the other country, trying to prove who's best. For me, that holds more weight."

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Archer Khatuna Lorig competed for Team USA in Beijing but has represented two other countries in past Olympics: Russia in 1992 (where she won bronze in the team competition) and Georgia in 1996 and 2000. Lorig, 34, immigrated to the U.S. after the 2000 Sydney Olympics and missed the 2004 Athens competitions because she had not received her U.S. citizenship. Now a fully fledged citizen, she'll return to Games under the U.S.

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Julie Ertel, 35, of Placentia has a medal from the 2000 Games, where she helped the U.S. women's water polo team take home the silver. In her second Olympics -- Ertel competed in the triathlon but came away without a medal.

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Kimberly Rhode, 29, of El Monte competed in women's skeet shooting and took home the silver medal. With two gold medals (2004, '06) and a bronze (2000) under her belt, she took home her fourth Olympic medal at Beijing.

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U.S. men's water polo team captain Tony Azevedo, 26, returned to compete in his second Olympics in Beijing and helped Team USA take home the silver medal. In the 2004 Athens Games, the Long Beach native led the U.S. squad with 15 goals.

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Bob Malaythong, left, of Rockville, Md., and partner Howard Bach, of San Francisco took their shot a badminton gold. On the Beijing Olympics, Bach tells USA Today: "Badminton in Beijing is huge Ñ it's one of their top three sports....The challenges that we face as athletes here is exposure. Having sponsors ... helps put us in the spotlight because we normally don't get attention. But in Beijing it's different because it's popular there."

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Diving champion Troy Dumais, 28, of Ventura made his third trip to the Olympics in Beijing.

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Sprinter Allyson Felix of Los Angeles won the silver medal in the Women's 200m and helped Team USA win the gold medal in the Women's 4x400m relay at Beijing. The USC graduate has drawn praise for volunteering to participate in a U.S. Anti-Doping Agency program, in which athletes in the 2008 games were subjected to an extraordinary number of drug tests to prove they were clean.

PHOTOGRAPH BY: Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times

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Brenda Villa was the captain of the 2008 women's water polo team that won the silver medal. To her coach, she was the "Wayne Gretzky of women's water polo."

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La Jolla native Carrie Johnson competed in the women's 500-meter single-kayak race in Beijing. It was her second Olympics.

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Mike Day of Santa Clarita was the first athlete of three to capture a spot on the U.S. BMX Olympic team. He won the sliver medal in Men's BMX in Beijing, which was the Olympic debut for Day and bicycle motorcross.

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