Real Salt Lake's Sturgis is off Olympic team

Real Salt Lake's Nathan Sturgis is not heading to Beijing after all. The 21-year-old midfielder re-aggravated his hamstring this week at the pre-Olympic training camp in Palo Alto, Calif., and will be replaced by FC Dallas' Dax McCarty.

Sturgis originally injured the hamstring on April 19 at Toronto, but after nearly three months of recovery he was confident he was back to full strength when he was named to the Olympic team last Thursday.

It seemed like a gamble for U.S. coach Peter Nowak to select Sturgis in the first place, a gamble that didn't pay off.

Sturgis has only played in two games this year for Real Salt Lake. Sturgis should be rejoining RSL later this week to continue rehabbing his hamstring.

With 12 games remaining in the season for RSL, there's still time for Sturgis to recover and make a valuable contribution to his club team despite the frustration of missing the Olympics.

Goalkeeper Chris Seitz is the only RSL player remaining on the Olympic team, which departs for Hong Kong on Friday for a pre-Olympic tournament.

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E-mail: jedward@desnews.com