These athletes made a non-Olympic year entertaining

	Justin Gatlin staked his claim as the world's fastest man, sweeping the 100 and 200 meters at the World Championships. Bill Frakes/SI
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For a non-Olympic year, 2005 had its share of flights and falls -- just enough to whet the appetite for '06, when the Winter Games will be held in Italy in February. Here are some of the highlights and lowlights during the past 12 months:

Tim Montgomery and Justin Gatlin

One sprinter soared while the other was grounded. Gatlin affirmed his claim as the world's fastest man, adding to his gold in the 100 meters at the Athens Games by sweeping both the 100 and 200 at the World Championships in frigid Helsinki, Finland, last summer. Montgomery apparently closed the book on a career of scandal and suspicion by announcing his retirement rather than wait out a two-year suspension handed down in the wake of the BALCO scandal. Montgomery's best results were wiped off the books, including the world-record 9.78 seconds in the 100 he set in 2002, which was surpassed last year by Jamaica's Asafa Powell (9.77).

Bode Miller

It had been two decades since a U.S. male skier won the overall World Cup title, but Miller broke the drought last spring when he became the first Yank since Phil Mahre to finish atop the ski world. The mercurial Miller was known for competing in every race, from the zigzags of slaloms to the icy pitches of downhills, and for crashing in many of them. Yet he also won six of the season's first 10 races and eventually held off a late charge from Austria's Benjamin Raich to take the title.

Aaron Peirsol and Grant Hackett

In a year in which Michael Phelps experimented with new events and Ian Thorpe went on sabbatical, these two stalwarts emerged from the shadows of their famous teammates and just kept winning. Peirsol won both backstroke events at the World Championships in Montreal, adding to his titles from the Athens Olympics. Hackett, the best distance swimmer on the planet for the last decade, won his unprecedented fourth world crown in the 1,500-meter freestyle one week after capturing gold in the 400 free.

Irina Slutskaya

The Russian figure skater was beset by injuries and illness before the season -- she suffered from pneumonia and asthmatic bronchitis, an inflamed heart lining and a knee sprain. At one point, Mikhail Gorbachev's personal physician was brought in to see her after bruises appeared on her legs and her legs began to go numb. What's more, she was trying to help her mother, who was on dialysis, find a suitable kidney donor. Yet through it all, Slutskaya had the best skating year of her career, winning her sixth European title to tie Sonja Henie and Katarina Witt, and winning the world title in front of her home fans in Moscow.