Sports Beat

A pool for love? German freestyle swimmer Franziska van Almsick—who won a total of eight medals in the past three Olympic Games—recently dispelled retirement rumors by telling the German tabloid Bild that she'll compete in the 2004 Games. More important, she divulged that her favorite place to have sex is "in the water." Franziska, 24, who is dating heavily tattooed German Olympic team handball player Stefan Kretzschmar, also said that from a competitive standpoint, "sex has always given me a big boost." Thanks for sharing, Franziska, and please pass the chlorine.

? Pat Riley may be the boss of the Heat, but when it comes to the Boss, he's just another groupie with great hair. Riley has attended a half-dozen shows on Bruce Springsteen's current tour, including concerts in Chicago and L.A. Springsteen's hit The Rising is played at home games when Riley walks onto the floor, and he has incorporated the song into practices. "I'm rising up, man," says Riley, whose Heat was 1-7 at week's end. With Springsteen playing Saturday at the Heat's home floor, AmericanAirlines Arena, Riley is thinking about violating one of his vaunted rules and keeping his team in town the night before a road game so he can attend the show. The Heat would fly to Orlando the next day for a 5 p.m. start against the Magic. "It gives me goose bumps when a man who's worked hard on a career for 30 or 40 years, a musician, gets a calling," Riley says of Springsteen whose album is based largely on interviews he did with relatives of those who died in the Sept. 11 tragedy. "He got those people who were impacted to allow him into their lives, into their feelings."

?Ever wondered what an NBA player's bedroom looks like? Neither have we, but Celebrity Bedroom Retreats ($30, Rockport Publishers), a recently published book by New York City interior designer Joanna Lee Doster, provides something perhaps better: an intimate look at the red and ocher Moroccan-style sleeping quarters of SI swimsuit model Tyra Banks, girlfriend of Kings forward Chris Webber. If you must see where athletes wake up, the book features the bedroom of 76ers big man Derrick Coleman (white floor-to-ceiling wall units, a 70-inch TV) and the mahogany chest and ceramic fireplace that grace the bedroom of NFL quarterback turned CBS broadcaster Boomer Esiason. Doster had difficulty landing other sports stars. " Derek Jeter didn't want his bedroom photographed," she says.

?The wedding was in Belgium, but nobody waffled when 20-year-old tennis star Justine Henin (No. 5 in the world) married longtime boyfriend Pierre-Yves Hardenne, 22, a tennis coach, in the rural village of Marloie last I Saturday....

IRL driver George Mack, the second African-American to compete on that circuit, will appear on the Nov. 27 episode of Shipmates, the syndicated reality dating series....

If it comes down to Reese Witherspoon versus Pam Anderson, we're definitely tuning in: The Austrian ski resort S�ll is hosting its first Ski World Championships for Blondes next month. The competition is open to women only, and all nonblondes can get a dye job right on the slopes, giving new meaning to the term "highlight films." First prize, by the way, is a trip to Sweden.