Showing posts with label olympics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label olympics. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
the other man at the podium. wow.
When Tommie Smith and John Carlos gave a gloved Black Power salute on the Olympic podium in October 1968 it sent a shockwave through sport. But what happened to the other man on the platform?
Forty years ago, two black Americans, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, won gold and bronze medals in the 200m final at the Mexico Olympics, and used their time on the victory podium to protest with a Black Power salute.
The photograph of the two men with their heads bowed, each of them with an arm raised in the air and a fist clothed in a black leather glove, is one of the most striking images of the 20th Century.
Their actions caused havoc at the Games, ensuring the pair were ejected from the US Olympic team. But three men won medals in that race, and the consequences for the third athlete on the podium would be every bit as significant.
The silver medallist was a laid-back Australian, an up-and-coming runner called Peter Norman who, in the words of his coach, "blossomed like a cactus" when he got to Mexico. While observers expected the Americans to make a clean sweep of the 200m medals, Norman kept them interested by breaking the world record in the heats.
 | BLACK POWER SALUTE Raised fist traditionally used as salute by left-wingers and radicals Origins of gesture's adoption unknown Fist symbols adopted by Black Panthers in the 1960s |
An apprentice butcher from Melbourne, he had learned to run in a pair of borrowed spikes. More significantly, he had grown up in a Salvation Army family, with a set of simple but strong values instilled from an early age.
As his nephew Matt Norman, director of the new film, Salute, remembers: "The whole Norman family were brought up in the Salvos, so we knew we had to look after our fellow man, but that was about it."
In Mexico, that was enough for Norman, who felt compelled to join forces with his fellow athletes in their stand against racial inequality.
 Norman was one of Australia's foremost athletes but was ostracised |
The three were waiting for the victory ceremony when Norman discovered what was about to happen. It was Norman who, when John Carlos found he'd forgotten his black gloves, suggested the two runners shared Smith's pair, wearing one each on the podium.
And when, to the crowd's astonishment, they flung their fists in the air, the Australian joined the protest in his own way, wearing a badge from the Olympic Project for Human Rights that they had given him.
The repercussions for Norman were immediate. Seen as a trouble-maker who had lent a hand to those desecrators of the Olympic flag, he was ostracised by the Australian establishment. Despite qualifying 13 times over and being ranked fifth in the world, he was not sent to the following Munich games, where Australia had no sprinter for the first time in the Olympics. Norman retired soon afterwards without winning another title.
Sydney hope
Divorce and ill health all weighed down on him over the next few years. He suffered depression, drank heavily and grew addicted to painkillers after a lengthy hospital stay. During that time, he used his silver medal as a door-stop.
One of the things that kept him going was the hope that he would be welcomed and recognised at the Sydney Olympics. As his nephew puts it: "Then his life would have come full circle."
 The US monument to the protest has an empty space |
He was to be disappointed. In 2000, Peter Norman found himself the only Australian Olympian to be excluded from making a VIP lap of honour at the Games, despite his status as one of the best sprinters in the home country's history.
But the US athletics team were not going to ignore this omission. They invited Norman to stay at their own lodgings during the games, and welcomed him as one of their own. In an extraordinary turn of events, it was hurdling legend Ed Moses who greeted him at the door, and that year's 200m champion Michael Johnson who hugged him, saying: "You are my hero."
In 2004, Peter's nephew Matt started work on Salute, a documentary that, for the first time, brought all three athletes together in a room to tell their story of that day in Mexico.
Two years later, Peter had just seen the film for the first time and was about to embark on a publicity tour to the US when he had a heart attack and died. Tommie Smith and John Carlos, to whom he had always stayed close, travelled to Melbourne to act as pallbearers at his funeral, and remember their friend.
Empty place
"Peter didn't have to take that button [badge], Peter wasn't from the United States, Peter was not a black man, Peter didn't have to feel what I felt, but he was a man," says Carlos.
"He was that committed, and I didn't know that," adds Smith.
In 2004, a 23ft statue honouring Smith and Carlos was erected in San Jose State University. This huge replica shows each of them with their fists in the air, just as they stood four decades ago in Mexico.
 Smith and Carlos were pallbearers at Norman's funeral |
The place for the silver medallist is empty. It is where students and tourists stand to have their picture taken, when they want to take their place in sporting history.
In the film now being shown all over Australia, the absent athlete reflects on his legacy.
"I'm a firm believer that in a victory ceremony for the Olympics, there's three guys that stand up there, each one's been given about a square metre of God's earth to stand on, and what any one of the three choose to do with his little square metre at that stage is entirely up to him.
"If it hadn't been for that demonstration on that day, it would have just been another silver medal that Australia picked up along the line. No one would ever have heard of Peter Norman."
Monday, August 25, 2008
Somalia’s runners provide inspiration
BEIJING – Samia Yusuf Omar headed back to Somalia Sunday, returning to the small two-room house in Mogadishu shared by seven family members. Her mother lives there, selling fruits and vegetables. Her father is buried there, the victim of a wayward artillery shell that hit their home and also killed Samia’s aunt and uncle.
This is the Olympic story we never heard.
It’s about a girl whose Beijing moment lasted a mere 32 seconds – the slowest 200-meter dash time out of the 46 women who competed in the event. Thirty-two seconds that almost nobody saw but that she carries home with her, swelled with joy and wonderment. Back to a decades-long civil war that has flattened much of her city. Back to an Olympic program with few Olympians and no facilities. Back to meals of flat bread, wheat porridge and tap water.
“I have my pride,” she said through a translator before leaving China. “This is the highest thing any athlete can hope for. It has been a very happy experience for me. I am proud to bring the Somali flag to fly with all of these countries, and to stand with the best athletes in the world.”
There are many life stories that collide in each Olympics – many intriguing tales of glory and tragedy. Beijing delivered the electricity of Usain Bolt and the determination of Michael Phelps. It left hearts heavy with the disappointment of Liu Xiang and the heartache of Hugh McCutcheon.
But it also gave us Samia Yusuf Omar – one small girl from one chaotic country – and a story that might have gone unnoticed if it hadn’t been for a roaring half-empty stadium.
***
It was Aug. 19, and the tiny girl had crossed over seven lanes to find her starting block in her 200-meter heat. She walked past Jamaica’s Veronica Campbell-Brown – the eventual gold medalist in the event. Samia had read about Campbell-Brown in track and field magazines and once watched her in wonderment on television. As a cameraman panned down the starting blocks, it settled on lane No. 2, on a 17-year old girl with the frame of a Kenyan distance runner. Samia’s biography in the Olympic media system contained almost no information, other than her 5-foot-4, 119-pound frame. There was no mention of her personal best times and nothing on previous track meets. Somalia, it was later explained, has a hard time organizing the records of its athletes.
She looked so odd and out of place among her competitors, with her white headband and a baggy, untucked T-shirt. The legs on her wiry frame were thin and spindly, and her arms poked out of her sleeves like the twigs of a sapling. She tugged at the bottom of her shirt and shot an occasional nervous glance at the other runners in her heat. Each had muscles bulging from beneath their skin-tight track suits. Many outweighed Samia by nearly 40 pounds.
After introductions, she knelt into her starting block.
***
The country of Somalia sent two athletes to the Beijing Games – Samia and distance runner Abdi Said Ibrahim, who competed in the men’s 5,000-meter event. Like Samia, Abdi finished last in his event, overmatched by competitors who were groomed for their Olympic moment. Somalia has only loose-knit programs supporting its Olympians, few coaches, and few facilities. With a civil war tearing the city apart since the Somali government’s collapse in 1991, Mogadishu Stadium has become one of the bloodiest pieces of real estate in the city – housing U.N. forces in the early 1990s and now a military compound for insurgents.
That has left the country’s track athletes to train in Coni Stadium, an artillery-pocked structure built in 1958 which has no track, endless divots, and has been overtaken by weeds and plants.
“Sports are not a priority for Somalia,” said Duran Farah, vice president of the Somali Olympic Committee. “There is no money for facilities or training. The war, the security, the difficulties with food and everything – there are just many other internal difficulties to deal with.”
That leaves athletes such as Samia and 18-year old Abdi without the normal comforts and structure enjoyed by almost every other athlete in the Olympic Games. They don’t receive consistent coaching, don’t compete in meets on a regular basis and struggle to find safety in something as simple as going out for a daily run.
When Samia cannot make it to the stadium, she runs in the streets, where she runs into roadblocks of burning tires and refuse set out by insurgents. She is often bullied and threatened by militia or locals who believe that Muslim women should not take part in sports. In hopes of lessening the abuse, she runs in the oppressive heat wearing long sleeves, sweat pants and a head scarf. Even then, she is told her place should be in the home – not participating in sports.
“For some men, nothing is good enough,” Farah said.
Even Abdi faces constant difficulties, passing through military checkpoints where he is shaken down for money. And when he has competed in sanctioned track events, gun-toting insurgents have threatened his life for what they viewed as compliance with the interim government.
“Once, the insurgents were very unhappy,” he said. “When we went back home, my friends and I were rounded up and we were told if we did it again, we would get killed. Some of my friends stopped being in sports. I had many phone calls threatening me, that if I didn’t stop running, I would get killed. Lately, I do not have these problems. I think probably they realized we just wanted to be athletes and were not involved with the government.”
But the interim government has not been able to offer support, instead spending its cash and energy arming Ethiopian allies for the fight against insurgents. Other than organizing a meet to compete for Olympic selection – in which the Somali Olympic federation chose whom it believed to be its two best performers – there has been little lavished on athletes. While other countries pour millions into the training and perfecting of their Olympic stars, Somalia offers little guidance and no doctors, not even a stipend for food.
“The food is not something that is measured and given to us every day,” Samia said. “We eat whatever we can get.”
On the best days, that means getting protein from a small portion of fish, camel or goat meat, and carbohydrates from bananas or citrus fruits growing in local trees. On the worst days – and there are long stretches of those – it means surviving on water and Angera, a flat bread made from a mixture of wheat and barley.
“There is no grocery store,” Abdi said. “We can’t go shopping for whatever we want.”
He laughs at this thought, with a smile that is missing a front tooth.
***
When the gun went off in Samia’s 200-meter heat, seven women blasted from their starting blocks, registering as little as 16 one-hundredths of a second of reaction time. Samia’s start was slow enough that the computer didn’t read it, leaving her reaction time blank on the heat’s statistical printout.
Within seconds, seven competitors were thundering around the curve in Beijing’s Bird’s Nest, struggling to separate themselves from one another. Samia was just entering the curve when her opponents were nearing the finish line. A local television feed had lost her entirely by the time Veronica Campbell-Brown crossed the finish line in a trotting 23.04 seconds.
As the athletes came to a halt and knelt, stretching and sucking deep breaths, a camera moved to ground level. In the background of the picture, a white dot wearing a headband could be seen coming down the stretch.
***
Until this month, Samia had been to two countries outside of her own – Djibouti and Ethiopia. Asked how she will describe Beijing, her eyes get big and she snickers from under a blue and white Olympic baseball cap.
“The stadiums, I never thought something like this existed in the world,” she said. “The buildings in the city, it was all very surprising. It will probably take days to finish all the stories we have to tell.”
Asked about Beijing’s otherworldly Water Cube, she lets out a sigh: “Ahhhhhhh.”
Before she can answer, Abdi cuts her off.
“I didn’t know what it was when I saw it,” he said. “Is it plastic? Is it magic?”
Few buildings are beyond two or three stories tall in Mogadishu, and those still standing are mostly in tatters. Only pictures will be able to describe some of Beijing’s structures, from the ancient architecture of the Forbidden City to the modernity of the Water Cube and the Bird’s Nest.
“The Olympic fire in the stadium, everywhere I am, it is always up there,” Samia said. “It’s like the moon. I look up wherever I go, it is there.”
These are the stories they will relish when they return to Somalia, which they believe has, for one brief moment, united the country’s warring tribes. Farah said he had received calls from countrymen all over the world, asking how their two athletes were doing and what they had experienced in China. On the morning of Samia’s race, it was just after 5 a.m., and locals from her neighborhood were scrambling to find a television with a broadcast.
“People stayed awake to see it,” Farah said. “The good thing, sports is the one thing which unites all of Somalia.”
That is one of the common threads they share with every athlete at the Games. Just being an Olympian and carrying the country’s flag brings an immense sense of pride to families and neighborhoods which typically know only despair.
A pride that Samia will share with her mother, three brothers and three sisters. A pride that Abdi will carry home to his father, two brothers and two sisters. Like Samia’s father two years ago, Abdi’s mother was killed in the civil war, by a mortar shell that hit the family’s home in 1993.
“We are very proud,” Samia said. “Because of us, the Somali flag is raised among all the other nations’ flags. You can’t imagine how proud we were when we were marching in the Opening Ceremonies with the flag.
“Despite the difficulties and everything we’ve had with our country, we feel great pride in our accomplishment.”
***
As Samia came down the stretch in her 200-meter heat, she realized that the Somalian Olympic federation had chosen to place her in the wrong event. The 200 wasn’t nearly the best event for a middle distance runner. But the federation believed the dash would serve as a “good experience” for her. Now she was coming down the stretch alone, pumping her arms and tilting her head to the side with a look of despair.
Suddenly, the half-empty stadium realized there was still a runner on the track, still pushing to get across the finish line almost eight seconds behind the seven women who had already completed the race. In the last 50 meters, much of the stadium rose to its feet, flooding the track below with cheers of encouragement. A few competitors who had left Samia behind turned and watched it unfold.
As Samia crossed the line in 32.16 seconds, the crowd roared in applause. Bahamian runner Sheniqua Ferguson, the next smallest woman on the track at 5-foot-7 and 130 pounds, looked at the girl crossing the finish and thought to herself, “Wow, she’s tiny.”
“She must love running,” Ferguson said later.
***
Several days later, Samia waved off her Olympic moment as being inspirational. While she was still filled with joy over her chance to compete, and though she knew she had done all she could, part of her seemed embarrassed that the crowd had risen to its feet to help push her across the finish line.
“I was happy the people were cheering and encouraging me,” she said. “But I would have liked to be cheered because I won, not because I needed encouragement. It is something I will work on. I will try my best not to be the last person next time. It was very nice for people to give me that encouragement, but I would prefer the winning cheer.
She shrugged and smiled.
“I knew it was an uphill task.”
And there it was. While the Olympics are often promoted for the fastest and strongest and most agile champions, there is something to be said for the ones who finish out of the limelight. The ones who finish last and leave with their pride.
At their best, the Olympics still signify competition and purity, a love for sport. What represents that better than two athletes who carry their country’s flag into the Games despite their country’s inability to carry them before that moment? What better way to find the best of the Olympic spirit than by looking at those who endure so much that would break it?
“We know that we are different from the other athletes,” Samia said. “But we don’t want to show it. We try our best to look like all the rest. We understand we are not anywhere near the level of the other competitors here. We understand that very, very well. But more than anything else, we would like to show the dignity of ourselves and our country.”
She smiles when she says this, sitting a stone’s throw from a Somalian flag that she and her countryman Abdi brought to these Games. They came and went from Beijing largely unnoticed, but may have been the most dignified example these Olympics could offer.
-----------------------------------------------------------
stuff like this makes me cry.
This is the Olympic story we never heard.
It’s about a girl whose Beijing moment lasted a mere 32 seconds – the slowest 200-meter dash time out of the 46 women who competed in the event. Thirty-two seconds that almost nobody saw but that she carries home with her, swelled with joy and wonderment. Back to a decades-long civil war that has flattened much of her city. Back to an Olympic program with few Olympians and no facilities. Back to meals of flat bread, wheat porridge and tap water.
“I have my pride,” she said through a translator before leaving China. “This is the highest thing any athlete can hope for. It has been a very happy experience for me. I am proud to bring the Somali flag to fly with all of these countries, and to stand with the best athletes in the world.”
There are many life stories that collide in each Olympics – many intriguing tales of glory and tragedy. Beijing delivered the electricity of Usain Bolt and the determination of Michael Phelps. It left hearts heavy with the disappointment of Liu Xiang and the heartache of Hugh McCutcheon.
But it also gave us Samia Yusuf Omar – one small girl from one chaotic country – and a story that might have gone unnoticed if it hadn’t been for a roaring half-empty stadium.
***
It was Aug. 19, and the tiny girl had crossed over seven lanes to find her starting block in her 200-meter heat. She walked past Jamaica’s Veronica Campbell-Brown – the eventual gold medalist in the event. Samia had read about Campbell-Brown in track and field magazines and once watched her in wonderment on television. As a cameraman panned down the starting blocks, it settled on lane No. 2, on a 17-year old girl with the frame of a Kenyan distance runner. Samia’s biography in the Olympic media system contained almost no information, other than her 5-foot-4, 119-pound frame. There was no mention of her personal best times and nothing on previous track meets. Somalia, it was later explained, has a hard time organizing the records of its athletes.
She looked so odd and out of place among her competitors, with her white headband and a baggy, untucked T-shirt. The legs on her wiry frame were thin and spindly, and her arms poked out of her sleeves like the twigs of a sapling. She tugged at the bottom of her shirt and shot an occasional nervous glance at the other runners in her heat. Each had muscles bulging from beneath their skin-tight track suits. Many outweighed Samia by nearly 40 pounds.
After introductions, she knelt into her starting block.
***
The country of Somalia sent two athletes to the Beijing Games – Samia and distance runner Abdi Said Ibrahim, who competed in the men’s 5,000-meter event. Like Samia, Abdi finished last in his event, overmatched by competitors who were groomed for their Olympic moment. Somalia has only loose-knit programs supporting its Olympians, few coaches, and few facilities. With a civil war tearing the city apart since the Somali government’s collapse in 1991, Mogadishu Stadium has become one of the bloodiest pieces of real estate in the city – housing U.N. forces in the early 1990s and now a military compound for insurgents.
That has left the country’s track athletes to train in Coni Stadium, an artillery-pocked structure built in 1958 which has no track, endless divots, and has been overtaken by weeds and plants.
“Sports are not a priority for Somalia,” said Duran Farah, vice president of the Somali Olympic Committee. “There is no money for facilities or training. The war, the security, the difficulties with food and everything – there are just many other internal difficulties to deal with.”
That leaves athletes such as Samia and 18-year old Abdi without the normal comforts and structure enjoyed by almost every other athlete in the Olympic Games. They don’t receive consistent coaching, don’t compete in meets on a regular basis and struggle to find safety in something as simple as going out for a daily run.
When Samia cannot make it to the stadium, she runs in the streets, where she runs into roadblocks of burning tires and refuse set out by insurgents. She is often bullied and threatened by militia or locals who believe that Muslim women should not take part in sports. In hopes of lessening the abuse, she runs in the oppressive heat wearing long sleeves, sweat pants and a head scarf. Even then, she is told her place should be in the home – not participating in sports.
“For some men, nothing is good enough,” Farah said.
Even Abdi faces constant difficulties, passing through military checkpoints where he is shaken down for money. And when he has competed in sanctioned track events, gun-toting insurgents have threatened his life for what they viewed as compliance with the interim government.
“Once, the insurgents were very unhappy,” he said. “When we went back home, my friends and I were rounded up and we were told if we did it again, we would get killed. Some of my friends stopped being in sports. I had many phone calls threatening me, that if I didn’t stop running, I would get killed. Lately, I do not have these problems. I think probably they realized we just wanted to be athletes and were not involved with the government.”
But the interim government has not been able to offer support, instead spending its cash and energy arming Ethiopian allies for the fight against insurgents. Other than organizing a meet to compete for Olympic selection – in which the Somali Olympic federation chose whom it believed to be its two best performers – there has been little lavished on athletes. While other countries pour millions into the training and perfecting of their Olympic stars, Somalia offers little guidance and no doctors, not even a stipend for food.
“The food is not something that is measured and given to us every day,” Samia said. “We eat whatever we can get.”
On the best days, that means getting protein from a small portion of fish, camel or goat meat, and carbohydrates from bananas or citrus fruits growing in local trees. On the worst days – and there are long stretches of those – it means surviving on water and Angera, a flat bread made from a mixture of wheat and barley.
“There is no grocery store,” Abdi said. “We can’t go shopping for whatever we want.”
He laughs at this thought, with a smile that is missing a front tooth.
***
When the gun went off in Samia’s 200-meter heat, seven women blasted from their starting blocks, registering as little as 16 one-hundredths of a second of reaction time. Samia’s start was slow enough that the computer didn’t read it, leaving her reaction time blank on the heat’s statistical printout.
Within seconds, seven competitors were thundering around the curve in Beijing’s Bird’s Nest, struggling to separate themselves from one another. Samia was just entering the curve when her opponents were nearing the finish line. A local television feed had lost her entirely by the time Veronica Campbell-Brown crossed the finish line in a trotting 23.04 seconds.
As the athletes came to a halt and knelt, stretching and sucking deep breaths, a camera moved to ground level. In the background of the picture, a white dot wearing a headband could be seen coming down the stretch.
***
Until this month, Samia had been to two countries outside of her own – Djibouti and Ethiopia. Asked how she will describe Beijing, her eyes get big and she snickers from under a blue and white Olympic baseball cap.
“The stadiums, I never thought something like this existed in the world,” she said. “The buildings in the city, it was all very surprising. It will probably take days to finish all the stories we have to tell.”
Asked about Beijing’s otherworldly Water Cube, she lets out a sigh: “Ahhhhhhh.”
Before she can answer, Abdi cuts her off.
“I didn’t know what it was when I saw it,” he said. “Is it plastic? Is it magic?”
Few buildings are beyond two or three stories tall in Mogadishu, and those still standing are mostly in tatters. Only pictures will be able to describe some of Beijing’s structures, from the ancient architecture of the Forbidden City to the modernity of the Water Cube and the Bird’s Nest.
“The Olympic fire in the stadium, everywhere I am, it is always up there,” Samia said. “It’s like the moon. I look up wherever I go, it is there.”
These are the stories they will relish when they return to Somalia, which they believe has, for one brief moment, united the country’s warring tribes. Farah said he had received calls from countrymen all over the world, asking how their two athletes were doing and what they had experienced in China. On the morning of Samia’s race, it was just after 5 a.m., and locals from her neighborhood were scrambling to find a television with a broadcast.
“People stayed awake to see it,” Farah said. “The good thing, sports is the one thing which unites all of Somalia.”
That is one of the common threads they share with every athlete at the Games. Just being an Olympian and carrying the country’s flag brings an immense sense of pride to families and neighborhoods which typically know only despair.
A pride that Samia will share with her mother, three brothers and three sisters. A pride that Abdi will carry home to his father, two brothers and two sisters. Like Samia’s father two years ago, Abdi’s mother was killed in the civil war, by a mortar shell that hit the family’s home in 1993.
“We are very proud,” Samia said. “Because of us, the Somali flag is raised among all the other nations’ flags. You can’t imagine how proud we were when we were marching in the Opening Ceremonies with the flag.
“Despite the difficulties and everything we’ve had with our country, we feel great pride in our accomplishment.”
***
As Samia came down the stretch in her 200-meter heat, she realized that the Somalian Olympic federation had chosen to place her in the wrong event. The 200 wasn’t nearly the best event for a middle distance runner. But the federation believed the dash would serve as a “good experience” for her. Now she was coming down the stretch alone, pumping her arms and tilting her head to the side with a look of despair.
Suddenly, the half-empty stadium realized there was still a runner on the track, still pushing to get across the finish line almost eight seconds behind the seven women who had already completed the race. In the last 50 meters, much of the stadium rose to its feet, flooding the track below with cheers of encouragement. A few competitors who had left Samia behind turned and watched it unfold.
As Samia crossed the line in 32.16 seconds, the crowd roared in applause. Bahamian runner Sheniqua Ferguson, the next smallest woman on the track at 5-foot-7 and 130 pounds, looked at the girl crossing the finish and thought to herself, “Wow, she’s tiny.”
“She must love running,” Ferguson said later.
***
Several days later, Samia waved off her Olympic moment as being inspirational. While she was still filled with joy over her chance to compete, and though she knew she had done all she could, part of her seemed embarrassed that the crowd had risen to its feet to help push her across the finish line.
“I was happy the people were cheering and encouraging me,” she said. “But I would have liked to be cheered because I won, not because I needed encouragement. It is something I will work on. I will try my best not to be the last person next time. It was very nice for people to give me that encouragement, but I would prefer the winning cheer.
She shrugged and smiled.
“I knew it was an uphill task.”
And there it was. While the Olympics are often promoted for the fastest and strongest and most agile champions, there is something to be said for the ones who finish out of the limelight. The ones who finish last and leave with their pride.
At their best, the Olympics still signify competition and purity, a love for sport. What represents that better than two athletes who carry their country’s flag into the Games despite their country’s inability to carry them before that moment? What better way to find the best of the Olympic spirit than by looking at those who endure so much that would break it?
“We know that we are different from the other athletes,” Samia said. “But we don’t want to show it. We try our best to look like all the rest. We understand we are not anywhere near the level of the other competitors here. We understand that very, very well. But more than anything else, we would like to show the dignity of ourselves and our country.”
She smiles when she says this, sitting a stone’s throw from a Somalian flag that she and her countryman Abdi brought to these Games. They came and went from Beijing largely unnoticed, but may have been the most dignified example these Olympics could offer.
-----------------------------------------------------------
stuff like this makes me cry.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Bolt joins track pantheon
Jamaica's Usain Bolt poses…
BEIJING – Usain Bolt spotted the TV cameraman, darted over and raised his index finger for millions of viewers to see.
“I am No. 1,” he said. “I am No. 1.”
His boast qualifies as an understatement.
Wednesday night, when Bolt cemented his status as the world’s No. 1 sprinter, he also emerged as track’s Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky and Michael Jordan. Anyone who disputes that the Jamaican star belongs in that transcendent class better brush up on track history and prepare to lose the argument.
In a space of four days here, Bolt became the first man to break the world record in the 100- and 200-meter sprints in the same Olympics since the Games resumed in 1896. It’s worth noting who doubted it would happen, too.
Michael Johnson, who set the world record in the 200 when he ran it in 19.32 seconds at the 1996 Olympics, spoke to reporters before the finals Wednesday and explained why he thought Bolt was not yet ready to break his record.
“To run a 19.3, he’s going to have to run the curve a lot better, he’s going to have to hold that speed for a very, very long time,” Johnson said. “That’s not the most easy thing to do, even for him.”
Chances are, Johnson was spot-on with his assessment – even though Bolt went out hours later and broke Johnson’s record when he covered 200 meters in 19.30 seconds. Bolt can improve his speed on the curve, which will only fuel his astonishing progression.
Already, Bolt has broken three world records in less than three months.
In May, he lowered the 100 record to 9.72 seconds from 9.74 seconds – less than six months after he started running the event as a professional. He then broke that record in Sunday’s final, winning in 9.69 seconds despite coasting for the final 20 meters. Up against the world’s top sprinters, Bolt looked like he was competing against schoolchildren.
“It was the most impressive athletic performance I’ve ever seen in my life,” Johnson said.
During the 200 final, there was no early celebration. This was Bolt at top speed from start to finish. This was Bolt competing less against the seven helpless other sprinters entered in the race than against Johnson’s 12-year-old record.
With no one within five meters of Bolt down the stretch, there he was, arms still pumping, legs still driving, straining to sustain his speed. He leaned as he reached the finish line, glanced at the clock on his left and thrust his arms in the air.
The record was Bolt’s, one day before his 22nd birthday. With that, he became the first man to simultaneously hold the world records in the 100 and 200 since Don Quarrie held both in 1979, and he became the first man to win the gold in the 100 and 200 at the same Olympics since Carl Lewis in 1984.
“Michael Johnson is a great athlete and he revolutionized the sport,” Bolt said after the 200 final. “I just changed it a little bit.”
Despite all of his showboating, Bolt’s assessment fails to capture what he has done – and can do – for sprinting.
At 6-foot-5, Bolt has defied conventional wisdom that he was too tall for the 100. He has learned to burst out of the starting blocks as fast as the smaller and more compact sprinters, and his long stride gives him a sizable advantage. He needs only 40 to 41 strides to cover 100 meters whereas most 100-meter sprinters need 46 to 47 strides.
Bolt’s turnover – the speed with which his feet hit the ground – is as fast as smaller sprinters, meaning he’s virtually impossible to catch.
“He’s been able to take the long stride he has and been able to coordinate that and achieve a very long stride,” Johnson said before the 200 final. “That combination is deadly, as the people in (the 100 final) found out.”
Is Usain Bolt the best sprinter ever? As the Games approach a close, let the debate begin. But one thing is beyond debate: You can feel comfortable mentioning his name in the same breath as Gretzky, Jordan and Woods.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Double take: Same score, 2 different medals
BEIJING (AP)—For the first few minutes, Nastia Liukin didn’t even know the score, unable to see anything beyond the “2” in front of her name.
When she finally did look, she figured she had to be seeing double.
“I turned to my dad and said, ‘Dad, we got the same score.’ He looked up and said, ‘Oh yeah.’ We started getting a little confused,” she said.
They weren’t the only ones.
The Olympic all-around champion finished with the same score as China’s He Kexin in Monday night’s uneven bars final, but He got the gold medal and Liukin went home with a silver thanks to gymnastics’ convoluted tie-break system that sent everyone scrambling for the rulebook. Reading hieroglyphics might be easier than explaining why He won.
He’s teammate, Yang Yilin, won the bronze.
“It’s not correct. I believe it’s correct to have two gold medals,” International Gymnastics Federation president Bruno Grandi said. “But this is my modest opinion. The IOC is different.”
Gymnastics used to give out duplicate medals at the Olympics. In a bit of irony, Liukin’s father, Valeri, got one of his gold medals at the 1988 Olympics after tying teammate Vladimir Artemov on high bar. But the International Olympic Committee told the FIG to stop sharing medals after the Atlanta Games, and a tie-break system was implemented in 1997.
It’s a complicated formula that is based on deductions from the execution mark and involves more math than the SAT. Even Liukin wasn’t quite sure how the tie was broken—and that was after someone explained it to her.
“I’m not sure if anybody understands what the hell is going on,” her father said.
The short answer is that He Kexin had .033 less in deductions when you apply the second tie-break formula.
For the long answer, grab a pencil and some scratch paper.
He and Liukin both finished with 16.725. They had identical 7.7 start values (the measure of a routine’s difficulty) and they each had a 9.025 for execution after the highest and lowest of the six judges’ marks were tossed out. The execution mark is based on the perfect 10 scale, and the first tie-break takes the average of the four deductions that counted. He and Liukin were still tied after that.
For the second tie-break, the three lowest deductions that counted are averaged. When that was done, He had .933 in deductions and Liukin had .966.
Got that?
“I’m a little disappointed I tied,” Liukin said. “It wasn’t like I got second by three-tenths or five-tenths. I had the same score. That’s what makes it a little harder to take.”
Not that Liukin will raise a fuss about it.
“Scoring is scoring, that’s our sport,” she said. “In other sports, like track and field, it’s all timed and it doesn’t have anything to do with judging. You do your routine and you turn it over to the judges. That’s what we’ve been going through our entire lives and we’ve come to accept it.”
Then there’s the age thing. He, Yang and China’s Jiang Yuyuan have all been dogged by questions about their ages, with several online documents and reports suggesting they could be as young as 14. A gymnast has to be 16 in an Olympic year to be eligible. He was asked about it again Monday night, and again said she was 16. Younger gymnasts have more flexibility and less fear—that’s what would give them an advantage.
But Liukin wasn’t about to be drawn into that controversy.
“She’s an excellent athlete, no matter how old she is,” Liukin said. “She’s done her hard work and her preparation. She definitely deserved her gold medal.”
He’s routine certainly was spectacular.
She’s so tiny that she flits and floats between the bars with the quickness and ease of a hummingbird. In one move, she flips herself above the top bar and catches it again with her hands crossed, twisting her body like a contortionist.
She had a slight hop on her landing, but it was a minor flaw.
Liukin’s routine was equally impressive. She, too, appears to float between the bars, and her pirouettes on the high bar are so gorgeous dancers should take note. She also did her dismount perfectly—quite an accomplishment considering it’s been a problem all year. But like He, she also had a small error, on one of her flips.
“I play by the rules. So in my opinion, I have to say yes,” Liukin said when someone asked if the result was fair. “Judges have their own opinion and once you land your dismount, there’s nothing else you can do.”
Besides, Liukin has the medal that REALLY matters.
And with four medals, she’s pulled even with her father in the race for family bragging rights.
Valeri Liukin won four medals in 1988, two gold and two silver.
“I have the most important medal and it’s the all-around gold,” she said. “I have four medals now and I’m tied with my dad. One gold, two silvers and a bronze, and I have one more chance to get one gold that I feel like I missed out on today.”
The Chinese men aren’t missing out on any golds, with Chen Yibing making them 5-for-5 with a win on still rings. They were generous enough to allow someone from another country to get the vault gold, Poland’s Leszek Blanik. Of course, they didn’t have anyone in the competition, either.
Chen’s victory was hardly a surprise. He’s a two-time world champion on rings, and his routines are masterful. When his feet slammed into the mat with a thud heard ‘round the arena, he closed his eyes and pumped his fist. He didn’t have gold quite yet—there was one other gymnast left to compete, and Chen held up a finger to the crowd to shush them—but there was no question he was the winner.
When he was introduced as the gold medalist, he threw his head back and tears filled his eyes. He and teammate Yang Wei, the silver medalist, bumped fists on the podium, and Chen sang every word of China’s anthem.
“This is the highest individual honor for me,” he said, “and I waited a long time.”
So did Blanik, the bronze medalist on vault in Sydney. It took a tie-break to decide his medal, too, with Blanik getting the edge over France’s Thomas Bouhail because he had the highest score of the gymnasts’ four attempts.
If only it was that simple for Liukin and He.
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seriously, i'm not a gymnast but even i think that the new scoring system is a fuck-up. bring back the perfect 10!
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Michael Phelps eats 12,000 calories per day
After he retires from swimming, Michael Phelps might want to try his hand at competitive eating. The Olympic star recently said he consumes 12,000 calories per day, or 9,500 more than the FDA recommends for an active, young male.
Phelps has to keep his intake up in order to compensate for all the calories he burns during the 30-hours per week he spends in training. He told NBC that an average day might have the following menu:
Breakfast: 3 fried egg sandwiches, 2 cups coffee, 5-egg omlette, bowl of grits, 3 pieces of french toast, 3 chocolate chip pancakes
Lunch: 1 pound pasta, 2 ham and cheese sandwiches, energy drink (1,000 calorie)
Dinner: 1 pound pasta, 1 large pizza, energy drink (1,000 calorie)
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i want to be michael phelps! fried egg sandwiches galoreness.
Phelps has to keep his intake up in order to compensate for all the calories he burns during the 30-hours per week he spends in training. He told NBC that an average day might have the following menu:
Breakfast: 3 fried egg sandwiches, 2 cups coffee, 5-egg omlette, bowl of grits, 3 pieces of french toast, 3 chocolate chip pancakes
Lunch: 1 pound pasta, 2 ham and cheese sandwiches, energy drink (1,000 calorie)
Dinner: 1 pound pasta, 1 large pizza, energy drink (1,000 calorie)
------------------------------------------------------
i want to be michael phelps! fried egg sandwiches galoreness.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Make room for Phelps as winningest Olympian ever
BEIJING (AP)—Michael Phelps climbed out of the pool, unzipped his skin-tight suit and ambled over to chat with his coach.
“Well, you’re tied,” Bob Bowman reminded him.
“That’s pretty cool,” Phelps replied.
Yawn. This guy is making monumental feats look ridiculously easy.
Phelps etched his name with Mark Spitz and Carl Lewis among the winningest Olympians ever with his third gold medal and third world record in as many days.
In winning the 200-meter freestyle Tuesday, Phelps ran his career Olympic total to nine golds and avenged his only individual loss in Athens four years ago, when a 19-year-old Phelps took on the 200 free just so he could compete with Ian Thorpe and Pieter van den Hoogenband.
He finished third that night in what was called the “Race of the Century.” This time, it was hardly a race at all.
Phelps all the way.
“I hate to lose,” he said. “When you lose a race like that, it motivates me even more to try to swim faster.”
Competing out in lane six, Phelps quickly surged to the lead and led by a full body length halfway through the second of four laps. He was nearly two seconds ahead of the field when he touched in 1 minute, 42.96 seconds, breaking the mark of 1:43.86 he set at last year’s world championships.
“I just wanted to be out at the 50-meter point, and that’s where I was,” said Phelps, much more reserved in his reaction after a wild performance on deck the previous day. “I was in open water, and it was difficult for the other guys to see me.”
South Korea’s Park Tae-hwan took the silver in 1:44.85, touching while Phelps was already looking at the scoreboard. Peter Vanderkaay, one of Phelps’ training partners, gave the U.S. another medal by claiming the bronze in 1:45.14.
“I knew Park is strong in the last 50 meters,” Phelps said of the 400 free gold medalist, “so I knew I had to be fast and concentrated.”
Everyone else figured they were racing for second.
“Phelps swam so fast,” Park said. “It is my honor to compete with him.”
Added Vanderkaay, “I just tried to swim my own race. He’s going to go out, but I can’t let that affect my race strategy.”
Phelps is now 3-for-3 in Beijing, on course to beat Spitz’s 36-year-old record of seven golds in a single Olympics. He opened with a world record in the 400 individual medley, then led off an epic victory in the 400 free relay.
While chasing Spitz, he’ll take care of another historical landmark, one he wasn’t even aware of until earlier this year.
Phelps’s ninth career gold tied him with Spitz, Lewis, Soviet gymnast Larysa Latynina and Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi for the most in Olympic history.
“To be tied for the most Olympic golds of all time, with those names, in Olympic history …,” Phelps said, before pausing and letting out a slight chuckle.
“The Olympics have been around for so many years, that’s a pretty amazing accomplishment.”
The mark isn’t likely to be shared for long. Phelps will go for his fourth and fifth golds of these games, which would push him to 11 overall, when he competes Wednesday in the finals of the 200 butterfly and 800 free relay, two more events in which he already holds world records.
Just for kicks, Phelps set an Olympic record during Tuesday’s 200 fly semifinals, competing less than an hour after winning the 200 free.
“I set up an opportunity to have a perfect swim tomorrow,” Phelps said.
Perfection. That sums up the gangly 23-year-old from Baltimore who loves rap music, pimped-out cars and doing things in the pool that no one else even dared to think of.
“It might be once in a century you see something like this,” teammate Aaron Peirsol said. “He’s not just winning, he’s absolutely destroying everything. It’s awesome to watch.”
Phelps is a creature of habit. He struggles to wake up in the morning, and loves to take naps in the middle of the afternoon. He gets two massages a day and takes ice baths to help his body recover from the grueling schedule. He whoofs down gargantuan amounts of pasta and pizza between races.
“Lots of carbs,” he said.
When it’s time to race, there’s no one better.
“It’s his physical ability, it’s his ability to race, it’s his ability to keep focused, to get excited when he needs to and to come down when he needs to come down,” said Mark Schubert, head coach of the U.S. team.
“Well, you’re tied,” Bob Bowman reminded him.
“That’s pretty cool,” Phelps replied.
Yawn. This guy is making monumental feats look ridiculously easy.
Phelps etched his name with Mark Spitz and Carl Lewis among the winningest Olympians ever with his third gold medal and third world record in as many days.
In winning the 200-meter freestyle Tuesday, Phelps ran his career Olympic total to nine golds and avenged his only individual loss in Athens four years ago, when a 19-year-old Phelps took on the 200 free just so he could compete with Ian Thorpe and Pieter van den Hoogenband.
He finished third that night in what was called the “Race of the Century.” This time, it was hardly a race at all.
Phelps all the way.
“I hate to lose,” he said. “When you lose a race like that, it motivates me even more to try to swim faster.”
Competing out in lane six, Phelps quickly surged to the lead and led by a full body length halfway through the second of four laps. He was nearly two seconds ahead of the field when he touched in 1 minute, 42.96 seconds, breaking the mark of 1:43.86 he set at last year’s world championships.
“I just wanted to be out at the 50-meter point, and that’s where I was,” said Phelps, much more reserved in his reaction after a wild performance on deck the previous day. “I was in open water, and it was difficult for the other guys to see me.”
South Korea’s Park Tae-hwan took the silver in 1:44.85, touching while Phelps was already looking at the scoreboard. Peter Vanderkaay, one of Phelps’ training partners, gave the U.S. another medal by claiming the bronze in 1:45.14.
“I knew Park is strong in the last 50 meters,” Phelps said of the 400 free gold medalist, “so I knew I had to be fast and concentrated.”
Everyone else figured they were racing for second.
“Phelps swam so fast,” Park said. “It is my honor to compete with him.”
Added Vanderkaay, “I just tried to swim my own race. He’s going to go out, but I can’t let that affect my race strategy.”
Phelps is now 3-for-3 in Beijing, on course to beat Spitz’s 36-year-old record of seven golds in a single Olympics. He opened with a world record in the 400 individual medley, then led off an epic victory in the 400 free relay.
While chasing Spitz, he’ll take care of another historical landmark, one he wasn’t even aware of until earlier this year.
Phelps’s ninth career gold tied him with Spitz, Lewis, Soviet gymnast Larysa Latynina and Finnish runner Paavo Nurmi for the most in Olympic history.
“To be tied for the most Olympic golds of all time, with those names, in Olympic history …,” Phelps said, before pausing and letting out a slight chuckle.
“The Olympics have been around for so many years, that’s a pretty amazing accomplishment.”
The mark isn’t likely to be shared for long. Phelps will go for his fourth and fifth golds of these games, which would push him to 11 overall, when he competes Wednesday in the finals of the 200 butterfly and 800 free relay, two more events in which he already holds world records.
Just for kicks, Phelps set an Olympic record during Tuesday’s 200 fly semifinals, competing less than an hour after winning the 200 free.
“I set up an opportunity to have a perfect swim tomorrow,” Phelps said.
Perfection. That sums up the gangly 23-year-old from Baltimore who loves rap music, pimped-out cars and doing things in the pool that no one else even dared to think of.
“It might be once in a century you see something like this,” teammate Aaron Peirsol said. “He’s not just winning, he’s absolutely destroying everything. It’s awesome to watch.”
Phelps is a creature of habit. He struggles to wake up in the morning, and loves to take naps in the middle of the afternoon. He gets two massages a day and takes ice baths to help his body recover from the grueling schedule. He whoofs down gargantuan amounts of pasta and pizza between races.
“Lots of carbs,” he said.
When it’s time to race, there’s no one better.
“It’s his physical ability, it’s his ability to race, it’s his ability to keep focused, to get excited when he needs to and to come down when he needs to come down,” said Mark Schubert, head coach of the U.S. team.
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