The ‘eight don’t asks’ of the Olympics
July 22, 2008
Posters are appearing around Beijing guiding locals about how to interact with the (few) foreigners coming for the Summer Games.
The posters instruct residents on the “eight don’t asks” when chatting with foreign guests. Here’s a rough translation, courtesy of the Peaceful Rise blog:
Don’t ask about income or expenses, don’t ask about age, don’t ask about love life or marriage, don’t ask about health, don’t ask about someone’s home or address, don’t ask about personal experience, don’t ask about religious beliefs or political views, don’t ask what someone does.
Tiger Woods to be first billionaire athlete
July 10, 2008
Tiger Woods to be first billionaire athlete – Yahoo! News
CANBERRA (Reuters Life!) – Tiger Woods is on course to become the first billionaire athlete with the popular U.S. golfer proving a marketing dream, according to Forbes Magazine.
Woods, who won the U.S. Open last month despite a bad knee, is on track to exceed $1 billion in career earnings by 2010 after earning $115 million in 2007, said the American magazine which publishes an annual list of the world’s richest people.
‘Olympic wedding’ surge in China
June 21, 2008
BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | ‘Olympic wedding’ surge in China
Thousands of Chinese couples are applying to tie the knot on 8 August, to help celebrate the opening of the Beijing Olympics, state media say.
The number eight also brings good fortune in Chinese folklore, and the eighth day of the eighth month of 2008 is regarded as especially propitious.
Officials have vowed to grant marriages licenses to all the applicants.
Earlier this month, China reported a surge in the number of children named Aoyun, meaning Olympic Games.
Woods to Have Knee Surgery, Ending His Season
June 19, 2008
Woods to Have Knee Surgery, Ending His Season – NYTimes.com
2008 golf season that many believed would be Tiger Woods’s best has instead become his briefest. Two days after his epic victory in the 108th United States Open, Woods announced that he would have surgery to repair damage to the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee and would miss the rest of the season.
Tiger Woods played through pain in his surgically repaired knee at the United States Open, often grimacing after shots.
Woods said in a news release on his Web site Wednesday that he ruptured the ligament last summer while running near his home in Florida after the 2007 British Open.
I rarely watch golf but the US Open last weekend was so intense. Seriously, who knew golf could be so exciting. Tiger is amazing. How he could play on one good leg and still win the competition is incredible.
I was talking to my dad about this (he’s a big golfer) and I jokingly said that it must suck for the caddy since he’ll be out of work for the rest of the year. My dad was quick to tell me caddies generally receive 10% of the golfer’s winnings. Tiger Wood’s caddy must be filthy rich! He has even donated $1m to a hospital in New Zealand. Who knew being a golf caddy could be so lucrative?
Linden hangs up his blades after 19-year career
June 11, 2008
Linden hangs up his blades after 19-year career
Vancouver Canucks forward Trevor Linden has retired from hockey, ending a 19-year National Hockey League career.
The 38-year-old made a formal announcement at GM Place in Vancouver on Wednesday afternoon, but the move was expected after Linden was given a standing ovation during a farewell lap after the Canucks final regular-season game this season.
I’ve had someone call me Trevor before…
Speed Racer: 100 Meter World Record – TIME
June 2, 2008
Speed Racer: 100 Meter World Record – TIME
(NEW YORK) — Like a bolt out of nowhere, Usain Bolt is now the world’s fastest man. The Jamaican sprinter, who doesn’t even consider the 100 meters his best race, set the world record Saturday night with a time of 9.72 seconds at the Reebok Grand Prix, .02 seconds faster than the old record held by his countryman, Asafa Powell.
Bolt was using the 100 for “speed work” and to avoid having to run the more grueling 400, when, suddenly, he ran the world’s second-fastest time last month at 9.76. Even then, he said he wasn’t sure if he would give up the 400 meters for the 100 for the Beijing Olympics.
Hard to imagine he has any choice now.
Everest record set by 76-year-old
May 25, 2008
BBC NEWS | South Asia | Everest record set by 76-year-old
A 76-year-old Nepalese man has become the oldest person to climb Mount Everest, according to officials.
A tourism ministry spokesman said Bahadur Sherchan reached the summit on Sunday morning in good health and was set to return to base camp on Monday.
Climbers have been flocking to the mountain since ascents were temporarily halted because of security concerns over the Olympic torch relay.
On Thursday, a record 86 mountaineers reached the 8,850m (29,035ft) summit.
Very impressive.
Olympic Dream Stays Alive, on Synthetic Legs
May 17, 2008
Olympic Dream Stays Alive, on Synthetic Legs – New York Times
When an international court ruled Friday that a double-amputee sprinter from South Africa was eligible to compete in this summer’s Olympic Games in Beijing, the stage was set for disabled athletes to meet their own trailblazer.
The watershed ruling made the runner,Oscar Pistorius, the first amputee to successfully challenge the notion that his carbon-fiber prosthetics gave him an unfair advantage and assured his right to race against able-bodied athletes in the Olympics, should he qualify. Previously barred from competing in such races by track and field’s world governing body, Pistorius will continue to stoke the debate over the competitive issues created by evolving technology in sports.
The ruling’s direct impact on disabled athletes could be limited, in part because Pistorius, 21, still must post a time fast enough to qualify for the Games. Yet his victory Friday in the Court of Arbitration for Sport sent a message that could long resonate among Paralympians.
Although I think it’s great that certain amputees are able to compete directly with able-bodied athletes in the Olympics, I don’t agree with this ruling. In this case, he actually has an unfair advantage. His prosthetic legs are lighter and more elastic than real legs and muscle fatigue is a non issue. His heart also doesn’t need to pump blood to his legs providing him with increased oxygen uptake in other muscles.
Dreams carry Natalie Du Toit to Beijing
May 16, 2008
Dreams carry Natalie Du Toit to Beijing – Olympics News – Telegraph
She has made history by becoming the first amputee to qualify for the Olympic Games, an achievement that defies scientific logic. While lawyers still argue over whether her compatriot, Oscar Pistorius, gains an unfair advantage on the track over his able-bodied rivals through his prosthetic blades, Du Toit’s incredible feat is to have finished fourth in a two-hour race in choppy water, and with swimmers bumping and boring into each other, with only half the leg-propulsion of her rivals.
Unlike Pistorius, Du Toit does not wear a prosthetic leg in races and is therefore free to compete in Beijing. It is akin to competing in a sculling race with one scull or a kayak race with a single-bladed paddle. Her secret? Well, there is no secret, she says, no physical or technical trick to compensate for the loss of a limb. Just hard work and obsessive determination. “There’s no real compensation. You just do the hours in the swimming pool, you do the hours of racing and you do the hours of mental preparation. You just go out and give it everything. I don’t even think of one leg, two legs. When you’re racing in an able-bodied competition you’re all equal and you go out there and try your best, and that’s what counts.
That’s impressive.
ESPN – He’s blind and 78, but this bowler still sees a perfect 300 – ESPN
As he held his 16-pound bowling ball in his hands and looked down the lane toward the pins standing before him, 78-year-old Dale Davis saw only a blur.
He couldn’t see the lane. He couldn’t see the pins. He couldn’t see the people who had gathered behind him to see whether the blind man could accomplish something no one else at this alley ever had.
To Run Faster, Triathletes Should Stop Swimming and Cycling – New York Times
There’s a reason it’s hard to excel in three sports at once, physiologists say. The training necessary to do your best in one sport is likely to counteract what is needed to be good at another.
When you are training, said Gary S. Krahenbuhl, an exercise physiologist and emeritus professor at Arizona State University, improvement depends on physical and biochemical changes in muscle cells and in nerve-firing patterns. And those changes are very sport-specific, he added. The result, Dr. Krahenbuhl said, is that “changes that facilitate performance for one event may actually undermine performance in another event.”
“To think that you could train in such a way as to have your greatest performance in all the sports is impossible,” he added.
Even body musculature can trip up triathletes. Swimmers need large muscles in their backs and shoulders. Runners and cyclists want small, light upper bodies. Cyclists need large quadriceps muscles. Runners don’t, and in fact they don’t want any extra muscle weight on their legs.
One of my goals this summer is to train more in these three sports. So reading this doesn’t exactly add to my confidence!
Super Bowl 30-second ads to cost $3 mln in 2009
May 7, 2008
Super Bowl 30-second ads to cost $3 mln in 2009: report
NEW YORK (Reuters) – NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co, plans to say next week that the entry price for a 2009 Super Bowl 30-second ad will be $3 million, the Wall Street Journal said on Tuesday.
The $3 million mark has never been the starting price for a commercial at the Super Bowl, though individual slots have sold for that much before, the report said.
Some Athletes’ Genes Help Outwit Doping Test
April 30, 2008
Some Athletes’ Genes Help Outwit Doping Test – New York Times
The 55 men in a drug doping study in Sweden were normal and healthy. And all agreed, for the sake of science, to be injected with testosterone and then undergo the standard urine test to screen for doping with the hormone.
The results were unambiguous: the test worked for most of the men, showing that they had taken the drug. But 17 of the men tested negative. Their urine seemed fine, with no excess testosterone even though the men clearly had taken the drug.
It was, researchers say, a striking demonstration of a genetic discovery. Those 17 men can build muscles with testosterone, they respond normally to the hormone, but they are missing both copies of a gene used to convert the testosterone into a form that dissolves in urine. The result is that they may be able to take testosterone with impunity.
The gene deletion is especially common in Asian men, notes Jenny Jakobsson Schulze, a molecular geneticist at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm. Dr. Schulze is the first author of the testosterone study, published recently in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
This was also on The Economist a few weeks back.
lyndon. 