Word: champion
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Black is a powerfully atmospheric writer--he is, after all, John Banville--and a champion noticer of details like a "flock of lacquered, dark brown birds" and the tanned ankles of his father-in-law. But watching him try to do what a mystery writer does shows you what's so tough about it. Good genre writers know how to express ideas and emotions through events--plot--rather than dialogue or evocative descriptions. Precious little happens in The Lemur other than Glass trading icy quips with his wife. If Benjamin Black is John Banville's guilty secret, he needs...
What's that? Well, let's just say Ana Ivanovic, the French Open champion and new top-ranked women's player in the world, had a slightly tougher ride than most tennis pros. Reared in the war-torn Serbia of the 1990s, Ivanovic has risen from her home country's ashes to become the best in the game, the leader of the unlikely Serbian revolution that includes Jelena Jankovic, the second-ranked woman in the world, and Novak Djokovic, No. 3 on the men's side. At 20, Ivanovic has all the assets of a megastar-in-the-making: looks...
...everyone was happy with the new surface, especially those who contend the change may have robbed England of its best chance of crowning a homegrown Wimbledon champion since Perry took the title in 1936. Tim Henman, a serve-and-volley player, made four Wimbledon semifinals, but says the new grass forced him to alter his natural game midcareer. "I remember sitting at a change-over in 2002 in utter frustration and thinking 'What on earth is going on here? I'm on a grass court and it's the slowest court I've played on this year.' " Veteran tour...
...wooden paddles and plastic balls. China decided to develop star paddlers largely because the International Table Tennis Federation was, in 1953, one of the first sports organizations to drop ties with Taiwan in favor of the mainland. In 1959, Rong Guotuan made history as China's first world champion in any sport. Mao deemed the victory a "spiritual nuclear weapon." Determined to maintain Ping-Pong supremacy, coaches fanned out across the countryside looking for kindergartners with quick reflexes and superior hand-eye coordination. "Other countries have produced some really good table-tennis players," says Liu Fengyan, director of China...
...Ping-Pong because we train harder than anyone else," says Xu Mengjie, a pigtailed 10-year-old standing under a giant banner that exhorts fight for your country. "I always feel like I need to work harder because that's the only way I can become an Olympic champion...