Word: coliseums
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...mainstream sports like skateboarding and snowboarding, the annual competition also feeds an audience hunger for life-threatening daredevilry. There are no lions, but at times, it's been easy to see the parallels between those who watch "Big Air" skateboarding and motocross and the bloodthirsty crowds at the Coliseum of Ancient Rome. At the 2003 summer games, one motocross rider left the competition in a wheelchair after crashing; another rider attempting a trick called the "Sterilizer" had an accident that sent him into convulsions in front of the crowd. In 2007, a skateboarder attempting a massive jump fell five stories...
...badly mannered. Their outfits and body armor are off-the-rack (of a bad masquerade store). Their solicitations are proffered in barks and grunts. And if you get close enough without paying for the experience they might just bite your head off. For those who have visited the ancient Coliseum in recent years, you have probably run into these would-be modern-day Roman gladiators, or more precisely, they have run into you. Last I checked, they were demanding 20 euros to pose next to them for a photograph outside the Coliseum, holding-the-sword not included. (See 10 things...
...city's freelance gladiators - and has now decided that the best way to do that is to give travelers a more realistic experience. Umberto Broccoli, the recently named head of archaeology for Rome, is pushing ahead with a proposal to recreate gladiator battles in or near the Coliseum. Dressed in original costumes and carrying actual swords and tridents (unlike the plastic and aluminum toy replicas used by the current hustlers), well-trained gladiator actors will be choreographed to perform historically accurate battles like those that ended in death two millennia...
...with Russell Crowe unavailable for auditions, Broccoli told the Rome-based La Repubblica daily that he may be forced to turn to the unruly amateurs who lurk around the Coliseum. "We shouldn't fear vulgarity when recounting ancient life," he said. "The gladiators were vulgar, sweaty, smelly, cursing folk. Why not show them as they really were...
...Francesco Rutelli, the former Rome mayor and Italian Culture Minister who now heads the city council opposition, is not impressed. Rutelli says Rome's current center-right administration's ideas for expanding culture are just rehashed, low-brow plans to make a quick buck. "Gladiators at the Coliseum? Compliments for originality," he quipped. "They must have had a think tank of Nobel laureates working in secret to come up with this...