Word: germanic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Expect the Chinese, East German and Japanese men to be chasing the Soviet gymnasts for team gold, Swimmer Tamas Darnyi of Hungary to be chasing his own world record in the 400-m ind. medley, and Biondi to be continuing his medal chase, in the 100-m butterfly. On the basketball court the U.S. takes on the 1987 Pan Am winner, Brazil, and its colorful colossus, Oscar Schmidt. In the water Terry Schroeder captains the U.S. against defending world and Olympics champ, Yugoslavia...
...astounding success of the G.D.R. team has raised inevitable questions of secret drugs or revolutionary training methods. "That's all nonsense," says Karlheinz Gieseler, secretary-general of the West German Sports Federation and a longtime observer of East German sports. "What makes the G.D.R. so great is the successive pruning out and systematic training of their talent...
...Seoul, a disciplined East German contingent is ready to demonstrate its prowess again, with strong competitors in everything from swimming to marksmanship. Many analysts expect the country's 307 athletes to take home more metal than the 645 Americans, and maybe even more than the 520 competitors from the Soviet Union...
...process begins with the statistical assessment of the nation's second- and third-graders, who are measured, weighed, timed and questioned. The resulting data is churned through a computer at the German College of Physical Culture in Leipzig, which determines whether a child might have a special aptitude for a certain sport. Says Renate Vogel, a former world champion G.D.R. swimmer and now deputy coach of the West German women's Olympic team: "No one with talent falls through the sieve...
...athlete, the G.D.R. is still paradise," East German Swimmer and Defector Jens-Peter Berndt, now a member of the West German Olympic team, told the Bonn daily Die Welt. "Nowhere else do athletes work so intensely and with such concentration. All your problems are taken off your hands." Exhibition meets, medical bills, sponsorship, job worries, troublesome journalists -- all such distractions are largely unknown to them. But there are other pressures. Academic performance and political education are closely monitored. A "socialist family tree" -- no close relatives in the West -- is required for international competition...