Word: golde
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...weeks after Claudia Losch of West Germany won a 1984 Olympic gold medal with a shot put of 67 ft. 2 1/4 in., Natalia Lisovskaya took that event at the Soviet bloc's boycott-inspired Friendship Games with a throw almost 5 ft. longer. Barred by politics in 1984 from a chance at world sport's most enduring honor, Lisovskaya began training at Moscow's Brothers Znamensky Sports School for Seoul...
...when Greg Louganis was favored to become the first man in more than 50 years to win two gold medals in diving at the same Olympics, he instead sat home with the U.S. boycott team and watched the victories go to a Soviet and an East German whom Louganis had outscored at Montreal four years before. Louganis achieved his double at Los Angeles in 1984 and hinted at retirement. But next week he too will be competing in Seoul, perhaps in part because he is one of just a handful of U.S. and Soviet athletes with a personal memory...
...nationalistic fans, boycotts brought joy. Without the U.S. and 61 other countries on hand, the Soviet gold-medal tally jumped from 49 in Montreal to 80 in Moscow, while the U.S., unhindered by the Soviets and the equally formidable East Germans, vaulted from 34 gold in Montreal to 83 gold in Los Angeles. With the sporting world reunited, Seoul may be a rude awakening for flag wavers on both sides. But the shock will likely be worse for U.S. viewers: the memory of Los Angeles is more recent, and more unrealistic. At the 1984 Friendship Games, East bloc athletes outperformed...
...popular explanation in the U.S. for the 1984 boycott was Soviet fear that its star performers would fail drug tests. And as for the awesome women athletes, well, are they really women at all? Skeptics recall that Tamara and Irina Press, the hulking Soviet sisters who won five Olympic gold medals in the 1960s, dropped from international competition after sex tests were introduced. In this mistrustful vision, athletes respond to the carrots of cushy jobs, fancy apartments and Western consumer goods, coupled with a fearsome stick if performance falters: the threat of losing all privileges, perhaps even of being banished...
...even more advanced installations, although it is perhaps less effective in using them. While Soviet athletes frequently agree that they cannot be called amateurs, they contrast their salaries of a few hundred dollars a month and their state bonuses of up to $20,000 for winning even gold medals to the millions reaped by a Carl Lewis or a Mary Lou Retton. "I have no contract and cannot advertise my services for hire," notes Soviet Backstroker Sergei Zabolotnov, who earns $583 a month as a swimming- coach-in-training. The Soviets, too, mutter darkly about drugs, and with reason: some...