Word: goldings
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...Despite Japan's unexpected gold rush, reaction back home has been surprisingly muted. For the first few days, the papers focused more on early disappointments in men's soccer and women's softball, sports in which Japan had hoped to win medals. True, the major dailies did print a special edition when the men's gymnastics team won gold, but the triumph was treated not so much as a watershed victory as a rightful return to the top tier. After all, before tumbling from grace in the 1980s, Japan won the men's team-gymnastics gold at five consecutive Olympics...
...pleasant relief from over-hyped contests between the one-syllable American and Australian, Phelps and Thorpe. In the gymnastics arena, even the Americans who came in second in the men's team final could hardly begrudge the tears of joy from Mitsuo Tsukahara, a Japanese gymnast who won gold in 1976 and was now watching his son Naoya lead the 2004 tumbling squad to victory. "When I was an athlete who won, I was happy," said the elder Tsukahara. "But as a father, I am proud. And that emotion is even more powerful than just happiness." Clutching...
...very sorry," he said, in a common refrain from Japanese Olympians. "I wish I hadn't disgraced my nation." Four years later, Tsukahara has broken free from these emotional shackles. "Yes, I'm happy for my country," he said, just minutes after accepting his first-ever Olympic gold. "But I'm also happy for my family, my coach, my friends and even myself." Teammate Hiroyuki Tomita, who nailed a spectacular 9.850 high-bar routine to clinch Japan's hairbreadth victory was even more blunt: "People say there must have been lots of pressure, but I think there's less pressure...
...dramatic, given that this year marks the 40th anniversary of the Tokyo Olympics. Back then, an ascendant economic power wanted to show just how spectacularly it had risen from the ashes of war. Japan spent $3 billion on those Games and sprinted past Germany for third place in the gold-medal count. In their patriotic frenzy, most Japanese medalists deferentially linked their victories to the country's remarkable economic rise. Still, the compulsion to reap gold for national honor sometimes proved disastrous: in 1968, a Japanese marathoner who had won bronze in the Tokyo Games committed suicide after injuries looked...
...that he had never been warned about any prohibited kicks in previous international competitions. "But I don't take them seriously." Regardless, Piersol's griping was somewhat undercut later in the week when the Texan was briefly disqualified for a questionable turn in the 200-m backstroke, before his gold was reinstated 20 minutes later. But Kitajima's ultimate revenge came a couple days after his 100-m triumph, when he cruised to victory in the 200-m competition, with an Olympic record time of 2:09.44. "That talk of the kick just motivated me more," he said. "They...