Word: gymnast
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Indeed, there was a time when 19 seemed so far down the line that I couldn’t even imagine what I would be doing after so many years. But watching the 14-year-old British diver Tom Daley and the 16-year-old American gymnast Shawn Johnson made me think back with regret to what I was doing when I was 14 (Mortal Kombat) and 16 (Jackass stunts...
...While I still ponder the Olympic life I never led, it was on one of my final days in Beijing that I came to realize all that I would have been forced to sacrifice along the way. Shawn Johnson—the 16-year-old gymnast who had contributed to my intense retrospection the days before—joined NBC’s program, and I was assigned to take her on a tour of the Great Wall...
...with synchronized swimming, rhythmic gymnastics was added as an Olympic sport at the Los Angeles Games in 1984. The sartorial rules are strict: leotards must not stray into, god forbid, tutu territory. A brazen flash of a bra strap can even result in points subtracted from the gymnast's score. Curiously, in each Olympics, one of the five apparatuses isn't contested. In Athens, the clubs, which look like a pair of brightly hued bowling pins, didn't make an appearance. This year, it's the bouncy ball that's missing. Rhythmic gymnastics is certainly mesmerizing, but Cirque de Soleil...
...stakes need to be raised. We can't continue to have every gymnast hugging every other gymnast when her floor routine ends, and not just because it's bound to be used as bait on To Catch a Predator. If the purpose of the Olympics is to make the world more peaceful, maybe the reason it hasn't succeeded is that the Games aren't warlike enough. The ancient Greeks got themselves oiled up to wrestle for a good reason: to channel their bloodlust into something meaningless. Also because they were crazy gay. Globalization has made getting along with countries...
...Olympic flame. The two obvious candidates were hoops star Yao Ming and hurdling legend Liu. When Yao loped in front of the massive Chinese Olympic team with the Chinese flag held aloft, the audience naturally thought Liu would carry the final torch. But that honor went instead to retired gymnast and sports-clothing tycoon Li Ning. Liu didn't even march with the Chinese Olympic delegation. Where...