Word: gymnast
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...arguments for staying on the sideline have some merit. First, the controversies surrounding China are complicated: Is it reasonable to expect a teen gymnast, who has spent a lifetime hitting the pommel horse much harder than the books, to be conversant on the geo-political consequences of China's Sudan policy? "Some of the athletes are caught," says U.S. wrestler Patricia Miranda, a Yale Law School graduate and one of the rare athletes to voice opposition to China's human rights record. "They might for the first time be hearing about this stuff. They don't have a reference point...
Kara E. Kaufman ’08 has a difficult time staying still. As she walks briskly past the stage at the Loeb Drama Center, the former rhythmic gymnast may just as well have been on a landing mat, about to launch into a somersault. She sits down on the edge of a seat and restlessly gazes at the stage.The senior has been stage-managing for the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club (HRDC) for the past four years and served as president last year. In addition to learning more about the process of theater production, Kaufman has grown personally from...
...findings don't surprise elite gymnasts, who endure hours of punishing training every day. "I always thought that gymnastics is one of the hardest sports, if not the hardest," says Carly Patterson, the reigning Olympic women's champion. "The amount of hours we train, it's a lot for your body, and there are going to be times when you get hurt." Such injuries can sometimes be life-threatening: last summer, Wang Yan, a Chinese Olympic gymnast who was competing at her national championships, fell head-first from the uneven bars and broke her neck; in 1998, another Chinese gymnast...
...majority of these injuries occurred in a supervised setting, such as in a gymnastics program at school (40%) or a competitive gymnastics club (39%). But the good news, according to the study, is that the overall rate of gymnastics injuries dropped 25% between 1990 and 2005. Much of that decline has to do with better equipment and improved safety measures. In the past, as gymnast Patterson recalls, the "horse" used for vaulting was much smaller and narrower, making certain maneuvers especially hazardous. "The horse used to be long and skinny, with only a limited space to put your hands. When...
Shannon Miller, a two-time Olympic gold medalist and the most decorated U.S. gymnast in history, remembers other changes to the vault as well, including a larger, padded safety zone around the take-off point. "I remember it was a big thing in the gymnastics world," she says, when the International Gymnastics Federation's new rules required the springboard to be surrounded by a horseshoe-shaped mat. "You wouldn't get credit for the vault if you didn't have a safety mat," says Miller. "Before that, it was just the springboard, and if you launched crooked, then you were...