Word: idealizations
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...maintain an athletic career. Top athletes now train year-round instead of seasonally. "It's not advancing age that necessarily hurts performance," says American physiologist Steve Fleck, "it's deconditioning." Experts believe that swimmer Mark Spitz, 42, whose technique in the butterfly stroke is still regarded as ideal, failed in his comeback bid earlier this year in part because he had been out of condition for 17 years and did not do enough resistance training. Nonetheless, notes Fleck, "the trend is in the direction of the better performances coming from older athletes...
Amateurism's provenance was much, much later, in Victorian England. A devoted Anglophile, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, stipulated that the modern Games he conjured into existence in 1896 should be amateur, in part because he believed that would guarantee gentlemanly fair play. Bound up as well in the ideal was a desire to maintain the barriers of class. The leisured rich did not want to compete with working-class athletes whose muscles were toned by manual labor...
...thing itself, the game, should be. But isn't there a middle ground somewhere between amateurism and full- court-press plutocracy? The demand by the I.O.C. that no one earn money strictly for an appearance in the Games is one indication of the enduring strength of the Olympic ideal. The fact that one non-N.B.A. basketball player, Christian Laettner, has been included on the American squad seems to be yet another bow to the notion of sport for its own sake. The gesture bespeaks an ambivalence -- one that will not soon vanish from the Games...
...swipe at Stevenson, who was divorced, Ike's spots targeted the women's vote by portraying the President as a "traditional family man." Mamie was used repeatedly; her "smile and modesty and easy natural charm make her the ideal First Lady," said the G.O.P. spots. Bush may be more subtle, but Barbara will undoubtedly surface as the Republicans seek to remind voters of Clinton's once troubled marriage...
...promoting its use and export. Engineer Mack Shelor, an executive with CSX's energy resources and logistics division, learned through some contacts that Otisca was the only firm capable of producing a coal-based liquid fuel that would meet the specifications he was seeking. The Greenbrier was an ideal demonstration site because the venerable resort was cherished for its pristine Appalachian environment, yet required an energy supply equal to that of a small town. Shelor phoned Smith in Syracuse. "Best call I'd had in 10 years," recalls Smith...