Word: mats
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...single moment only to clang off the runway and into the scorer's table like a tipsy frat boy. During the all-around final on the most crushing apparatus in gymnastics, the vault, Hamm's weary legs couldn't support his landing, and he stumbled off the mat. A lousy 9.137 score dropped him to 12th place in the competition, with only two events to go. "I thought maaaybe I could win a bronze," says Hamm...
...farm in Waukesha, Wis., enjoys a low-bar profile. "He's not going to turn into a marketer," says Sandy Hamm, Paul's father. "His job is to compete, not promote." Although next time, he could do his mom and the judges a favor by staying on the mat...
...principal. "Why don't you let her do something else?" asked Jose Miranda, whose daughter Patricia wrestled on the high school boys' team in Saratoga, Calif. "How about gymnastics? Or volleyball?" He begged her to give it up, even threatened to sue the school to get her off the mat. She wouldn't relent. Jose, a Brazilian-born family doctor, wanted his daughter to concentrate on school; he also feared for her safety. And for him, there was the obvious question. "Why would a woman want to wrestle?" he asked her. "That's not a thing for a woman...
Miranda had also been hit hard off the mat--her mother died at 40. Although Miranda was only 10 at the time, she accepted the death as a lesson for her own life. "I realized that my life would be one-fourth over if the same thing happened to me," she says. "So I needed to take on some challenges fast." She not only made the Olympics but also graduated from Stanford, in 2003. Yale Law School awaits...
...WOMEN'S WRESTLING The women who take to the mat in Athens won't just be battling for gold, silver and bronze?they'll be fighting for respect. That's a struggle Japan's top female wrestler, Kyoko Hamaguchi, understands well. As the daughter of popular 1970s pro wrestler Heigo (Animal) Hamaguchi, who today helps coach her, Kyoko Hamaguchi was expected to be a champion on bloodline alone. Her father never tried to make things easy on her. "I have been coaching my daughter since she was 13 and made her cry many times," he says. Determined to live...