Word: medal
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...gold medalists in recruiting foreign-born athletes are Qatar and Bahrain, tiny oil-rich Gulf states that have poached top runners from Kenya, Morocco, and Ethiopia. The effort took off in the 1990s, when Qatar began importing Bulgarian weight lifters, one of whom, Angel Popov, won a bronze medal in the 2000 Olympics under his adopted Arab name, Saif Saeed Asaad. Since then, Qatar and Bahrain have each shelled out millions of dollars to persuade athletes to change their citizenship, tossing in lucrative incentives for setting world records and bringing home Olympic gold...
...cash-for-gold strategy may pay off this week. Moroccan-born star Rashid Ramzi, now running for Qatar, is a favorite to win the men's 1,500-m race, though he'll be challenged by two Kenyans running for Qatar and Bahrain under new Arab names. Two other medal favorites going into the Games' final weekend are Bahrain's Ethiopian-born 1,500-m specialist Maryam Yusuf Jamal and Qatar's Kenyan-born marathoner Mubarak Hassan Shami, who will have to beat out former teammates who know him by his birth name, Richard Yatich...
Granted, there are 630 million of them. But practically everywhere you looked during these Beijing Games, there was another Chinese woman - and a few girls - with a gold medal slung around her neck. By Aug. 19, China's female Olympians had captured 23 of the country's 43 golds, nearly the same amount as the entire American team had garnered. (By contrast, female athletes have won only 11.5 of America's 26 gold medals. The half refers to the mixed team equestrian event...
...China's women have the legacy of Karl Marx to thank for their remarkable performance. Chairman Mao liked to say that "women hold up half the sky," and when the country began its state-sponsored project in the 1990s to cultivate gold-medal athletes, women were given more than equal treatment. In fact, China's Sports Ministry strategically focused on developing women's sports because they tend to be underfunded in most other countries. The People's Republic pours millions of dollars into developing everything from female marksmen to women wrestlers. "Chinese girls are willing to work harder...
Last year Kevin Jackson, coach of the U.S. freestyle wrestling team, labeled his prized phenom, Henry Cejudo, the "future of wrestling." That tag just got tossed off the mat. "Call me the 'present,' " Cejudo, 21, says today, pointing to the gold medal around his neck. "Call me the 'present...