Word: medalic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Almost half of the athletes you profiled were American. New Zealand, which has a number of athletes with medal chances, was not mentioned. You would have better served the Olympic spirit by highlighting one outstanding athlete from each member nation of the International Olympic Federation. Bob Howe, Manukau, New Zealand...
...ancient Greeks, whose Olympiads can be traced back to 776 B.C., didn't give out medals but rather bestowed olive wreaths upon their victors. The medal tradition began with the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, where winners got silver, seconds got bronze and third place got zip. In the intervening 112 years, the coveted awards have been rectangular, ridged, doughnut-like, gilded and--for the 1972 Sapporo Winter Games--shaped like an amorphous blob. At the 1900 Paris Games, some events forwent medals in favor of prizes: one pole-vault runner-up won an umbrella...
...their most idealistic, the Olympics are supposed to unite the world through sport. Yet any witness to the international medal race knows different--governments take these prizes seriously. So do their athletes. As American four-time discus champion Al Oerter once put it, "These are the Olympics. You die before you quit...
...charges can compete against China's best athletes. Mexico and Thailand's weightlifting squads are helmed by Chinese, and Belgium's table-tennis team is also Chinese-run. Both the American and Australian diving teams are strengthened by Chinese coaching expertise. And Shawn Johnson and Bernard Lagat, top American medal prospects in women's gymnastics and men's middle-distance track respectively, depend on the ministrations of their personal Chinese coaches...
Gymnastics is tough on the body, and the U.S. team is proving that in Beijing. On Thursday, two of the team's medal contenders in both the team and individual competitions had to step down from some of those podium dreams. Morgan Hamm is out. The U.S. men's team's only Olympic veteran and most experienced gymnast aggravated an ankle problem during training Thursday morning and had to withdraw from the Games. On the women's side, Chellsie Memmel, a former world champion who qualified for her first Games, also worsened a troublesome ankle and is scaling back...