Word: medaling
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...China has also entered the winners' circle by building up expertise in little-known sports that offer a profusion of Olympic medals. Shooting, which has 17 golds up for grabs, was targeted early on?and China's first Olympic gold came in the unheralded 50-m pistol event in 1984. In 1995, China noticed that the recently added Olympic sport of Taekwondo attracted few top-class athletes outside South Korea, and cobbled together the nation's first Taekwondo squad. Less than five years later, China won a gold medal in the discipline in Sydney...
...Asians have long monopolized the indigenous martial-arts events that feature in the Olympics?judo and Taekwondo?and the region's athletes routinely pop up on the medal podium for grinding full-contact disciplines like boxing and wrestling. In Athens, Asians will be competitive in more sports than ever before, but their best hopes for glory still lie in those that require creative methods of inflicting physical punishment...
...Japan's Olympic team, and Ryoko Tani?a ruthless martial-arts master who wears pink hair-ties?will lead the way. Meanwhile, South Korea is favored to excel in Taekwondo, although Taiwan and the rest of the world have been gaining ground since the sport debuted as a medal event in 2000. Olympic boxing can always count on a contingent of tiny tough guys from Thailand; 2003 world champ Somjit Jongjohor is looking to strike gold. And in one of the newest Olympic sports, women's wrestling, Japan can expect up to four gold medals, thanks in part to Kyoko...
...changed her name last December when she married Japanese pro baseball player and fellow Olympian Yoshimoto Tani in a $3 million Paris wedding that was televised across Japan. Tani's popularity in her home country is as outsized as she is pint-sized, but that only makes the gold-medal pressure on the 1.46-m judoka all the more intense. She was upset in the 1992 and 1996 Games, having to settle for silver on each occasion. At Sydney in 2000, she told reporters she wanted "at best, a gold. At worst, a gold." It was the best of times...
...served him well. His college coach, Hidetoshi Nakanishi, remembers seeing Inoue for the first time as an 11-year-old, practicing each day until his coaches would force him to stop. Even then, Nakanishi says, "I knew he was someone to be looking forward to." Nonetheless, Inoue's gold-medal-winning performance at Sydney was a shock. To earn first place, judokas have to win five straight matches in a single day, which can take up to 25 minutes of fighting. Inoue won all of his matches by ippon (knockout) in a total of six minutes. "It is his ippon...