Word: olympians
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...million miles, so we're not invited to the bash. But the Village's "International Zone," home to dozens of shops, park space and a square where the Olympic flag-raising ceremony takes place, is more accessible and offers a taste of what life is like for an Olympian. Wander around and talk to enough athletes, and you'll sense that the Beijing Village is scoring high marks. The athletes' rooms are relatively spacious, and amenities like swimming pools are a nice touch. Despite the smog overhead, the trees and gardens spaced around the Village ensure a greener feel than...
...Judah's Bikila: Ethiopia's Barefoot Olympian is a more straightforward version of the same tale. Though Judah, a veteran foreign correspondent who knows Africa well, offers us plenty of solid reporting, his account struggles to overcome the dearth of rich source material even as it gets bogged down in some of the details the author has managed to dig up. At its best - in Judah's description of the Rome race, and in providing context that explains the wider importance of Bikila's victory - the book is a valuable addition to the history of running and Africa...
...Darfur cause is a distraction, he emphasizes that it's their right to stay out of it. He also knows that with Chinese Olympic officials sensitive to criticism during the Games, many athletes would risk their standing within their home countries if they spoke out. As an ex-Olympian, Cheek certainly wasn't going to steal the spotlight. Now China has given...
Wood writes about books the way other people write about sports; authors aren't so much Olympian as Olympic. Woolf writes, in The Waves: "The day waves yellow with all its crops." Wood reads this sentence so hard that he practically topples into it: "The effect is suddenly that the day itself, the very fabric and temporality of the day, seems saturated in yellow. And then that peculiar, apparently nonsensical 'waves yellow' (how can anything wave yellow?), conveys a sense that yellowness has so intensely taken over the day itself that it has taken over our verbs, too--yellowness...
Still, the amateurs seem to have helped boost the event. Although this race used to draw big names like former Olympian Danny Clark and Tour de France workhorse George Hincapie, as well as amateurs, organizers say attendance at this four-corner criterium (a short race course) has suffered in more recent years. To liven things up a bit, Eustice decided to bring two very different cycling cultures together on the same 3/4-mile course along the brownstone-lined streets of Harlem - the pros and the bike messengers. "I almost look at them as the artists colonizing the big race," says Eustice...