Word: pommel
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...hope to build a dream team by 2008." A day earlier, in the choke performance of the week, China's male gymnastics team tumbled from gold-medal shoo-in to fifth-place finisher. The disastrous showing owed largely to the mishaps of one 19-year-old Olympic newcomer, pommel-horse world champion Teng Haibin, who, in rapid succession, stepped twice out of bounds in the floor routine, slipped on the parallel bars and, in a crowning, cataclysmic moment, swung himself right off the high...
...possibility of failure?has kept them locked in a Confucian pressure cooker, in which disappointing the country is the ultimate taboo. The national burden has been blamed for several high-profile Olympic chokes in previous Games, most recently Tsukahara's meltdown in Sydney, when he plunged off the pommel horse and ruined his chances of a medal in the individual all-round event. "I'm very sorry," he said, in a common refrain from Japanese Olympians. "I wish I hadn't disgraced my nation." Four years later, Tsukahara has broken free from these emotional shackles. "Yes, I'm happy...
Olympians still train like the ancients, twirling on the pommel horse for hours, waking up at 6 a.m. to run 50 laps by breakfast. But athletes are increasingly using the latest innovations to help them gain an edge. These include sharkskin swimsuits that reduce friction, video goggles that let rowers watch themselves paddle and speedometers for sprinters...
...might be surprising that Li will no longer appear in ads for the company's goods, which bear a logo that looks like Nike's swoosh with a foxtail attached. Li says the affluent Chinese he is now targeting are too young to remember his feats on the pommel horse. "I wish I were as popular as I used to be," Li says with a sigh. It's a fate Jordan, 39, has also suffered. Sales of the Air Jordan are down this year...
...hard on the neck, but otherwise it was awesome. I mean awesome! I was totally psyched! I figured to win the 200-m freestyle and the single scull. But who would have thought I'd also take the decathlon, the triathlon and the mathlon, not to mention the pommel horse, the high horse, the gift horse and the pole vault with horse? By the time I got to the 50,000-m, trans-Sydney long jump, I was wiped. The Games take their toll on an old sport...