Word: race
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...dirt track under the midday sun, Irrfan Khan waits at the starting line. The 42-year-old actor is playing a poor army recruit from a village in central India who runs just to get the extra ration of food allotted to athletes. At his first race, his character doesn't know what to do when the pistol sounds, so he prays. "You idiot! Run!" the starter screams. That spurs the soldier into action, and the naive confusion on his face turns into determination. Extras from the Bengal Sappers - actual young army recruits who live on the base in Roorkee...
...addition to erecting new protective walls on the final curve, Olympic organizers moved the men's start down the mountain, to the area where the women's luge athletes were scheduled to start their race. The near vertical drop at the beginning of the luge runs helped sliders build the excessive speed; eliminating some 600 feet (183 m) from the 4,600-ft. (1,402 m) track kept most runs below 90 m.p.h. (145 km/h). Loch hit 91.6 m.p.h. (147 km/h) on a Saturday heat, the top speed in the competition. Under the new setup, no luge athlete was injured...
...Racers in the women's event, which starts on Monday, are even more irked about the changes. While the men started from the women's position, the women will now start their race where the juniors take off, right before the sixth turn in the 16-turn Whistler track. "I understand it," said American Erin Hamlin, the reigning luge World Champion, while taking in the final moments of the men's competition. "But I've worked so hard training from the women's start and getting into rhythm, for nothing." Competitors in the women's event were only able...
...flood control is a major priority. Thus, when canals freeze over, Dutch fans explain that skating on them is cathartic. We have conquered our enemy. Let's celebrate by running our blades all over it! Skating is so ingrained in Dutch DNA that fans talk about one particular race, the "Eleven-City Tour," with the sort of reverence normally shown by global soccer fans for their favorite teams. The Eleven-City Tour is a 125-mile skate over frozen lakes and canals in the northern Dutch province of Friesland. Since all the water has to be frozen at once...
...also helps the Dutch spirits that their skaters bring home the hardware. Kramer won the 5,000-meter race on Saturday with a time of 6 min. 14.60 sec., setting a new Olympic record and nabbing his first gold. (American Chad Hedrick, the defending Olympic champion in this event, finished 11th; Shani Davis, the favorite in the middle-distance races, came in 12th.) Holland has now won 25 speed-skating golds in its Olympic history, tied for second with Norway behind the United States, which has 28, as the country with the most titles in the sport. Kramer is also...