Word: spartakiad
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Through this gleaning process the Soviet Union eventually selects its Olympic athletes. The best in team sports are selected through regional and national championships, while the finest in individual sports are determined in the quadrennial Spartakiad, a sort of dress-rehearsal Olympics held in Moscow the summer before the Games. In 1979, 90 million Soviet athletes tried out in local and regional contests, and 10,000 eventually took part in Spartakiad...
...British Olympic Committee, defying its own government, voted in March to participate and insisted last week that it will not change. When the Games open in Moscow on July 19, they will be considerably less than a true Olympics, but apparently a lot more than a mere Communist-bloc Spartakiad...
They journeyed to Moscow for the same reasons the first astronauts went to space, to test an alien environment and pave the way for more important missions ahead. Under these trying conditions, a team of largely unknown U.S. athletes performed creditably, though not often winningly, at Spartakiad, the Soviet Union's quadrennial games. They also learned some lessons that should pay handsome dividends when it really counts: at the 1980 Moscow Olympics...
Track and field, the traditional centerpiece of Olympic festivities, showed Spartakiad at its comic worst and competitive best. In the heats of the 3,000-meter steeplechase, two runners from Guinea-Bissau came face-to-face with hurdles for the first time. The hurdles won. One of the Africans clambered over several hurdles using both hands but balked at a second encounter with the water obstacle. With the crowd egging him on, he stared at it for a moment, shook his head and walked away...
...brightest find of Spartakiad, both in ability and personality, was Carl Lewis, just turned 18. In only his third competition outside high school meets, the gracious, unassuming Willingboro, N.J., athlete won a gold medal for his leg in the 800-meter relay and a bronze in his specialty, the long jump. Lewis was disappointed with third place in the long jump, but Stan Vinson, 27, who won gold medals in the 400-meter dash and 1,600-meter relay, looked ahead: "I think he'll jump 29 ft. before he's 20 the way he's going...