Word: sportingly
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...success so far in women's Olympic tennis - coming close on the heel's of Zheng's strong performance at this year's Wimbledon - is a relatively recent phenomenon. In China's more vehemently socialist days, tennis was frowned upon, viewed as a marker of capitalist excess. (Any sport in which a major tournament has English nobility sampling strawberries and cream on the sidelines hardly bespoke of communist equality.) But China has changed, and a decent backhand is now considered de rigueur among many progeny of the Chinese elite. There's also the matter of international glory: Like dozens...
...competition highlighted the two girls' contrasting gymnastics styles. Liukin, a willowy 5'3", resembles the gymnasts of the Nadia Comaneci era, when girls in the sport were long and lean and looked more like dancers than tight end defenders. Since the 1980s, however, thanks in part to the growing number of injuries and the more challenging skills the gymnasts are trying on the mats, the sturdier bodies, like Johnson's, at 4'9", have been claiming more titles - think Mary Lou Retton, Kerri Strug, Shannon Miller, and 2004 Olympic all-around champion Patterson. These are powerful athletes...
...rest of the world knows that this Olympic sport is ripe for an American invasion. "I tell people all the time that if the U.S. starts playing team handball," says David Davis of Spain, "it's over for the rest of the world." It may be too late for Beijing. But it's time for the U.S. to give itself a hand...
Once the U.S. team qualifies for the Olympics, go for the pros: take that group of NBA players who've always wanted to be Olympians, put them in a summer camp before the Games, and bang, the U.S. has a medal contender. That's ridiculous, you say. What sports executive would let a multimillion-dollar investment play some silly sport in the off-season? Well, if basketball general managers let their guys play Olympic basketball in the summer and hockey bosses permit their stars to play in the Olympic tournament during their season, why wouldn't they let them hurl...
...succeed. In fact, France plans to hold a tournament for its club teams in Miami next year, in order to promote handball in the States. "America is a great country," says French player Jerome Hernandez. "Look at baseball, basketball, American football. The U.S. knows how to build a sport." France's Kempe gets a bit whimsical. "It was always my father's dream to have handball become big in the U.S.," he says. "Maybe I'll become a trainer in the U.S. one day." Remember, these are French guys saying this...