Word: sports
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...wonders of Olympic basketball. Except these guys aren't playing hoops. They're going for gold in team handball, a popular game throughout Europe and, to a lesser extent, American gym classes. But handball is the only sport in which the Americans don't have a single Olympian. (Rhythmic gymnastics - you know, the one with the ribbons and balls - also has no Yank participant. But since it's an event within gymnastics, it doesn't count as its own Olympic sport...
What a waste. Haven't U.S. Olympic officials heard about this medal race with China? Every piece of hardware counts, and the U.S. is squandering a chance to cash in. Here's how handball works (and we're not talking about the version of the sport where old guys, often in frighteningly tight shorts, slap a ball against a wall): six athletic men and women run around a court, dribbling a mini-soccer ball every three steps. They pass it around and throw it into a nearly 10-ft.-wide, 7-ft.-high goal. You have to shoot the ball...
Steve Roush, chief of sport performance for the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC), admits there's no real excuse for the America's dismal Olympic handball record, which is 4 wins, 26 losses, 1 tie and yet another seat on the bench in '08. "I'm absolutely on the same wavelength," says Roush. "There's an athlete pool out there we can tap into to be successful. We have struggled for decades to figure out a formula...
Sound familiar? Even the world's best admit that handball is fairly straightforward. "It's not a difficult sport to practice," says Victor Tomas of Spain. "It's not a difficult sport to learn...
...could do one or two difficult moves, then fill out the rest of your routine with things you are comfortable doing. Now you have to be a freak of nature to be able to do a world-class routine." While gymnastics has always been an injury-prone sport, the new hurdles created by the scoring system may be pushing some athletes too far. Peszek strained an ankle earlier this week during a warm-up just minutes before the team marched out for the qualifying round of competition. Memmel, a former world champion who excels on the beam and bars, turned...