Word: sports
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...domination has come at a price. In China's state-run sports system, coaches trawl the countryside looking for children with suitable physiques for every sport. Once kids enter elite athletic schools like these, they rarely see their parents and the extensive training often takes precedence over academics. Divers have to be recruited particularly early - sometimes as young as age six - before they develop a fear of heights and so that their bodies can be molded into the ultimate water-piercing missiles...
...saying that the world is ready for someone like him - a messiah-like figure, charismatic and glib ... The Bible calls that leader the Antichrist. And it seems apparent that the world is now ready to make his acquaintance." The conservative website RedState.com now sells mugs and T shirts that sport a large "O" with horns and the words "The Anti-Christ" underneath...
...just ideals that have helped lift Spain. Investment in sport began to increase when the country hosted the 1982 soccer World Cup and then rose dramatically in the run up to and aftermath of the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. Sports clubs began to multiply, and the state created dozens of centers where thousands of elite athletes can train at the government's expense. "This has enabled a professionalization of sports unthinkable two decades ago," says Moscoso, "and encouraged Spaniards to see sports positively - fathers want their sons to be soccer players...
...treatment of dissenting voices such as human-rights activists and restive ethnic minorities like Tibetans and Uighurs. Keeping a lid on protest has proven difficult - the bright Olympics spotlight draws all manner of dissidents. Whatever the Chinese authorities and the International Olympic Committee might say about separating politics and sport, the Beijing Games have become the most politicized in decades. Less than five days before the flame was lit, there was a shocking attack by Muslim separatists in the city of Kashgar in China's far western Xinjiang region that left 16 policemen dead and equal number badly wounded...
...people who are determined to enjoy the Olympics (if they are spectators); to do their best in competition (if they are athletes); and indeed to celebrate China's greatest moment. "It could be that when the Games start, everybody forgets everything and it's all about the glory of sport," says Jamie Metzl, executive vice president of the New York City - based Asia Society and a former senior government official in the Clinton Administration. "I hope that that's the case. But there are a number of issues, whether it's Tibet, pollution, Falun Gong, doping. We don't know...