Word: swimmer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Every four years, a new generation of athletes appears from nowhere to grab the headlines and occupy prime time, upstaging aging heroes. Hard-nosed young swimmers from the U.S., Australia and Europe arrived on the world stage last week at Sydney's International Aquatic Centre, bewitching spectators with their triumphs in the water; six teenagers are taking home a total of eight individual gold medals from the 26 solo events contested in the pool. The class of 2000 did not come to Sydney to watch and learn - they came to win. Along with the tough-talking Quann, there was Ukrainian...
...lengths before. Halfway through the race, he started flailing and seemed in danger of drowning. But he prevailed, clocking in at 1:52.72. That's 1:04.08 longer than it took gold-medal winner Pieter van den Hoogenband and 50.27 longer than Moussambani's closest competitor, the 70th-place swimmer from Bahrain. It turns out that before he arrived in Sydney, Moussambani didn't know how to swim...
...Despite the language barrier, we all enjoyed the five-course meal, and it turns out we have much in common. Sure, Moussambani has never read TIME, and I have no idea where his country is, but we both know how to work it. He and his fellow swimmer Paula Barila Bolopa, who swam the 50-m in 1:03.97, doubling the second worst time, had received money to be interviewed by Australian papers. And Moussambani had already turned down an ad campaign. "Speedo offered to sponsor me, but I didn't like the contract," he said, eating baked Alaska...
...might look at it as long as he can look at anything." Got that right, Tony. And on this splendid natural stage the Olympic Games' newest sport, triathlon, debuted on Saturday morning, a splashy beginning to a day of competition that had Australia ecstatic by nightfall. In the evening, swimmer Ian Thorpe, a mere legend at 17 going into the Games, officially became immortal. His performance in anchoring Australia's 4 x 100 freestyle relay team to the gold medal over the cocky Americans became instant history here, a place that, these days, cares about history...
...Australian swimming idol Dawn Fraser, three-time winner of the Olympic 100-meter freestyle and a teenage champion in 1956, said the relay was the best race she had seen. Most observers were wondering whether they had seen the best swimmer of all time. Australia's head coach, Don Talbot, once described Thorpe as possibly the "swimmer of the century." On Saturday night, the chatty coach was almost lost for words. "How can you enhance the opinion I've got of him?" said Talbot. "I don't have the superlatives." But it was the question that commentators were not going...