Word: thrill
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...dive for China. Flip to a few rounds of the legendary Cuban heavyweight fighter Felix Savon. Here's Marion Jones--she wants to be the first woman to win five track-and-field golds in one Olympics--warming up for the long jump, but before she leaps you can thrill to Ian Thorpe--"Thorpedo"--Australia's 17-year-old swimming sensation. Then there's the amazing Russian super-heavyweight Greco-Roman wrestler Alexander Karelin, going for his fourth straight gold medal...
...thrill of those 72 seconds is the challenge of technical perfection," Schumann says. Shooting is not about the one perfect shot but about the perfect copy of the perfect shot 60 times, aiming for the maximum of 600 rings. The world record, set by Schumann in 1995, is 597, a figure that has been equaled--by him. Shooters are "mistake collectors," he explains. "Every hit besides the bull's eye is irretrievably lost...
...every dispassionate contest pitting nature's noblemen against each other, there is, or ought to be, one in which a festering resentment sends a sick thrill through the arena. Why get mad? Because your rival got stupidly lucky. Because your rival took more effective drugs than you did. Because some friends of your rival clubbed you on the knee a month before the big skate. And maybe the real or imagined slight goads the grudging one to greatness. Revenge spurs nearly every movie plot; why shouldn't it juice the adrenaline that an athlete needs to excel...
...that first week, of course, the thrill had pretty much dissipated, and I was complaining about homework, or my homeroom teacher, or swimming class. For the most part, I enjoyed school over the years, but every year I hoped (to no avail) that I'd be able to hold on to that initial frisson of excitement that saturated every first...
...this year is no different: I'll hit the sales, buy some cords. Maybe I'll even find a few new pencils. But even with the new duds and the virgin writing utensils, heading back into my office won't'elicit even a trace of that childhood thrill. I?ll just walk in to work as usual, glance around at the general office pallor, wash the subway grime off my hands, and settle in at my overly familiar desk. And worst of all, no one will express any particular interest in what I did over my summer vacation...