Word: tournamente
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...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 of other sports, tennis...
...first time in this tournament, when Spain did manage to get the US into a half-court game, the Americans responded with the kind of shooting efficiency that some skeptics wondered whether they possessed. Anthony in particular was sniping from three-point land with positively European brio - shooting four of six from behind the arc. Consistently, the US swung the ball crisply in the half-court game, found the open man, and then nailed long-range jumpers: Lebron James, Kobe Bryant, Tayshaun Prince (three of four) and Deron Williams all made three pointers. Overall, Team USA shot...
...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 the handball? They're less likely to get hurt in a sport that every kid in gym class can play. Plus, it'll keep them from crashing motorcycles during the off-season...
What's more, the handball world wants the U.S. to 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...
...China had pulled off an upset, Team USA could have made it to the medal round. Still, it's hard to overstate how important this win was for the U.S. men. In 2004, Puerto Rico's drubbing of the U.S. drained the team for the rest of the tournament. The Americans shut down China's guards - Bryant kept his vow to play D, applying choking pressure on Chinese point guards. The U.S. also caught a break; Yao Ming wasn't at full strength. Coming off a foot injury that ended his Houston Rockets season, Yao was slow and tired, often...