Word: world-record
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...Heights The ideals of the Olympic games are certainly worthwhile: sportsmanship, athletic prowess and opportunities for people from many nations and cultures to meet [Aug. 30]. What's wrong is the goal of constantly setting new world records, on which most athletic competitions, including the Games, are based. That world-record ideology assumes that the human body is capable of infinite development, enabling specially gifted athletes to continue breaking records for all time to come. That expectation is the reason that athletes use performance-enhancing drugs. They know they are not capable of surpassing records without resorting to such drugs...
...aback by her almost imperceptible pace. More than an hour had passed since Japan's Mizuki Noguchi, a 40-kg wisp, had fluttered into the stadium, vomited and smoothed back her hair to accept the gold with a time of 2:26:20. Even earlier, 16 competitors, including British world-record holder Paula Radcliffe, had left the historic town of Marathon, only to abandon the race because of the brutal hills and 35?C heat. (A few days later, Radcliffe would also fail to finish the 10,000 m, a meltdown the British press thought worthy of a Greek tragedy...
Michael Phelps did not win the prize the world was watching for--capturing the most gold medals in a single Games--but he did achieve an Olympian feat nonetheless, matching the most medals, eight, earned at an Olympics. Pulled along in his powerful wake, the U.S. team achieved its own victory, particularly on the men's side, by ending the competition with a world-record win in the medley relay and taking home three more golds than it did in 2000. It was a spectacular week of racing, in which tight match-ups crowned first-time Olympic champions like Japan...
...point, world-record holder Yelena Isinbayeva of Russia was one miss away from being bounced out of the competition - and then she cleared 4.80 m, claiming the gold. Finally, she had the bar set at 4.91 m, 1 cm higher than her old world record, and soared over on the first try. That done, she packed her pole for the night. Her motives were mercenary - on the track circuit, she gets a bonus every time she breaks the record. "I would like to do just a centimeter by one centimeter," she explained, "because every centimeter is big money." A world...
...freestyle) and Grant Hackett (who retained his 1,500-m crown) in the medal and publicity stakes. The two swimmers also helped Australia's women to finish ahead of their U.S. counterparts in the country rankings, thanks to their team's world-record breaking performances in the 100-m freestyle and 100-m medley relays. And the exploits of newcomers such as Lisbeth Lenton, Alice Mills and Jessicah Schipper, and more experienced performers such as breaststrokers Brooke Hanson and Leisel Jones, revealed a depth of swimming talent few Australians knew was there...