It’s a very specialized set of sports that the Chinese focus on but they simply kick absolute ass at them. ... If you look at the 2008 Olympic weightlifting results in Beijing... the women didn’t just squeak by to win a medal; most were simply so far ahead of their competition that it was a joke. In most cases, the Chinese women took their first attempt after everyone else had already finished lifting for the day. And they came out and just dispatched their weights in perfect form, setting new world records and winning medals with abandon. [more inside]
posted by Trurl
on Mar 4, 2012 -
52 comments
In February each year, Ludhiana becomes the destination fro hundreds of sports enthusiasts, including foreigners. They come to Kila Raipur to see the special breed of bullocks, camels, dogs, mules and other animals competing in highly professional events. It is to be seen to be believed. In 1946, Mr. Bakhsish Singh was instrumental in getting the most popular event of the Games – the Bullock Cart Race – introduced. This is the annual
Kila Raipur Sports Festival, commonly called
The Rural Olympics.
This years games are over, but
photos of
various events are
being posted online. For one last taste,
here's a 10 minute video from the 2007 events.
posted by filthy light thief
on Feb 21, 2012 -
3 comments
At the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, a yacht race was taking the world's teams through dangerous waters at breakneck speeds. Stig Käll and his brother Lars were in the running to win when, behind them, the Australian team capsized and slipped below the deadly waves. Making a split-second decision, the Källs turned their boat around and rescued the Australians, losing the race and vanishing from the pages of Olympic history, but winning recognition from the Japanese press, who awarded them the headline "Gold Medal of Humanity". The Käll brothers were the first to receive recognition from the
International Fair Play Committee, a group that now gives awards and recognition to people who display unusual sportsmanship, such as:
[more inside]
posted by shii
on Dec 6, 2011 -
41 comments
Double Full Full Full, annotated (NYT video, reg REq'd) U.S. Olympic Team aerial skier Ryan St. Onge and a science reporter describe via video the physics going on as he executes a triple backflip with four twists.
Also, the
snowboard halfpipe.
(Don't ask me why a triple backflip with four twists is called a "double full full full")
posted by planetkyoto
on Feb 3, 2010 -
16 comments
The Revolutionary "Consider, then, the Fosbury Flop, an upside-down and backward leap over a high bar, an outright—an outrageous!—perversion of acceptable methods of jumping over obstacles. An absolute departure in form and technique. It was an insult to suggest, after all these aeons, that there had been a better way to get over a barrier all along. And if there were, it ought to have come from a coach, a professor of kinesiology, a biomechanic, not an Oregon teenager of middling jumping ability."
posted by dhruva
on Sep 14, 2009 -
27 comments
Sports activism is dead? - so asks Andy Kroll in his review of
Dave Zirin's new book,
A People's History of Sports in the United States.
"And since the ‘80s, the money, TV time, and narcissism have only increased. Most professional athletes could care less — that is, if they even know at all — that their sponsors’ shoes and jerseys are made in squalid conditions in third world countries."
Author Zirin argues that “[w]e can pretend sports isn’t political just as well as we can pretend there is no such thing as gravity if we fall out of an airplane.”
[more inside]
posted by Surfurrus
on Oct 5, 2008 -
38 comments
Photos of the 2008 Paralympics. Sadly the Paralympics rarely garners the coverage of the Olympics, but thanks to the internet you can witch videos of the competitions at
Universal Sports (though it may be region-blocked, require registration and only seems to work on Windows).
posted by GuyZero
on Sep 12, 2008 -
30 comments
In late 2006, Santhi Soundarajan took the Silver Medal in the Women's 800m at the Asian Games in Qatar. Less than a week later, she was
stripped of her medal by the Olympic Council of Asia after a chromosomal test.
According to the Times of India, "the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) said the 25-year-old had failed a sex test, implying she had deceived the sporting world by competing as a woman when she was actually a man." The disqualification ended her athletic career, and several months after returning to her rural village in Tamil Nadu, India, she
attempted suicide.
[more inside]
posted by Kadin2048
on Jul 29, 2008 -
25 comments
HotOlympians.com has been shut down by the U.S. Olympic Committee.
The domain name hotolympians.com is infringing on federal trademarks. When I registered the domain name, I did some research on olympic trademarks and came to understand... that "olympic" was trademarked and "olympians" was not. I was wrong. And thus we will continue publishing under a new domain name which will be up shortly...
When asked why a local newspaper could publish a feature of an athlete right next to an advertisement, I was told that we weren't a news operation. I was told that hotolympians.com jeapordized American athlete's right to participate in the games.
posted by Tin Man
on Feb 17, 2006 -
35 comments
False Start How important is sportsmanship in the modern era? On Sunday afternoon at the IAAF World Championships, Jon Drummond false started in the 100m sprint and was disqualified. He refused to leave the track (initially prostrating himself in the middle of his lane) and ended up delaying the race by more than 50 minutes. In 1996, Linford Christie did
something similar in the Olympic games 100m final.
Is it just 100m sprinters, or is sportsmanship going out of fashion?
posted by daveg
on Aug 24, 2003 -
19 comments
Punks vs. Yuppies in San Francisco I don't know how I feel about trying to get yuppies and punks to reconcile but I do like the idea of a yuppies vs. punks Olympics. It'd be funny if they had one here in NYC (I'd nominate Willimasburg as the location).
posted by zinegurl
on Jun 16, 2002 -
27 comments
Meet the Athens Olympics mascots. I'm not sure when Olympics sites started adopting cartoony mascots, but I'm sure of this much: This pair is the worst I've ever seen. They're supposed to represent Greek gods? Please. They look like they were drawn in about five minutes.
posted by diddlegnome
on Apr 4, 2002 -
36 comments
Sporting News Predicts the Future. It's 9:30 pm EST and the closing ceremonies have been on for 1 hour, but the Sporting News has provided us with a complete recap of the night, including Rogges final words to Salt Lake City. They must have hired Ms. Cleo recently.
posted by smcniven
on Feb 24, 2002 -
6 comments
Canada Wins Hockey After watching Belarus pull off a miracle, Canada joins in to see them in the semi final. Question is, who's gonna win? Wooooooooo...
posted by Dav0xor
on Feb 20, 2002 -
16 comments
Colorado real winner of Games Besides possible event fixing or the exhaustion of SLOC's 400,000 hot dog supply on DAY 5, what other Olympic donnybrook might be worth mentioning? This will probably not seem interesting to anyone outside of Utah or Colorado, but Denver Post columnist Woody Paige wrote an inflammatory column that has many Utahns, uh, losing their religion.
(You'll note that the link isn't to the Denver Post website -- that's because they yanked the Feb. 12 column from their site earlier today, without comment. A mailto link was posted on their splash page for complaints about the article, but even that's gone now.)
Talk about sour grapes.
I suppose that if the games are ever held in Tel Aviv, Woody will fill his column with references to "funny" Jewish apparel, hair styles, dietary habits, or worse.
FWIW, Barry Newman's column in today's Wall Street Journal was a lot more balanced . Sorry, no link -- subscibers only :(
posted by Big Dave
on Feb 13, 2002 -
13 comments
Shock! U.S. takes all medals in snowboarding Was anyone honestly surprised by this? Or (for that matter) when USA Basketball beats all opponents in the summer Games? We don't tend to win in things like figure skating, luge, bobsled, etc. ... so we add events like this, then trumpet them when we sweep the competition...
posted by krewson
on Feb 12, 2002 -
65 comments
Olympic Farce "...there has been an attempt over the past few years to hijack the Olympic spirit, to minimize national pride and turn the events into a UNICEF-style celebration of global harmony and cooperation. The organizers are trying to turn the Olympics from a series of sporting contests into a multinational festival..."
posted by bunnyfire
on Feb 11, 2002 -
29 comments
The 19th Winter Olympics are now officially under way, begun with America's take on the traditional
opening ceremonies. What moved you to tears? What made you gag? Were you proud to be an American, or so embarrassed that you couldn't watch? Was the WTC flag presentation tasteful? Was John Williams' score inspirational? Did you like the ice dancing, the fireworks, and the Native Indian celebrations? Who did
you want to see light the Olympic caldron?
posted by johnnyace
on Feb 9, 2002 -
73 comments
Gay Games VI Under the Gun “What has sparked the concern is a three-page E-mail from the
executive committee of the Federation of Gay Games two weeks ago that
raised the possibility of the 2002 Games being moved or forfeited. The
executive committee of the Federation will visit Sydney from July
21–28 for a status report that will be critical. [...] Also, he said a comparison of Sydney's budget to Amsterdam and New
York is flawed, because using the exchange rate doesn't matter.
‘We're not buying any of our goods and service in the US.... $11 million Australian is still $11 million
Australian.’ ”
posted by joeclark
on Jul 17, 2001 -
0 comments
Net faces 10-year Olympic shutout. Chairman of the IOC Internet working group says, "Unless and until you can guarantee your internet signal is only available within your territory, you cannot put video on your website. We're going to go forward with that and we're going to see how it evolves." Anyone have some portable transmission walls they can erect on international boundaries every two years?
posted by netbros
on Dec 5, 2000 -
0 comments
It's all over... And I can honestly say that watching this Olympics has shaken all the pre-Games cynicism out of my system. It's been wonderful to watch, looked wonderfully organised, and suffused with a sense of good spirit by its hosts... good on you, mates.
posted by holgate
on Oct 1, 2000 -
32 comments
C.J. Hunter failed drug tests. What I don't get is why the IOC brought this up now, months after it happened, and right when the track and field events are going. He's not even competing in the Olympics. He's there to support his wife, Marion Jones. What purpose is served by announcing this information except to bring doubt on Marion's efforts to win her events. The IOC and the media have done a bad thing here, in my mind, it confuses and disgusts me.
posted by cowboy
on Sep 26, 2000 -
15 comments
"the biggest anti-doping program in Olympic history." ``I'm very pleased,'' International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch said of the doping withdrawals. ``I'm very happy. This is very good news. It shows the new system for detecting doping substances will work very well. ... The objective is to have clean games."
Detecting doping? With what? Like a radar, err.. dopler?
posted by tiaka
on Sep 6, 2000 -
0 comments
