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Dutch athlete Monique van der Vorst became paralyzed from the hip down during a surgical operation when she was 13 years old, and used a wheelchair afterward. She also suffered a spinal cord injury in 2008. Meanwhile, she became a cyclist, using her hands for propulsion, and won two silver medals at the 2008 Paralympics, as well as other athletic honors. Then van der Vorst was involved in another crash last year when she was hit by a bicycle. While recovering, she began to feel tingling in her feet! Months of therapy followed while van der Vorst regained the use of her legs.
Doctors have no explanation for her amazing recovery. Some believe the trauma of her last accident may have jolted her body back into activity.
But the realities of her new-found joy also put an immediate end to a successful athletic career.
“Although walking is the best thing you could do in life, I immediately missed the sport, the people and the challenges,” van der Vorst said.
Rehabilitation and physiotherapy with an athletic focus strengthened her and as soon as she sat on a bike she again wanted to give it a try.
But van der Vorst has a new goal. She has signed with a professional cycling team as an able-bodied athlete, and is training to compete in the 2016 Olympics. Link -via Buzzfeed, where you can see more pictures.
(Image credit: Bas Czerwinski/AP)
Here are Wenlock and Mandeville, the mascots for the 2012 Olympics in London, England. Wenlock will represent the Olympic games and Mandeville will represent the Paralympic games. Their names are a piece of history.
Wenlock is named after the Shropshire town of Much Wenlock where, in the mid-19th century, the Wenlock Games became one of the inspirations for the modern Olympic movement.
Mandeville’s name is derived from Stoke Mandeville, in Buckinghamshire, home to Stoke Mandeville Hospital.
In the 1940s Dr Ludwig Guttman came to the hospital to set up a new spinal unit to help former soldiers suffering from spinal cord injuries.
Looking for ways to inspire those in his care he encouraged them to take up sport and the Stoke Mandeville Games was formed, widely recognised as a forerunner of the modern Paralympic movement.
The characters’ appearances are loaded with symbolism, explained at The Daily Mail. Link to story. Link to website.-via Holy Kaw!
This chart from the utility company EPCOR contrasts water consumption in Edmonton, Alberta on two different days. February 27th is charted to show a normal day. February 28th was the day Canada won the Olympic gold medal hockey game. As you can see, a huge percentage of their customers waited for breaks in the game to “go”. Link -via reddit
Designer Steven Heller gives an overview and critique of Olympic pictograms used over the past 74 years for the New York Times. When you only see these every few years, you don’t realize how different they are for each Olympiad. -via the Presurfer
The final day of the Winter Olympics this Sunday has only two events: the gold medal men’s hockey game and the 50km cross-country skiing race. Brian McKeever will be skiing for Canada. This race will make him the first Olympian ever to participate in both the Winter Olympics and Paralympics in the same year. McKeever is legally blind.
In 1998, McKeever was a promising 19-year-old skier when he was diagnosed with Stargardt’s disease, a type of juvenile macular degeneration that gradually leads to blindness. Twelve years later, McKeever only has 10 percent of his vision, and that tiny fraction is in his peripheral vision.
Rather than rolling over when he lost his sight, though, McKeever got back on his skis.
Read about how McKeever does it at mental_floss. Link
All athletes are ecstatic over winning a gold medal at the Olympics. But how about second and third place winners? It turns out that a bronze medal will bring more happiness than a silver medal!
Research by three U.S. academics, who analyzed heat-of-the-moment reactions, medal-stand temperament and interviews of Olympians, shows that bronze-medal winners, on average, are happier with their finishes than silver medalists. Take silver, and you tend to fixate on the near miss. Score bronze, and you are thankful you were not shut out altogether.
“When you come in second,” said Thomas Gilovich, chairman of Cornell’s psychology department and one of the study’s co-authors, “it’s the most natural thing in the world to look upward. ‘I got the silver and that’s what it is, but what is it not? It’s not the gold.’
“With the bronze, the natural place to look is downward. ‘I got the bronze. That’s what it is, but what it isn’t is off the medal stand.’ “
The research was done during the 1992 summer games in Barcelona, but the findings appear to hold true in 2010. Link -via Digg
(image credit: Flickr user selihpxe8)
Wired has a collection of aeriel photographs of Olympic sites from the present and the past. Shown is an image of the “slide center” in Whistler, home of the skiing bobsled, luge, and skeleton events at the Vancouver Olympics.
(image credit: DigitalGlobe)
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Vancouver is a city, but the community of Whistler, where the winter Olympic skiing events are actually held, is shared with native wildlife. A family of lynx was spotted hanging out near the luge track, and on Wednesday a lynx crossed the downhill skiing track.
The lynx is a large cat – weighing up to 30 pounds and reaching 26 inches in height – that roams forests of the northern United States and Canada. And take it from a Canadian – downhiller Manuel Osborne-Paradis – the lynx is no cuddly outdoor friend when you’re speeding down an icy slope at 70 mph.
“Get out of the way,” he said. “Oh, wow. You do not want to get close to that.”
The downhill session was already on hold because of fog, and no skiers linked with lynx. Still, officials issued a warning over the race radio in case someone was on the course. The lynx had its own agenda and hopped over the barriers lining the perimeter to retreat to the forest.
(image credit: AP/Gero Breloer)
I saw my first curling match a couple of days ago. What a strange sport it is that has people walking on the ice in shoes! If you are as confused as I was, check out the mental_floss guide to the rules and strategy of curling. This article even explains why they yell so much! Link
Is it luck or a curse that causes German speed skater Daniela Anschutz-Thoms to finish in fourth place? Not once, not twice, but fifteen times in the Olympics, the World Championships, and the European Championships. At each competition, medals are awarded to the top three only. It happened again in Vancouver.
Right up until the last lap, Germany’s unluckiest Olympian looked set to break the mold and grab silver in the women’s 3000 metre speed skating race.
But eventually the 35-year-old fell short, losing out on third place by just three hundredths of a second.
No matter how hard poor old Daniela tries, she just can’t escape fourth place.
Anschutz-Thoms will have one more chance at a medal, in the 5,000 meter race next week. Link -via Digg
The Olympic Torch arrives in Vancouver tonight for the opening ceremonies of the 21st Winter Games. On its way through Canada, it rode on skates, sleds, snowmobiles, boats, wheels, and even a snowboard. One torchbearer even received a marriage proposal while she was carrying the Olympic flame! The Big Picture shows what the journey is like in a series of photographs. Link
(image credit: VANOC/COVAN, Lorenzo Negri with IMF)
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At the opening ceremonies for the Vancouver Olympics Friday, Robel Teklemariam will carry the flag for Ethiopia. Teklemariam is a cross-country skier from a country that has no snow. He came to the United States at age 9 while his mother worked for the UN in New York City, and attended the University of New Hampshire on a full scholarship. This will be his second Olympic competition. Link
I would have to agree that the Olympics would be improved with sports that people actually participate in during snowy weather. Snowball Fights, Snowman Building, and Hot Toddy Drinking are right up my alley, but I will leave Dogsled Racing to those who are more experienced. Video examples of each are included. Link
Michael R. Barrick created a graphic last summer using the Vancouver Olympics mascots and the internet cartoon character Pedobear. The image shows up in a Google image search for the mascots, so it was only a matter of time before someone used it without knowing that Pedobear is not an Olympic mascot. The graphic showed up this weekend in the Polish newspaper Gazeta Olsztyn. Link
When is it OK to take an open flame on an airplane? When it’s the Olympic flame, ignited in Greece and on it’s way to Vancouver for the winter games.
After departing Athens, Greece on October 30th, the Olympic Flame has been traveling across Canada, now about 1/3 of the way into its 106-day, 26,000 km overland relay (another 18,000 km by air). Over 12,000 torch-bearers will carry the flame along a winding path covering all of Canada, passing through over 1,000 communities total – from Toronto, Winnipeg and Calgary to smaller communities such as Gwa’Sala-Nakwaxda’xw, Notre-Dame-du-Lac, Moose Jaw and Sheshatshiu. The final destination: Vancouver’s BC Place on February 12, 2010, where it will light the Olympic Cauldron and signal the start of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games.
The Big Picture has 33 photographs that follow the torch’s journey. Link -via J-Walk Blog
(image credit: REUTERS/Andy Clark)
Sidi Ergo has pictures and descriptions of the most expensive bicycles ever made, including models plated in gold and encrusted with diamonds. This model, the Koga Kimera, isn’t quite so luxurious. But developed by UK bike-maker Koga for Dutch Olympic competitor Theo Bos Koga, it’s priced at almost one million dollars. The Kimera is said to have the lowest wind resistance of any bicycle ever made.
Link via The Presurfer | Photo: Oobject
The 2016 Olympic summer games will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The 2012 games will be in London, England. Since the first modern Olympics in 1896, 22 cities have hosted the summer games, some more than once. Can you name all those cities in five minutes? That’s the challenge of this Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. Good luck -I could only name 16. Link
The track and field events of 100 m dash, long jump, high jump, and shot put can get kind of boring after a while. But how should they be improved?
How about with a sumo suit? The people behind the Sumo Suit Athletics World Championships (motto: "slower, lower, weaker!") aim to liberate these events from elitist pro athletes so the (flabby) masses can join in on the fun!
Can’t compete with Usain Bolt over 100m? Not able to leap tall buildings in a single bound? Well have no fear, in a Sumo Suit no one can!
Indeed! TYWKIWDBI has the video clip: Link
72-year-old Dawn Fraser confronted two teenage home intruders at her daughter’s home in Noosaville, Australia. One attacked her, thinking a little old lady wouldn’t resist much. What he didn’t realize was that Frazer has always been a tough lady.
“Out came this guy who then grabbed me around the throat and said ‘I will kill you’, and with that I grabbed him around the ear and hair and kneed him in the groin,” she told Channel Seven television late Monday.
“I was threatened by the way he spoke to me and I’d never been spoken to like what he called me … I think I lost it. I have got a titanium knee so it must have hurt him,” she said.
The two youths were referred to child services. Fraser {wiki} won eight Olympic medals for swimming in 1956, 1960, and 1964, including four gold medals for Australia. Link
Missing the bus may have been the best thing that ever happened to UK sprinter Jeffrey Lawal-Balogun:
"Then one day I was on my way to college and had to run after the bus. I must have been quite fast because a girl came up to me afterwards and asked if I ran with a club."
It turned out the girl was from Kent Athletic Club and she introduced him to leading sprint coach Clarence Callender, who was immediately impressed. Jeffrey, now 23, of Mottingham, South London, is already carving out a name for himself – and encouraging children to take up athletics at an early age. [...]
He added: "I never thought running after a bus would lead to all this. And the funny thing is, I missed it."
Link | Jeffrey’s profile at The Stellar Group
(Photo: Stellar Group Ltd)
I’ve been training for a 20k that takes place at the end of May, and I can definitively say that you will never find me on anyone’s “Fastest Runners” list. “Slowest Runners,” “Saddest Runners,” “Runners with the Worst Form,” “Runners Who Hate GU the Most,” maybe. But not “Fastest Runners.” However, if you’re looking for some inspiration to give your jogs a little boost, here are four guys who should do the trick.
He only held the record for six weeks, though: John Landy surpassed the sub-four-mile mark by just a sliver (3:57.9). On August 7 of the same year, though, Bannister got his chance to win the title back when he and Landy faced off at the British Empire and Commonwealth Games. Although Landy led for the majority of the race, Bannister came up with his famous “Bannister Burst” in the last quarter of the race and sped past Landy to win. Too bad Landy ended up retaining the record anyway: they both came in at times slower than Landy’s previous 3:57.9. You can watch it here – it’s pretty fascinating. I can’t imagine running a mile in less than four minutes and still losing. The current record of 3:43.13 was set by Hicham el Guerrouj of Morocco in 1999.
A sub-four-minute mile is incredibly impressive, no doubt, but it’s even more impressive when you’re over 40. And so far, Irishman Eamonn Coghlan is the only man older than 39 to have clocked 1600 m in under 240 seconds. Ever. Eamonn was no amateur runner – in the ’70s, famous track coach Jumbo Elliott offered Coghlan a scholarship to come run for Villanova. Coghlan accepted, and there he won four NCAA titles. He ran his first under-four in 1975 and has since accomplished the feat 83 times, including his record-setting over 40 run in 1994. He was 41 at the time. Interestingly, a sub-four over the age of 50 has never been accomplished, so maybe we’ll see another record out of Eamonn Coglan yet. And if the name sounds familiar to you, but the sport seems all wrong, that’s because Eamonn’s son, also named Eamonn, is a golf pro in the U.S.
I think I’ll do a follow-up on amazing female runners next. If you have some suggestions, leave me a comment and let me know!
