Rain and Erik Santos To Perform in Olympic Festival Closing Ceremony
September 14, 2008 by cd · 42 Comments
Our very own Erik Santos is among the chosen few accross Asia to perform in the closing ceremony of the Olympic Festival in Beijing.
RP Wushu Athlete Cops Gold in Olympic Demo Sport
The Philippines can find some solace in Willy Wang’s feat.
Wang won the gold medal in the combined events of men’s nanquan and nangun (bare fists) Friday to somehow make up for the country’s listless performance in the Beijing Olympics.
But because wushu is only a demonstration sport, Wang’s victory will not count in the regular medal standings.
The wushu gold is reminiscent of the gold medal won by Arianne Cerdeña in the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Cerdeña’s triumph in bowling did not count because it was an exhibition sport.
Source: GMANews.TV
Phelps’ Seventh Gold Most Incredible Yet
August 17, 2008 by cd · 3 Comments
The computer called it one-hundredth of a second, but technology is a fantastic liar. Imagine the time it would take to travel between a pair of atoms on the tip of a needle – that was the difference that delivered Michael Phelps his seventh gold medal.
But clarity didn’t come before thousands of eyes snapped quickly upward to the giant screen, officially registering Phelps’ victory inside Beijing’s Water Cube. A collective stare was followed by a rolling whoosh of American joy and disbelief as his name popped up one-hundredth of a second faster than Serbia’s Milorad Cavic – 50.58 seconds to 50.59.
Good enough for an Olympic record, and fast enough to touch off an explosion in the bleachers looming overhead: “WHOOOOOOOAAAAAA!”
Phelps went into the final 50 meters of Saturday’s 100-meter butterfly in seventh place, then shovel-kicked his way to a victory that could hardly be measured in the length of an eyelash. Even he had to take off his goggles and eye the scoreboard to believe it, at which point he slapped his spindly fingers into the water and let out a roar of “Yeaaaaaaaaaaah!”
At that very moment, the Serbian swimming team was looking up at the same results from the edge of the pool deck, screaming another chorus of “NO!” The Serbians would later protest the results, to the point that FINA had to review a replay that slowed the race down to one ten-thousandths of real time. The video and timing system showed that Phelps had indeed won, if only by a few cells at the tips of his fingers. Even the Serbs had to relent after FINA ushered them into the video room and showed them frame-by-frame results. But even now, the win looks indecipherable to the naked eye.
“I saw the finish on the big screen after the race and then I saw it slowed down frame by frame at the massage area,” Phelps said. “I was looking at the computer, and it’s almost too close to see. One one-hundredth is the smallest margin of victory in our sport. It’s pretty cool.”
Pretty cool and pretty stunning – a finish that provoked a range of the most raw human reactions possible. Two fans in cowboy hats leaned over a railing near the center of the pool and shrieked at each other over the chaotic finish, “He’s gonna lose! He lost! He lost!” Journalists leapt from their seats in disbelief, some scrambling to change the tops of their stories to match a headline of “PHELPS DEFEATED.” But the computer said otherwise, and video would back it up later.
Cavic clearly didn’t believe at first. Multiple replays in slow motion looked too close, something that apparently didn’t sit well immediately after the race. The silver medalist sped by reporters, looking disgusted and waving off interviews. He headed straight toward a coach from his Serbian team, who wrapped his hands around Cavic’s neck and looked him in the eyes.
“You won,” his coach said.
Cavic nodded and collapsed his 6-foot-5 frame into an embrace. The man who Friday looked at Phelps and said, “It would be good for the sport if he lost,” thought he had delivered the most unpopular booster shot in the history of swimming. And when he found out he hadn’t, he slowly graduated through every conceivable emotion – anger, disgust, acceptance and then, finally, understated happiness over having captured his country’s first ever medal in swimming.
“I’m sure people will be bringing this up for years, saying that, you know, ‘You won that race,’” Cavic said. “Well, this is just what the results showed. This is what the electronic board showed. I kind of have mixed emotions about it. This could be kind of a good thing. If I lost by a tenth of a second or two-tenths of a second, I could probably be a lot cooler about this. But with a hundredth of a second, I’ll have a whole lot more people saying, ‘You really won that race.’
“Is Michael Phelps the gold-medal winner? I think if we had to do this again, I’d win.”
It’s that kind of bravado that may have crept back to haunt Cavic. Just before the race, Phelps’ coach, Bob Bowman, looked at his star and repeated the words.
“It would be good for swimming if you lost,” Bowman said.
It was the perfect dig at the perfect time.
“I always welcome comments,” Phelps said later with a grin. “If anybody wants to say anything, I’ll always welcome it. I like it. It definitely motivates me even more.”
Phelps and Cavic actually had a brief moment before the race where each stood staring at each other, both waiting to step up on their blocks. Neither looked away for that one moment – like two fighters standing at center ring waiting to tap gloves.
“Both of us have metallic goggles, so I couldn’t see his eyes and he couldn’t see mine,” Cavic said.
Once they finally hit the water, Phelps didn’t come out as fast as many expected, particularly after the 50-meter turn. Phelps was at the rear end of the entire field at that point, a half-body length behind Cavic and teammate Ian Crocker – a pair of historically fast starters. But Phelps began chopping into that lead almost immediately, moving up to fourth place by the final 25 meters. That set up the ending that swimming aficionados predicted, with the final 10 meters a dead heat between Phelps and Cavic.
It wasn’t until the last stroke of both swimmers that the race was decided, when Cavic chose to glide in underwater for his last two meters, while Phelps forced in one last stroke coming out of the water and chopping downward onto the wall to finish. In that last moment, Phelps thought the decision to “chop the wall” had lost gold.
“I really thought that cost me the race, but it happened to be the direct opposite,” Phelps said. “If I would have glided, I would have ended up being way too long. I ended up making the right decision. Trying to just take sort of a short, fast stroke to try to get my hand on the wall first – it turned out to be in my favor.”
And it was that moment – that decision – which delivered Phelps his history, tying him with Spitz, both now having won seven gold medals in a single Olympic Games. It also set the stage for Phelps carving out his own plateau with one event left. After Sunday’s 4×100 medley relay, in which the Americans have never lost and are overwhelming favorites, Phelps should realize his impossible quest for eight gold medals.
“It seems like every day I’m in sort of a dream world,” Phelps said. “Sometimes you sort of have to pinch yourself to see if it’s really real. I’m just happy I’m in the real world.”
Source: Yahoo! Sports
Author: Charles Robinson
Michael Phelps
August 14, 2008 by cd · 5 Comments
Michael Fred Phelps II (born June 30, 1985 in Baltimore, Maryland) is an American swimmer, a world-record holder and the winningnest Olympian in history.
Michael Phelps Becomes the Winningnest Olympian Ever
August 13, 2008 by cd · 5 Comments
US swimmer Michael Phelps became the winningnest Olympian ever by capturing his 10th and 11th career gold medals and five world records at the Beijing Olympics.
James Walsh is First Pinoy to Swim Below 2 Minutes
August 12, 2008 by cd · 5 Comments
Although it’s a long shot for an Olympic medal in swimming in the presence of powerhouse countries like USA and Australia, our very own James Walsh was able to set a new Southeast Asian record and became the first pinoy to break into the 2-minute bracket.
Team Philippines at the Olympics (1924 to 2008)
August 9, 2008 by cd · 19 Comments
The Philippines first participated at the Olympic Games in 1924. The nation has competed at every Summer Olympics since then, except in 1980 when they join the American-led boycott of the games. Find out our Pinoy Olympians through the years and who are the 9 Filipinos in history to win an Olympic medal.
Iraq Banned from Beijing Olympics
Just two weeks before the start of the Olympics, Iraq was told Thursday it’s not welcome in Beijing because of a political feud in Baghdad that angered the games’ guardians and exiled a country that arrived to a roaring ovation at the opening ceremony four years ago.
The International Olympic Committee told Iraqi sports officials in a letter that it would uphold its ban imposed in June after the government in Baghdad replaced its national Olympic panel with members not recognized by the IOC.
The IOC had called the move unacceptable government interference.
In Iraq, it also smacked of the lingering sectarian bitterness between the new Shiite power brokers and the Sunnis who were once favored under Saddam Hussein—whose son, Odai, ran the nation’s Olympic committee as a personal fiefdom and was accused of torturing athletes who came up short.
“Clearly we’d very much like to have seen Iraq’s athletes in Beijing,” said IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies. “We are very disappointed that the athletes have been so ill-served by their own government’s actions.”
But Davies suggested there was still a possibility for last-ditch talks to salvage Iraq’s place before the games open Aug. 8.
“If there can be some movement and if a resolution can be found, that’s still an open door,” she told CNN. When asked if there’s a window of about a week, she said “Correct.”
At the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, the crowd at the opening ceremony rose to its feet as the small Iraqi team entered the stadium for the first Olympics since the fall of Saddam. The team was led by Najah Ali, a 106-pound boxer who carried the red-white-and-green flag. Later, the pint-sized underdog pumped his fists after winning a bout in an early round and shouted from the ring that his victory was “a symbol of freedom.”
Iraq’s soccer team also became one of the feel-good stories of Athens when it made a surprising run to the semifinals—only to be defeated by Italy 1-0 in the bronze-medal game.
This year, at least seven Iraqi athletes were expected to compete in Beijing in sports including weightlifting, rowing and archery. Their spots were given to other nations by the IOC.
Iraqi sports officials reacted with disbelief and outrage as they watched the efforts for Beijing vanish. Iraq has only one medal—a bronze in weightlifting in 1960—since its first appearance at the Summer Olympics in 1948.
“Unjust,” said Fawzi Akram, a member of the sports committee in parliament. “Iraq is passing through an exception period and should be given special consideration.”
The official who received the IOC’s letter—Jassim Mohammed Jaafar, the minister of sport and youth—grumbled: “We reject this unfair decision.”
But it’s been coming to a head for months.
In May, Iraq’s government dissolved the 11-member National Olympic Committee. Among the claims was that it was illegitimate because it lacked enough members for a legal quorum—even though four members of the committee, including its chief, were kidnapped two years ago and their fates remain unknown.
There’s also possible echoes of Iraq’s sectarian rifts. The Youth and Sports Ministry is dominated by Shiites who also control the government. Iraq’s Olympic Committee had included several holdovers from the Saddam era.
The IOC banned Iraq in June, but said it was open for talks. Iraq, too, promised to meet the IOC and present “solid evidence” of corruption, unfair elections and other alleged failings by the committee.
But on Thursday, the IOC said the deadline to open negotiations had run out — just as athletes begin their final preparations for Beijing.
“We are deeply sorry for this result,” said the IOC letter.
Iraq is not the first country to miss an Olympics because of government interference.
In the most recent case, Afghanistan was prevented from sending a team to the Sydney Games in 2000 when the Taliban regime’s heavy hand extended to sports.
The U.S. Olympic Committee also had a stake in the Iraq team, signing an agreement in 2006 to help with training for Beijing.
White House press secretary Dana Perino expressed disappointment.
“I’m sure that the Iraqi athletes who have trained so hard and were finally going to represent a country that is free and sovereign and working to establish its democracy, they have to be terribly disappointed, and I’m disappointed for the athletes as well,” she said.
While many Iraqi officials rallied behind the government, the mood among fans was sour.
“The (IOC) decision will be a catastrophe for Iraqi sports,” said Dia Hussein, coach of the Iraq Police Soccer team, which plays in the national league. “I blame the Iraqi government for bringing this on the country.”
Yaroub Kadim, a 22-year-old university student, described sports as “one of the only real lifelines connecting everyone in the country.”
There’s a cruel irony in the suspicions that sectarian power plays may have sunk Iraq’s Olympic hopes. Sports has become one of the few genuine sources of national unity since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
In July 2007, Iraqis erupted with joy when their national team—the Lions of the Two Rivers—won the Asia Cup. Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds poured into streets lined with blast walls to celebrate, shoot guns in the air and bask in a common Iraqi pride.
The soccer team was also hit by a ban by the sport’s governing body, but was lifted in time for Iraq to compete in the World Cup qualifying tournament. Sports figures also have joined the long rolls of civilians killed in the war.
The Olympic cycling coach, national wrestling coach, a soccer federation member and a prominent volleyball player have been killed, most in 2006 during the height of sectarian slayings.
Source: Yahoo
