She grew up in Flint, Michigan, a city so poor and underserved that the local government doesn’t care their children are being poisoned by lead in the water. But she had a talent – to hit, and hit hard.
Claressa Shields is the world’s strongest female boxer in the middleweight class (75kg), and is a favorite to win gold at the 2016 Rio Olympics. In fact, she could become the first American to win boxing gold in two successive Olympics.
She is a marketing phenomenon heading into the Summer Games – the most recent being her appearance in the recent Sports Illustrated The Magazine’s Body issue, which features nude photos of some of the most famous athletes in the world. But it is the documentary, T-Rex, which tells the story of a fragile young girl turning into a determined woman and Olympic champion, that put her firmly on the American pop culture map.
Will she have strong competition at the Rio Games? Of course, she still has to be win her three or four contests. But as Shields stated recently in Slate’s sports podcast, Hang Up and Listen, she has fought all her known competition and beat them all at least once. And when she won the middleweight women’s world boxing championship on May 27 this year in Astana, Kazakhstan, she beat the only strong contender she had not faced, Nouchka Fontjin of the Netherlands.
She’s (Nouchka) pretty tall, she’s a heavy hitter. For the last two years, I just can’t wait to fight her. I can’t wait to run into her. She was ranked number 3 in the world, and when someone’s ranked that high, and I hadn’t fought them, there’s always some talk. I want to prove the doubters wrong, prove that I’m the best, prove that I cannot be beat by anybody. For the last two years, she’s been an opponent I’ve been hitting on in the gym against her because I thought she was top competition. I fought her in the worlds and dominated her, 3-0. She was competitive. But I was just great.
Shields is 74-1 in her career, a two-time world champion, gunning for a second Olympic gold. Chances of success? High.
We’re a little less than a month away and the intense fear of the zika-virus has diminished over the past few months. Part of the reason is that mosquitos, which transmit the zika-virus to humans, flourish in hot weather, and Brazil is in its cool season in August.
Still, athletes and National Olympic committees are taking measures where they can. I’ve noted three basic strategies: protection, abstention and just-in-case measures.
Protection: The US Olympic Committee will be issuing long-sleeved shirts and long pants to their athletes, as well as a six-months supply of condoms post Olympics as the virus can be transmitted through sexual fluids. The Australian Olympic Committee is providing their athletes with condoms specially treated with an anti-viral coating. The Korean Olympic Committee is not only providing long-sleeved shirts and long pants to their athletes, they are infusing the fabrics with mosquito repellent. To ensure everyone in Rio has mosquito repellent, Rio’s Olympic Organizing Committee just signed up SC Johnson as an official Olympic sponsor, which means that thousands of bottoles of the mosquito repellent OFF! Will be distributed to athletes, staff and volunteers.
Abstention: Despite calls by a prominent Canadian doctor to postpone the Rio Olympics, the World Health Organization did not endorse a ban, although they are strongly recommending pregnant women from travelling to zika-infested areas like Brazil, as well as to abstain from sex for at least 8 weeks after returning from zika-infested areas. If they do not experience such symptoms as rash, fever, arthralgia, myalgia or conjunctivitis after 8 weeks, they are likely uninfected. A handful of athletes have withdrawn for the Rio Olympics citing concerns regarding the zika virus, including the top four golfers in the world: #1 Jason Day of Australia, #2 Dustin Johnson of the US, #3 Jordan Spieth of the US, and #4 Rory McIlroy of Ireland, among others.
Just-in-Case Sperm Freezing: 2012 London Games long jump gold medalist Greg Rutherford initially expressed the strong possibility of not going to the Rio Games. But now that Rutherford has frozen his sperm, and has ensured the possibility of having children without the risk of zika-infection, he is now re-considering his participation. Spanish NBA star, Pau Gasol, is also considering freezing his sperm in order to have a greater of peace of mind if going to Rio.
Average temperatures in Rio de Janeiro over 12 months
In the end, for the majority of the athletes, many athletes are going because the cool weather means a significant drop in risk. According to the New York Times, three-time gold medalist beach volleyball player Kerri Walsh Jennings already participated in a tournament in Rio in March and her precautions were effective. “I took my essential oils, I’m going to bring my Honest bug repellent, and I escaped all mosquito bites until the very last day. And I came home, and I didn’t get Zika.”
With the Rio Olympics in August in the middle of the Brazilian winter, she feels confident that the zika virus will not be a threat.
What a lot of athletes may also privately admit is that they are not going to let a tiny mosquito deny them a chance at glory after years of grueling training.
I lived in Bangkok and Singapore for over 13 years, where it is summer year round, and the temperatures are commonly in the low to mid 30’s Celsius (high 80’s Fahrenheit), and sometimes high 30’s Celsius (100+ Fahrenheit). And for every single one of those years, I had a nice big swimming pool within 10 meters of my apartment.
Jumping into the pool was an absolute delight!
But not for high-performance swimmers, athletes who have trained by jumping into water 12 degrees (20 Fahrenheit) colder than their body temperature, since they were kids. The bracing shock apparently never goes away.
“The worst part about being a swimmer? Jumping in the pool.”
“Jumping into the water when It’s 6am in the winter – it is the last thing you want to do.”
“It’s the worst part of any swimmer’s day.”
Click on the above picture or go to this link and see grown men and women revert back into little kids just thinking about it.
Stephen Colbert, like his former boss Jon Stewart and his former colleague, John Oliver, has a wit as sharp as Occam’s razor. It is often a joy to listen to him dissect an issue. In the above video clip, his dissection of the state of the Rio Olympics felt more like a vivisection. Here are a few examples:
I’m pumped for the Rio Games. They are less than two months away…or never…because yesterday Rio’s acting governor warned “the Olympics could be a big failure.”
Many of the venues are still unfinished, possibly because more than ten billion dollars in construction contracts went to just five firms, all of which are currently under investigation for price fixing and kickbacks. This has already led to top executives and politicians being jailed or charged…although the plus side for those executives – the prisons won’t be completed until 2036.
Experts don’t expect an increase in arrests during the Olympics in part because police patrols may grind to a halt because they can’t afford to buy fuel. Though with any luck the problem will solve itself when the cars are stolen. These budget shortfalls led first responders to stage protests all over Rio yesterday, including one at the airport where police held a sign that read: Welcome to Hell. Police and firefighters don’t get paid, whoever comes to Rio de Janeiro will not be safe.
Hell. It explains why they’re changing the Olympic logo from three people holding hands to two guys mugging the other guy.
Your child is talented – talented enough to make it to the highest levels of competition, like the Olympics. You’ve driven her countless hours to and from practice, begged time off from work yet again to be with her at a meet, cried out when she fell, massaged her creaky calves to make the pain go away, wept as she was carted off for surgery, and went bananas upon the moment of her triumph.
The video at the top of the page is of the parents of Aly Raisman, who won gold medals in the team and floor women’s gymnastics competitions at the 2012 London Olympics. The expressions, the body language, the sounds of the parents are so explicit that we cannot help but feel their anxiety. We understand that these parents have had their fair share of sacrifice, pain and joy. As the writer of the book, The Secret Olympian wrote, that is the price of athletic success for many.
To make it in sport you need others to sacrifice their goals. To make it in sport you need others to sacrifice their time, and often money, for you to make it. I didn’t speak to a single Olympian who didn’t recognize the huge burden they were to their parents when growing up. My parents spent thousands of hours at weekends and week-nights, driving me to and from training and to races across the country, and spent thousands of pounds on coaching, training camps and kit (and sating my excessive appetite!)
The parents of Aly Raisman will be featured in an upcoming television series in America called “Gold Medal Families”. In it, Raisman’s mother is quoted as saying:
“Time is such a precious commodity, and the impact on family time was tough,” says Lynn, whose daughter is looking to make the team for a second time in July after winning gold in the floor exercise event in London in 2012. “Around the time Aly was 10, she reached a level where her coach did not want her out of the gym during school vacations. There were a number of times where my husband took her siblings away … and I stayed home with Aly. There were birthdays, holidays and family gatherings she missed because she had [to go to the] gym. Even just regularly missing daily family dinners was hard.”
Aly Raisman was in St Louis for the US Olympic Team Trials in gymnastics. On June 26th, Raisman, at the rather elderly age of 22, won a spot on the American team headed to Rio in August. Can her parents stand the pressure?
The scale of this ban due to doping is unprecedented in Olympic history, and will have a significant impact on the Rio medal tally as Russia won 18 medals in track and field, including 8 gold medals, at the 2012 London Games. This is a tragedy for Russians, who likely were fully expectant of their citizens bringing home medals and glory from Brazil. But it is also a victory for athletes who live clean sporting lives, and a bit of redemption for athletes whose final results may have been affected by a tainted Russian athlete.
But this a complex tale of good and bad, with victims, heroes and dreamers. Here are a few of the players in this tragedy:
The Whistle-Blowing Victim, Darya Pishchalnikova: Way back in December of 2012, a female discus thrower from Astrakhan Russia wrote a very sensitive email in English, and sent it to the World Anti-Doping Agency. Darya Pishchalnikova took a chance by opening up to the global doping regulatory authority, expecting her whistle lowing to be handled with the utmost confidentiality. According to this New York Times article, Pishchalnikova’s email was sent to the top three WADA officials at the time, with a note explaining that the discus thrower’s accusations were “relatively precise”, filled with facts and names. What did WADA do with Pischalnikova’s email? They forwarded it to the Russian sports authorities
What is interesting is that she had actually tested positive for an anabolic steroid prior to the 2012 London Games in May, 2012. She blew the whistle 7 months later, explaining how she had taken banned substances as a part of a systematic doping program in Russia. But perhaps predictably, after the Russian authorities were forwarded Pischalnikova’s email from WADA, the Russian Athletics Federation banned her from competing any further for Russia.
Yuliya Rusanova of Russia; REUTERS/Michael Dalder
The Reluctant Hero, Yuliya Stepanova: Like Pishchalnikova, Yuliya Stepanova (now Rusanova) was a standout athlete who was banned by the IAAF due to abnormalities with her bloodwork. Her husband, Vitaly Stepanov, was actually a member of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA), who was growing disenchanted with RUSADA’s lack of integrity. At one point, the 800-meter specialist took steps to divorce herself from her crusading husband. But after Yuliya was banned by the IAAF for two years, the couple committed to work together, and began to think about ways to share their insight into systematic doping of Russian athletes. Eventually, they agreed to go on camera with German news broadcaster, ARD, for a documentary that blew the lid off Russia’s state-sponsored doping system. Fearing for their safety, the couple, now married, are living in the United States.
Sir Craig Reedie
The Reluctant Sheriff, WADA:We know that the World Anti-Doping Agency was aware of allegations into Russian state-sponsored doping, as early as December, 2012 based on Pischalnikova’s case. We also know according to this 60 Minutes account that Yuliya’s husband, Vitaly sent 200 emails and 50 letters to WADA, detailing what he knew as an insider at RUSADA. As 60 Minutes stated, “his crusade eventually cost him his job.”
WADA’s president is Craig Reedie. In this New York Times article, he acknowledges that Vitaly contacted him, but also implied he did not act on it. In fact, he even confirmed “that he had sent a reassuring email to the Russian sports ministry in April — four months after the ARD documentary was broadcast — in which he praised the sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, for his efforts in the fight against doping and said there was ‘no intention in WADA to do anything to affect’ their relationship.”
Wow.
The Hopeful, Yelena Isinbayeva: Pole vaulting has been an Olympic event for women for only four Olympiads, debuting at the 2000 Sydney Games. In that period, Russian Yelena Isinbayeva has won gold in 2004 and 2008 before taking bronze in 2012. She has never tested positive for drugs. And despite the ban, she still hopes to participate in her fifth and
Brazil is the home to the Amazon Rain Forest, so diverse in fauna and flora that Brazil is considered a “megadiverse country”, one that demands greater global attention in preserving its biological riches. With the ultimate global party – the 2016 Olympic Games – about to commence in Rio de Janeiro, authorities are ensuring that messages about environmental protection are given priority.
On June 14, Rio 2016 and Brazilian Mint held a press conference to display the medals to be awarded to top three finalists in the Olympic and Paralympic competitions to be held in August and September this year.
The talking points:
The nearly 2,500 gold, silver and bronze medals were produced according to strict sustainability criteria.
The gold medals were formed by gold that was extracted without the use of mercury.
Thirty percent of the silver and bronze medals are made up of recycled materials.
Half of the plastic in the ribbons that will suspend the medals were made from recycled plastic bottles.
What caught my eye? The fact that mercury wasn’t used in the mining of gold. I know mercury is a substance humans generally want to avoid direct exposure to. One of Japan’s most infamous environmental health cases and lawsuits are based on a Japanese company in Kumamoto that routinely released mercury into Minamata Bay, causing thousands of cases of mercury poisoning. In Japan, that condition is called Minamata Disease.
What I didn’t know was that mercury has become a popular tool for mining gold. Chemically, mercury and gold attract, or as the scientists would say, mercury amalgamates to gold. This small understanding of chemistry has motivated miners to use mercury in a variety of ways to separate gold specs from rock and dust.
The video below on artisanal gold mining demonstrates the process. First miners pick away at walls of rock with the understanding that gold nuggets an gold dust are in the seams. Large chunks of rock are then handcrushed, and then crushed further by mechanized processes. When the rock has been reduced to pebbles and dust, water is added. At this stage, mercury, which is a liquid element easily purchased, is added to the mix.
Mercury and gold attract, form an amalgam, and thus are easily gathered from the gold-mercury-water slush.
While coming into contact with mercury is not a good idea, as the workers inevitably do in this process, the next step is the most life threatening. The amalgams are then heated so that the gold can be separate from the amalgam. Essentially, the mercury is burned off, released in fumes. It is those fumes that are inhaled by the workers.
The end of the video leads to a conclusion that makes me wonder why gold is so important in the first place: one ounce of gold is mined from one ton of ore using mercury amalgamation techniques. It is good that the 2016 Rio Olympic gold medals are not mined from that poisonous process. But like blood diamonds, poison gold needs to be outlawed.
Who’s going to win the medal haul at the 2016 Rio Olympics? Today there are predictive models for everything: what film will win Best Picture at the Oscars, who will win a presidential campaign, and of course, what team will win a given sporting championship. The Olympics are also fair game.
Already, various experts and organizations have made their predictions on which nations will take home the lion’s share of the gold, silver and bronze medals at the 2016 Summer Games. As the website Topend Sports notes, the results of four well-known Olympic prognosticators have similar conclusions: The USA and China will vie for domination, while Russia, Great Britain and Germany make hay as well. In Asia, Japan is expected to do well as a prelude to the 2020 Games in Tokyo. Unfortunately, but perhaps not surprising, host Brazil is not expected to finish in the top ten.
At the London Olympics four years ago, Russian track and field athletes took home a total of 18 medals, of which 8 were gold. That will drop Russia’s medals chances drastically, and boost the totals of its rivals.
As Nobel Prize winning nuclear physicist, Niels Bohr, famously said, “prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.”
South Korea’s Archery Team for the Rio Olympics Korea’s team comprises recurve men Kim Woojin, Ku Bonchan and Lee Seungyun and recurve women Choi Misun, Ki Bo Bae and Chang Hye Jin.Nothing like an Olympic Games to get a nation to focus. And when South Korea was awarded the 1988 Summer Olympic Games, the National Olympic Committee and Korean Government drew a bullseye on archery.
Over the past 7 Summer Games, South Korea has won 18 of 28 possible gold medals, whether individual or team, men or women. In fact, the South Korean women’s team has won gold at every Olympics since 1988.
This is not luck. This is a significant investment in identifying archery talent early, and developing the strongest archers so that the pool competing for international competition is deep. This is how the BBC explained the South Korean archery talent machinery.
Koreans are introduced to archery at primary school, with talented children receiving up to two hours training a day. The less able are then weeded out at middle school, high school and university level until the very best are hired as adults by the company teams run by organisations such as car manufacturer Hyundai.
Approximately 30% of the Korean Archery Association’s (KAA) budget comes from the country’s Olympic Committee, but the main financial strength of the system is from these 33 company teams who provide a wage and a pension to archers employed solely to compete for them.
With so many top class archers around (back in 2004, a non-Korean archer who was ranked 5th in the world had the same competition record as a Korean archer placed 90th in the country), no one is guaranteed a victory or a spot in the national team. Many former gold medalists have been struck off a year or so later because others (and some of them newbies) have surpassed them in ranks. It’s a sport where seniority really doesn’t matter at the end of the day, allowing for true competitive spirit to flourish.
Apparently, the sport of archery is expensive – a single arrow costing around $40. And because archery in South Korea is so well funded, their archers can spend all their time sharpening their craft. Again, the former archer describes this world-class level of dedication.
The sport is also very well-funded, and athletes really get to focus on what they do best. This means that they practise like machines. The 2012 London Olympics women’s team said that they shoot 500 arrows a day. As far as I know, Ki shoots with a 40 pound bow. Obviously I’m a bad point of comparison, but I am pretty much done for the day after shooting a double Portsmouth (120 arrows) with a 34 pound bow.
As it turns out, only one person from the 2012 London Games will be returning to the 2016 Games, Ki Bo-bae, who won gold in the women’s individual and women’s team competitions. The rest, you can bet are the best of the Korean up and comers.
Any sure bets for the Rio Olympics? South Korean archery is looking like a bullseye.
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