What are your Limits ?

World's Hottest Athlete: Allison Stokke vs. Tatiana Grigorieva

Allison Stokke

Allison Stokke became an internet sensation just over a year ago just as she was leaving high school. She’s (obviously) hot, and it didn’t help that her event of choice, pole vaulting, is ripe for innuendo for all the online hornballs. She’s a champion pole vaulter who set the national high school outdoor record, and now competes at Cal where she’s in her second year. Expect to see plenty more of Stokke and her toned olive skin in future competitions, Olympics, youtubes, and sports blogs.

Allison Stokke was a standout California high school track star that became an internet phenomenon after her picture was posted on net. Stokke set a national record for pole vaulting with a mark of 13-7 in her senior year at Newport Harbor High School. Stokke is now attending University of California, Berkeley and is on the track and field team.

Tatiana Grigorieva

This Australian pole vaulter won a silver at the 2000 Olympic games, and looks very good naked (*cough cough* google images). After retiring from pole vaulting last year, Tatiana went on to compete in Dancing with the Stars and as “Olympia” on Gladiators (the Australian version of what we call American Gladiators). She has also appeared in international editions of GQ and Esquire, but best of all she is a picture perfect doll representing the land down under.

(Thanx:http://blog.ingamenow.com/)

What is the price of success for China’s athletes (Olympic Success) ?

Chinese athletes are undoubtedly performing well at their home Games in Beijing, but at what cost? Their success stems from a tightly regimented, some say at times brutal, athletic training system designed with one thing in mind: to win whatever the price, says the Epoch Times.
While Chinese athletes are pushed to the limits of mental and physical endurance, key regime spokespeople reveal the importance of Olympic gold for the continued legitimacy of one-party rule.

As an autocracy, the regime is able to impose fierce control on its athletes and their training. One gold medal is worth one thousand silvers, according to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Olympic officials.

In the quest for gold, many Chinese athletes have had their education, personal finances, and even their family life taken over by the state. Children are recruited from a very young age, nation-wide, according to body type.

British Olympic rower Matthew Pinsent told the BBC in 2005 that he saw children in a Beijing gymnasium being pushed to breaking point, yelled at, and said one young boy was clearly beaten.

Foreign media recently accused China of using underage gymnasts, which the regime denied. But children as young as four are among those recruited into the intensive gymnastic training squads.

The intensive training programmes are not designed to benefit the athletes as professionals, but to test them to extermes, meaning only the strongest will survive. It is very much a case of perform or perish: the outlook for a former athlete in today’s China is bleak.

The China Sports Daily, an official Party mouthpiece, estimated that of the 300,000 retired athletes 80 per cent are unemployed, injured, or living in poverty. The regime promised them US$ 4 million in annual welfare which was supposed to start in 2007.

Lu Yuanzhen, a professor of sports sociology at the Academy of Sports Sciences at South China Normal University told The New York Times that if China’s athletes do poorly, “the entire nation and its people will lose face.”

(http://insidechinatoday.net/2008/08/14/what-is-the-price-of-success-for-chinas-athletes/)

Everybody In - Beating the Heat

The northern hemisphere is feeling the summer heat. A number of heat waves have already rolled across parts of southern Europe,the United States and Asia. From swimming pools to rivers, wave pools, ocean beaches and more, here are some recent photos of people around the world having fun, competing and keeping cool in the water.

(http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/)