Gold medal failure

You spend years training patiently and persistently, demanding of yourself nothing but perfection. You'd think that would all come in handy when you climb down from that podium for the last time.

Not really, says a study of eight former Olympians by university researchers in Australia and Sweden.

"Olympism is a slippery term," the researchers said in a study they did for the International Olympic Committee. While science has paid attention to athletes and their transition into the rest of their lives. that hasn't often included former Olympians.

They found the perfectionism, submission to coach bullying or inhumane training and the need to perform for rewards can all work horribly against retired athletes.

So, too, the egocentricism and the lack of compromise they learn as competitors can also make for someone who's no fun in the post-Games workplace.

The study urged the IOC to figure out how to identify who needs an intensive course in life skills when they move on to something other than competitive sports.

The true north, facing north

The Empire State Building is lighting up to honour the Olympic countries and Canada's turn will come this Saturday, Aug. 4.

The north side of the New York City landmark will shine red and white all night. Canada is sharing the tower with Bulgaria (west), Greece (south side) and Serbia (east).

The north side of the Empire State Building will be red and white again on Sunday, Aug. 5, but that will be in honour of Switzerland. We're not telling.

The folks who run the lights on the tower lit it red and white for Canada during the Canada Day weekend as well.

 

A living legacy of the Nazi Olympics

Margaret Lambert is 98 and lives in New York City quietly, with her 101-year-old husband. But the London 2012 Games are reminding the world of her place in history.

Lambert, born Gretel Bergmann in Laupheim, Germany, in 1914, is the last living athlete banned from the Berlin 1936 Games for being Jewish.

An exhibit at the Free Word Centre "Politics & Olympics," tells her story.

She held one German record of 1.51 metres for the high jump and had soared to another personal best of 1.55 metres at the 1934 British championships in London. The year before, when Adolf Hitler became Chancellor in Germany, Jews had been thrown out of sports clubs and competitions in Germany.

The Nazis were forced to invite her back to Germany to compete when the United States threatened to boycott the Berlin Games over Hitler's vow to exclude black and Jewish athletes.

Lambert returned, qualified and hit another German record, 1.60 metres in the high jump. In a documentary on her life aired by HBO in 2004, she recalled what powered her over that bar: "I can hear that voice calling from within: Jump! Show them what a Jew is capable of doing."

A month before the Games, she was tossed out of competition, told she "wasn't good enough." She emigrated to the United States in 1937.

Her last German jump was put back in the record book in 2009, a decade over her home town named the sports stadium after her.

Wearing spandex and a smile, girls

Two scientific analyses of past Olympic coverage put hard numbers on the cold reality of women in sports:

Your best chance to get on prime-time TV is to wear a bathing suit and look girly.

This might not seem terribly surprising during these Twitter Olympics, where American comedian Conan O'Brien tweeted his mockery American shot-putter Holley Mangold's weight, British comedian Frankie Boyle made fun on Twitter of swimmer (and double gold medallist in Beijing) Rebecca Adlington and Australian media called Oz swim champion Leisel Jones too fat to compete.

But that's just anecdotal. This is number-crunching research with an even more damning conclusion.

A study of NBC's coverage of the 2010 Vancouver Games found men received three-fifths of the air time and 75 per cent of the most-mentioned athletes were male.

The American researchers also found commentators most often said the men won because of experience and the women because of courage. Women failed, they said, because of lack of commitment.

Another study, this one of the 2008 Summer Games, found 97 per cent of the airtime women got were in six "socially acceptable" sports: yes, beach volleyball and synchronized swimming were among them. The others were track, volleyball, diving and gynmastics.

"It should be noted," the study of NBC's summer coverage said, "that it is now customary for the participants of all these events to wear the equivalent of a bathing suit."

Perhaps downhill skiing or speed skating in skivvies would help the winter athletes.

 

Burned

A few of the 8,000 torches used in the Olympic relay from Athens to London are up on eBay already, selling for a couple of thousand dollars each.

Two women who tried to unload theirs in May, however, got Olympic-scale burned.

Sarah Milner Simonds, a community gardener from Somerset, and Sophia Cowburn of Cornwall both put their enduring symbols of the 2012 Games up for auction for about $250,000 each. Both winning bids turned out to be fake, but not before the women were scorched with hate email for trying to cash in on the Games.

Each had said the money would go toward charity.

Two other 2012 torches are still on eBay in the U.K. for a more modest $4,000 or so, with bids. A range of pins, mini-torches by toymaker Hornby and clothing worn by the handpicked volunteer torch relay runners are also up for auction.

Sarah and Sophia might want to reflect that timing is everything. A dozen or more of the sleek white torches used in the relay before the Vancouver Games are going on eBay for a few hundred dollars each.

 

 

LIVE: Canada meets Sweden in women's soccer

Columnist Cathal Kelly brings updates from Canada-Sweden.

 

Which Olympic athlete are you?

This morning's most popular time-waster is a quick quiz which lets you see which of the 10,000 Olympic athletes you most resembly by height and weight.

Here's the link.

Just by way of comparison, your Star morning crew played out as a rower from Scotland, a weightlifter from North Korea, a U.S. fencer (our most lithe editor), a Tunisian volleyball player (our cyclist commuter), a British long distance runner (our very tall, lean editor) and a hammer thrower from Finland.

Own the podium.

 

Olympics Tuesday: Here's what we're watching

Canada's Brent Hayden has qualified for the semifinals in the men's 100-metre freestyle event. We'll find out if he swims for a medal at 2:30 p.m. (all times Eastern). The final is Aug. 1.

Also in the pool, Katerine Savard was 19th in women's butterfly and did not advance. The men's 4 x 200 freestyle relay team was 14th. The top eight make the relay final.

The women's 10-metre synchro is Canada's next solid chance at a podium finish when Meaghan Benfeito and Roseline Filion compete in the final at 10 a.m.

Canada's women play a must-win football (soccer) match against Sweden starting at 9:30 a.m.

It's another full day on the tennis court for Canada, with Milos Raonic, Alekaandra Wozniak both playing 7 a.m. matches, and the doubles team of Daniel Nestor and Vasek Pospisil also in action today.

Canada's women's gymnastics team, for the first time in history, competes in a finals event starting at 11:30 a.m.

Zara Phillips is going for gold in equestrian today as her Royal cousins cheer her on. Canadians include Peter Barry, Rebecca Howard, Michele Mueller and Jessica Phoenix.

Weightlifter Christine Girard will try to improve on her Olympic fourth-place finish from 2008 in the women's 63-kilogram event at 10:30 a.m.

 

Is anyone actually watching beach volleyball?

Soldiers dancing in conga lines, bikini-clad cheerleaders, spectators stacking plastic beer cups in tottering towers. Even spectators taking in a match Monday between the men from Great Britain and Brazil were distracted by activity in the stands at central London's Horse Guards Parade.

As rival sections of the arena competed to build the largest beer cup tower, jumbo screens showed troops joining a conga line around the 15,000 seat venue.

Even those watching the sandy court faced distractions, including dancers in skimpy outfits who performed during each major break in play.

-The Associated Press

Field hockey sees pink, and blue

(Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters)

For the first time in Olympic history, field hockey players are tangled up in blue.

The field at Olympic Park is now blanketed in an electric blue surface with a hot pink border. The eye-catching colour scheme fits right in with the London Games and is grabbing some attention for a fringe sport that could use all the help it can get.

In hopes of making the game easier to watch for spectators, the decision was made to change from green turf and white ball to blue turf and yellow ball

Many of those tuning into field hockey are doing so for the first time. But even some who have been watching for years find it jarring at first.

Australian defender Mark Knowles says he loves the new look. He says it makes hockey stand out from the other sports played on green fields.

- Jon Krawczynski, The Associated Press