Swallow your pride, pal
Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post says Paul Hamm is missing the big picture by not giving his men’s gymnastics all-around gold medal to South Korean Yang Tae Yong.
“Such a gesture would carve his name into the marble of sports history, and people would talk about him decades from now. Instead, he’s an asterisk,” Jenkins writes.
“If he had gone over to the South Korean and pressed his gold medal into the guy’s hand, and said, ‘I don’t care what the rules say, you deserve this,’ he would have the instant book contract, the big commercial endorsements and speaking engagements for big money to the end of time.”
Isn’t that the American Dream?
See you in Vilnius
Jerry Greene of the Orlando Sentinel, instructing American fans in a little geography after the USA’s men’s basketball loss to Lithuania: “Where is Lithuania? Come on, it’s on the right side of the Baltic Sea. If you hit Latvia, you went too far.”
Food for thought
More Greene: “So I’m looking at Russia’s gymnastics diva, Svetlana Khorkina, and there’s only one thought in my mind: Will someone please give that girl a sandwich?”
No whining here
Sue Bird and U.S. women’s basketball teammate Tamika Catchings took a break from hoops this week to stomp grapes at the Evharis winery, about an hour west of the Olympic complex.
They checked out vines, learned how to pick grapes and got to smash them with their bare feet. No worries about stains, however. They were white grapes.
Keeps her out of trouble
U.S. Women’s Open champion Meg Mallon told Doug Ferguson of Associated Press that people shouldn’t criticize 14-year-old Michelle Wie for playing golf so much.
“I think you guys all forgot what 14 was like,” Mallon said. “At 14, we were doing nothing but getting in trouble. We were bored. We were telling our parents we didn’t like them. She’s getting more life experiences to help her than any 14-year-old sitting around on a computer, doing things they shouldn’t be doing.”
Naked truth
What about their shirts? The September issue of Playboy features eight U.S. Olympians. According to Jeff Gordon of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, that can mean only one thing:
“This ‘Women of the Olympics’ feature will remind readers that world-class athletes take off their pants one leg at a time, just like normal people.”
Down under the table
To help his squad of first-time Olympians relax, German men’s water polo coach Hergan Stamm is letting his players have a beer or two before their important match against Australia. “That’s the right way to think about Australia,” Stamm said.