Free Form Blogging: Famous Female Athletes

Greetings to our blog visitors in Dubai, Slovenia and Peru.

It has been a good while since we posted a free form blog where we just use words, topics, things which are trending on Twitter, yada, yada, yada, and tonight, we are going to come with a short piece involving female athletes, many of which we saw on ESPN's "Nine for IX" documentary on female athletes.

The six athletes we are using former American gold-medal winning gymnast Mary Lou Retton (pictured top), soccer star Mia Hamm who lead the USA to a World Cup title in 1999 (pictured center), Gabrielle Reece, a beach volleyball superstar (we expect she help us get hits from Dubai, Oman and Yemen), Indy race car driver Danica Patrick, East German gold-medal winning figure skater Katarina Witt and tennis Wonder Woman Martina Navratilova.

Witt and Reece both posed for "Playboy," Hamm posed for the cover of "Washingtonian Magazine" and Retton for those Wheaties boxes.

Here we go:

"Mary Lou Retton, a country girl from Fairmont, W.Va, won gold at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, and assuredly if Twitter had been around back then, she would have trending for a full six weeks. Mia Hamm went on to play for the Turkish soccer team Fenerbahce, an Istanbul powerhouse, and she broke a huge gender barrier for women (this is a joke, but there is now a women's soccer league in Turkey and ironically not one in America). Gabrielle Reece is probably driving a Prius with a bumper sticker that says: "Real athletes don't wear shoes." Amazingly enough, she is now 43 years old. But, Katarina Witt and Martina Navratilova are older than that. Witt was manipulated by the East German regime. Navratilova is now a gay rights activist and a novelist/writer; we assume she doesn't live in Topeka, Kansas. Danica Patrick is the only one of these athletes who has competed directly with men
in a men's sport. Of course, lots of guys hate her for this, but we think they are really just jealous because she is sooo out of their league."

Hmm....yeah, I don't think we need to file a copyright for this.

And, kudos to our beloved Salem Red Sox who defeated the Myrtle Beach Pelicans 1-0 in Salem, Va., in the first game of a best of three playoff series. The winner plays for the Carolina League championship.

http://www.gabriellereece.com/

http://www.miafoundation.org/

http://www.danicaracing.com/

http://en.katarina-witt.de/

http://www.martinanavratilova.com/

http://marylouretton.com/

Olympics and Politics Clash on Twitter Today

We got in the Twitter forum ourselves today by congratulating Mitt Romney for choosing former American Olympic gymnast Mary Lou Retton (pictured top) as his running mate aboard the U.S.S. Wisconsin in Norfolk, Va. (for our yack-herding friends in Tibet, we should point out Paul Ryan of Wisconsin was Romney's actual choice, as it is Retton's home state of West Virginia is not considered a swing state this time around).

For those of you in Denver or Los Angeles I will issue a SPOILER ALERT as many of the Olympic events discussed here have not been televised as of this writing.

These tweets were compiled between 5:00-6:00 p.m. New York time, which would 10:00-11:00p.m. in London and 12:00-1:00 a.m. in Istanbul. We shall explain some of the tweets with info at the end of the compilation. We should point out that the center image is of Hodari, the tiger mascot of the 1988 Seoul Olympics, and the bottom image is a zombie version of Michele Bachmann.

1) @VanouverSun: "Canada disqualified in Olympic men's 4 x 100-metre relay as Usain Bolt, Jamaica sprint to victory (with reaction)*

2) @AlexSemin: "There's better chance that I would be absolutely #filthy @ men's field hockey."**

3) @NPROlympics: "America's Brigetta Barrett Brings Out Her Best, and Jumps To A Silver Medal***

4) @LOLGOP: "We'll stop blaming Bush when you stop running on his ideas."

5) @tomperriello (Tom Perriello): "Romney comes to VA with a chairman behind sequestration that put millionaires ahead of the military. Classy." %

6) @BBCWorld: "(Tom) Daley secures 10m diving bronze." ^

7) @TeamBachmann: "#RomneyRyan 2012 is a winning combination! RT if America's Comeback Team has your support." ^%

*_Team Canada was disqualified because Jared Connaughton had stepped out of his lane during the relay. Trinidad and Tobago got bronze instead. Team America got silver in the event.

**_Alex Semin was a Washington Capitals star who recently joined the Carolina Hurricanes. Germany beat the Netherlands 2-1 to win gold in men's field hockey. Australia won bronze with a 3-1 over host Great Britain.

***-A pair of Russians_Anna Chicherova (gold) and Svetlana Shkolina (bronze) won the other medals in the high jump.

^- British diver Tom Daley won bronze; and American diver David Boudia (gold) pulled a huge upset over Chinese diver Qui Bo.

%-Tom Perriello is a former Democratic congressman who represented the very conservative fifth district of Virginia for one term; he pulled a major upset over arch conservative Virgil Goode, who is now running for president with the fringe right wing Constitution Party (ironically, Goode was once a Democrat). Perriello is now CEO of American Progress Action.

^%_In case it's not obvious, we do not share TeamBachmann's views.

http://www.teamusa.org

http://www.nhl.com

http://www.americanprogressaction.org

http://www.tomdaley.tv

http://www.marylouretton.com

Olympic Cities Distance Quiz (2 of 6)- Los Angeles to Tokyo

As the world gets ready for the 2012 London Olympics, we take a look at the distances between cities which have previously hosted the games. One thing we learned while putting this together is that Detroit tried many times to get the games, but they were unable to land them.

Los Angeles has had considerably more luck as they have hosted the 1932 Olympics and the 1984 Olympics.

Tokyo, Japan, was supposed to get the 1940 put an invasion of China sent the games to Helsinki, Finland. But, they were able to secure the games in 1964, becoming the first Asian country to host the Olympics. In more recent years, South Korea and China have hosted them as well.

There is an amazing contrast in the amount of international athletes who competed in each of the games. In 1964, they were athletes from 93 countries in Tokyo. 20 years later, in spite of a boycott from the Soviet Union, eastern block countries (except Romania and the now nonexistent Yugoslavia) and Cuba, athletes from 140 countries came to southern California.

In Tokyo, judo and women's volleyball become Olympic sports. Among the highlights in Japan were Soviet gymnast Larisa Latyrynina, a Ukrainian who is now 77, won two golds, a silver and two bronze medals. While Ethiopian marathon runner Abebe Bikila (1932-1973) won a second consecutive gold medal. For the Americans, recently deceased boxer Joe Frazier (1944-2011) won gold as a heavyweight in boxing.

In L.A., synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics debuted in the games where American gymnast Mary Lou Retton, now 44, won a gold in the all-around competition as well as a team silver and a silver on the vault. Carl Lewis won four gold medals in track. And, a barefoot runner from South Africa named Zola Budd, who competed for the United Kingdom, collided with American runner Mary Slaney*, who was wearing shoes, in a highly controversial and dubious 3,000 meter relay. Thus, many people have forgotten that Romanian runner Maricica Puica actually won the race.

So, what is the distance in miles between Los Angeles and Tokyo....

Is the answer:

A) 5,351 miles

B) 5,451 miles

C) 5,556 miles

D) 5,701 miles

PICTURED: A sumo wrestler and Sam the Eagle, who was the official mascot of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

*-Mary Slaney is now known as Mary Decker


SIDEBAR: As for the answer to our tv quiz entry from yesterday, "M*A*S*H" ran for 251 episodes.


http://www.marylouretton.com

Quote of the Day/Week- Dominique Moceanu

We continue our quotes from American athletes who won gold or silver at Olympics past with a gymnast Dominique Moceanu, 30, a daughter of Romanian immigrants who now resides in Cleveland in honor of the upcoming 2012 London Olympics.

Moceanu was a member of the Magnificent Seven women's gymnastics team from the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, which also included Amanda Borden, Shannon Miller and Dominique Dawes. That team won gold over tough competition from Romania, Russia and China.

The gymnast, who is a mother of two, also coaches part-time in Cleveland. Moceanu's coach was Romanian emigre Bela Karolyi, who coached Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton.

Here is Moceanu's quote:

"I was always kinda fearless in everything I did."

We had also considered quoting Borden, 35, a mother of a four-year-old child, who is originally from Cincinnati and now coaches and resides in Tempe, Ariz. Her gym is called, appropriately enough Gold Medal Gym.

Miller, whom we quoted two weeks ago, made news last year as she publicly disclosed that she was battling cancer which at last report was in remission.

http://www.dominique-moceanu.com

http://www.goldmedalgym.com

Casualties of Modern Technology- The VHS Tape (Entry 2 of 12)

Sorry for the six day layover at the airport in Atlanta (well, it would take too long to explain why I was really gone for this long), but let's get back to bizness (deliberately spelled wrong for all you English teachers out there; in-joke) here with an entry dedicated to the VHS cassette tape or videotape, which have all but vanished from the face of the earth.

My friend Jason Garnett actually held a VHS Night at the Shadowbox Microcinema in Roanoke, Va., where the film "Rad" (1986) with former Olympic gymnast Bart Conner- of all people- was screened. The film actually revolves around the world of BMX racing.

"Rad" was one of three feature films in the mid-80s to star men's gymnastics stars. The other two included "Gymkata" (1985) with Kurt Thomas and "American Anthem"
(1986) with Mitch Gaylord, a film that also featured a very gorgeous Janet Jones who later married hockey icon Wayne Gretzky.

Amazingly enough, no one in Hollywood thought of making such a film starring women's gymnastics darling Mary Lou Retton, but perhaps that was a good thing.

The videotape was first sampled in 1951 by Bing Crosby Productions, according to Wikipedia. Videotapes became widely available in the 1970s. Since VCRs were very expensive until the 1980s, there was little consumer demand for them. That all changed very quickly and cult films, like the South African wonder-hit "The Gods Must be Crazy" (1984), were more widely seen than the films were during their theatrical runs.

But, by the 1990s, dvds came and well the proverbial credits started to roll for the VHS tape.

SIDEBAR: We want to wish Parker Posey a happy 43rd birthday. No, we do not know her personally.