Usain Bolt celebrates 100m gold with Swedish women's handball team Usain Bolt didn't need to leave the athletes' village to toast his 100 metres gold, preferring to celebrate with three members of the Swedish women's handball team.
by Sophia Heath
Bolt beat his training partner Yohan Blake to retain his 100m title and in the process set a new Olympic record of 9.63 sec. The 25 year-old decided to enlist the help of Gabriella Kain, Isabelle Gullden and Jamina Roberts, who lost all five of their matches and finished bottom of their group in the handball tournament, to celebrate his victory.
The photo is slightly surprising considering that Bolt had insisted there would be no celebrations as he still has to try and retain his 200m crown.
“This gold means I am one step closer to being a legend so I'm working toward that,” Bolt said. “That's just one step, I have the 200m to go so I can't celebrate.”
A Swedish newspaper reported that the trio asked Bolt’s coach for accreditation so that they could congratulate the sprinter and spent an hour-and-a half in the sprinting legend's bedroom.
The Swedish ladies were not his only admirers. After confirming his status as the fastest man on earth he even got a kiss from last night’s silver medallist in the 400m Christine Ohuruogu.
* Must been the longest congratulatory in history. One hour and 30 minutes. Bolt you lucky fuck!
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Here's One Really Vulgar, Hilarious Irish Olympics Commentator This Olympic sailing commentator couldn't contain his disdain for the sport, resorting to commentary more colorful than usual like calling one competitor a dickhead and these spectators idiots, plus just making stuff up. I'm about 90 percent sure this is fake, but it's just too funny to think it might not be.
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US basketball player swaps homeland for Russia in bid for Olympic glory
Becky Hammon gets ready to head into the London 2012 quarter-finals with Russia despite no family ties to the country.
Russia's Becky Hammon goes for the ball in a London 2012 basketball game against Canada
When the names of the teams are read out for the women's basketball quarter-final between Turkey and Russia on Tuesday there will be one that stands out. Becky Hammon is not a common name in Russia.
The 35-year-old from Rapid City, South Dakota became a naturalised Russian citizen in 2008 to allow her to play for her adopted country in the Beijing Games. Unlike many others who have switched countries in the past, she had no family ties with her new homeland and the move drew a swift and sometimes stinging response. Anne Donovan, the USA coach at the time, said. "If you play in this country, live in this country and you grow up in the heartland, and you put on a Russian uniform, you are not a patriotic person." Hammon's move was prompted by her exclusion from USA Basketball's list of 21 players in its Olympic pool in 2007 and she now spends most of the year in Moscow, but competes for WNBA San Antonio Silver Stars during the summer. Earlier this year, she said that being Russian is just one piece of her identity. "The citizenship doesn't define me at all. It's an interesting part of my journey, but it's not what makes me who I am. Nor does basketball define me. If anything, the dual citizenship has given me a greater appreciation for the human race in general. Everyone in the world still needs the basics, love, joy, peace, hope, and some food and water. And whether you're American, Russian, British, or whomever from wherever, we all have a story to tell, mine just took an interesting turn when it came to my Olympic dreams."
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London Olympics: A dramatic U.S. soccer victory and first doping scandal
JUDO American judo fighter Nick Delpopolo apologized Monday after he was expelled from the Olympics for doping, blaming the disqualification on his unintentional consumption of something baked with marijuana. Delpopolo is the first of the 10,500 London Games athletes to fail an in-competition doping test. Is it worthy of all this press and outrage? Star-Ledger columnist Steve Politi writes this about the New Jersey native:
C'mon. Are we really still testing athletes for marijuana? Of all the things that they could put into their system for an advantage, of all the gorilla steroids and stimulants and HGH to make them that fraction of a second better than the world, we're worried about a little pot?
GYMNASTICS Gabby Douglas was nowhere near the podium this time. The all-around champion, who also helped the United States to team gold, finished last on uneven bars. Russia's Aliya Mustafina rallied to the victory.
Next comes the game the U.S. players have been eyeing for more than a year, a rematch with Japan on Thursday at Wembley Stadium with gold on the line. The top-ranked Americans lost to Japan on penalty kicks in the World Cup final last summer.
BOXING
Flyweight Marlen Esparza and middleweight Claressa Shields clinched the U.S. team's first two boxing medals. Esparza patiently outboxed Venezuela's Karlha Magliocco, and the 17-year-old Shields closed furiously in an 18-14 win over Swedish veteran Anna Laurell.
TRACK and FIELD Grenada's Kirani James won the men's 400 meters and 35-year-old Felix Sanchez of the Dominican Republic took the men's 400-meter hurdles on a rainy night at Olympic Stadium. Other track and field winners included Belarus' Nadzeya Ostapchuk (women's shot put) and Russia's Yuliya Zaripova (women's 3,000-meter steeplechase). Jenn Suhr, America’s best female pole vaulter for the better part of a half-dozen years, got the Olympic gold she needed to round out her resume. She vaulted 15 feet, 7 inches (4.75 meters) to defeat Cuba’s Yarisley Silva, who cleared the same height but lost on a tiebreaker because she had one more miss in the competition.
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Water Polo Cele-breast-ion
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Sex and the Single Olympian:
Lolo Jones Talks about Her Virginity
The world-class runner shows that virginity isn't just for nerdy 18-year-olds -- and that following God's plan for sexuality can be really hard.
Laura Leonard
Lori “Lolo” Jones is a world-class athlete. She won three NCAA titles and garnered 11 All-American honors while running track and field at Louisiana State University. In the 2008 Olympics, she finished first in the preliminary rounds for the 100-meter hurdles but in the finals tripped on the second-to-last hurdle and finished seventh. She easily passed this year’s 100-meter hurdles this morning, and on Wednesday will have a chance to collect the gold medal that has haunted her since the crushing Beijing loss. Her story is the stuff NBC programmers dream of, tailor-made for a fluffy human-interest piece to fill the time between archery and judo and other sports we haven’t thought about for four years.
Lolo Jones is also a virgin.
Guess which narrative people are talking about?
That Lolo’s virginity is considered more newsworthy than her athletic feats doesn’t surprise me, really. There are enough movies that hinge on the ridiculousness of a mature virgin (and even these are rarely by choice!) to confirm the hypothesis that sexual activity is normal and expected for anyone old enough to have graduated from college. Is it sad that we are more impressed that an attractive 29-year-old woman has managed not have sex than we are that she has distinguished herself as one of the best runners in the world? Perhaps. But we’ve seen this before with another world-class athlete. While some may have seen Tim Tebow’s admission as proof that he’s just as a naive kid, an aw-shucks former homeschooler who missed out by refusing the countless women who would love to “make him a man,” most lightly teased him while suggesting suitably conservative dates. He became the heartthrob of choice for Christians and moms everywhere; hundreds of girls uploaded YouTube videos trying to catch Tebow’s attention, and Katy Perry’s mom suggested she’d love to see her daughter date Tim. His virginity is seen by some as “too good to be true”--dating service AshleyMadison.com, which caters to married people looking for discreet affairs, offered $1 million to anyone who could disprove the claim. It has become something of a joke, the “challenge” to take Tebow’s virginity. This points to the ways we talk about the roles of men and women with regard to sexuality. We can joke about Tebow because he has remained strong and withstood temptation; Lolo, because she is conventionally “hot,” comes across as a tease. She suggested as much herself when she told Jay Leno, “no one likes a girl who doesn’t put out.”
The general shock surrounding this choice also reveals just how countercultural the Christian view of sexuality--which is what motivates both Lolo and Tim--remains. They have helped to put a new “face” on abstinence. Virginity isn’t just a stigma that nerdy 18-year-olds and pathetic but lovable 40-year-olds will do anything to shake. It’s a legitimate choice embraced by attractive, successful people who have had ample opportunities to have sex but aren’t because of God’s call on their lives.
What does set Lolo apart is how she also views her abstinence as her biggest accomplishment. In an interview for HBO’s Real Sports, she told Mary Carillo, “It’s just a gift I want to give my husband. But please understand this journey has been hard. There’s virgins out there and I want to let them know that it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Harder than training for the Olympics. Harder than graduating from college has been to stay a virgin before marriage. I’ve been tempted, I’ve had plenty of opportunities.”
Taken on its surface, this admission seems to confirm the secular opinion that the Christian view of sexuality is oppressive and unrealistic or just plain awkward. I don’t want to make presumptions about the complexities of Lolo’s faith and sexuality, as she has not publicly discussed them in much length. Her “struggle” narrative as it has presented is a good in the ways it works against the negative perceptions of virgins and honestly represents the reality of plenty of mature, single Christians. It is hard. This is true. But if the message stops here, it also makes the choice of abstinence into something it is not, or should not be.
The church needs this kind of reframing talk about celibacy, now more than ever. All the recent conversations about homosexuality in the church have brought to the forefront just how much we have placed marriage in the center of the church--and either completely forgotten about celibacy or relegated it to the fringes where people can deal with it alone until marriage offers them a ticket “in.” In the midst of the Chick-fil-A controversy, a friend directed me to a post by a gay Christian calling the church to consider how it might better support those called to celibacy: “Calling people to difficult standards is loving and Christlike; calling people to uphold difficult standards on their own is unloving and entirely antithetical to the gospel, especially when the standards you’re calling people to uphold are so closely connected to relationships and intimacy.” He points to Galatians 6:2, which commands us to “carry each other’s burdens” in order to fulfill the law of Christ.
If as a community we lovingly surround those who are called to virginity--whether for now or for life--it can be more than it has become. It does not have to be about constantly saying “no”--it should be about saying “yes” to something even greater. It is about honoring God with our whole selves and trusting his plan for our bodies. It is an act of worship, as Romans 12:1 puts it, and worship is our privilege rather than our sacrifice. It is not a means to an end, as Anna Broadway suggested in her post on why she no longer prays for a husband, but it is a real place in which God can and does want to work, right now. As a single Christian myself, I would define my struggle as one of constantly working to grow in dependence on God’s love and mercy to sustain me through singleness, loneliness, and sexual temptation--and not to see these things as ends in themselves but reminders that too often I look for satisfaction apart from the ultimate goodness God has promised us: himself. He doesn’t promise sex, or a husband. These things might come, and we are right to celebrate them when and if they do. But when our desires are in their right place, we see they are not the gold medal for which we strive.
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Fun and Games: Olympics athletes out clubbing to mark end of swimming competition
A who’s who of athletes partied the night away at trendy London club Chinawhite after giving their all at London 2012.
Phw-oar! Rower Sophie Hosking with a pal
FOR four gruelling years they have concentrated on nothing else but Olympic glory. So after giving their all at London 2012, these athletes can be forgiven for letting their hair down. More than 10,000 competitors are taking part in the Games – and some have already begun to party, despite the Olympic cauldron still burning. A who’s who of athletes partied the night away at trendy London club Chinawhite on Sunday. They included US swimmer Ryan Lochte and Team GB rowers Richard Chambers and Mark Hunter. Also at the “end of swimming” party were British gold-winning cyclist Dani King, champion rower Sophie Hosking, South African swimmer Jean Basson and Lebanese swimmer Katya Bachrouche. Other swimmers gambled and danced into the early hours at a casino in the Westfield shopping complex next to the Olympic Park. Athletes’ village insiders said staff are preparing for the “party to end all parties” on Sunday night and bosses at bars inside Westfield have been told to create special VIP areas for partying Olympians. Kelly Sotherton, who won a bronze heptathlon medal in Athens in 2004, said London will turn into “party central”.
Bottom's up: Dani King's partner moons at the snappers
She said yesterday: “Athletes are the worst for drinking. “Some people have been working for eight years towards this and may not have had a drink this year. "So once their event is over and they have a drink, they will be hammered. I think there will be a few ill people. “I reckon that London is going to be party central for athletes when they have finished their events. "Love stories will come from the Olympics as well and athletes meet and get married.” Sprinter Roger Black said: “When it’s all done, well, they’ve a lot of pent-up something or other,” he said. “You’re finally ready to party.”
Popular: Swimmer Ryan Lochte and friends in a taxi
Former Olympics swimmer Sharron Davies said: “Any partying is done away from the Village out of respect for athletes who are still competing. “To be honest you spend all your time training and eating healthily – and it only takes a glass of wine and you are hammered.” The focal point in the London Olympic Village is the dining hall where for three weeks 24 hours a day athletes can eat as much as you want. It is here the athletes “hook up” with each other. Organisers catered for every need, even ordering 150,000 condoms – one per athlete per day. Sources said there has been plenty of “late night activity” inside the sprawling complex. In Beijing in 2008 10,000 condoms were provided for the athletes – each one emblazoned with the motto: “Faster, Higher, Stronger.”
Support: Katya Bachroche with friend
British Olympic silver medallist Kriss Akabusi recalled the unique atmosphere of the village at the Barcelona Games in 1992. He said: “It’s go, go, go. All the athletes meet in the dining room and it is open around the clock. “The Americans come in and the volume goes up, or a swathe of northern European female athletes come in and everyone’s head turns. “In my day it was Heike Drechsler, if that was your taste, and there were necks were craning to have a look. “I know there was shenanigans because a load of my mates married other athletes but I wasn’t involved. “That said I am sure if you want to be a playboy you can, human beings are creative individuals. "The Olympic competitor pass attracts all kinds of interest from people who want to get to know you in all sorts of ways.” He said Australian and American competitors were often the targets of schoolboy “pranks”. He added: “There was one massive food fight started by the swimmers in Moscow which started with a bread roll and ended with sauce bottles and plates of food. “You are all young kids in your 20s and in your physical prime and if you are male you play pranks.” Dr Joao Olyntho Machado Neto, of Brazil’s London 2012 delegation, said: “Sex is common at the Olympics. It’s necessary. It’s natural. "If you are going to be healthy people, why not make sex? Brazil is very tolerant.”
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Michael Phelps' model girlfriend revealed, says she's up for anything (except nudity)
Michael Phelps has become one of the biggest stories of the summer Olympics -- again -- and now the attractive "mystery blonde" who has been seen out and about with the most decorated Olympian ever is grabbing a bit of his spotlight. The website Hollyscoop says Phelps' gal pal is a 25-year-old, Los Angeles based aspiring model named Megan Rossee.
"She and Phelps began dating in January (2012) and things started to heat up just prior to the Olympics," a source told the site. "At the time when they began dating, baseball and television star Doug Reinhardt was crushing on her too, but she chose to be with Michael instead."
Rossee tooka photo of she and Phelps arm in arm in London, along with all of his new Olympic hardware, with the simple caption: “Yay Michael.” She also hit the red carpet with him Monday night in London at a Speedo event. (Only swimmers and their significant others go to Speedo events.) Rossee has a page up on the modeling industry site Model Mayhem hat provides a few more personal details. First, she is tall: 5' 9 1/2." Second, she is an "All-American girl." Third: “I am super easy going and pretty much down for any type of project (that doesn't involve nudity). I love what I do and hope to further my career as a model as well as a performer, so if you are interested in working with me, send me a message!” Hollyscoop says Rossee currently bartends at Blok nightclub in Los Angeles, but Phelps wants her to quit her job so she can travel the world with him post-London. Hmmm ... keep bartending, or travel the world with an American sports hero? Tough choice.
Lori “Lolo” Jones is a world-class athlete. She won three NCAA titles and garnered 11 All-American honors while running track and field at Louisiana State University. In the 2008 Olympics, she finished first in the preliminary rounds for the 100-meter hurdles but in the finals tripped on the second-to-last hurdle and finished seventh. She easily passed this year’s 100-meter hurdles this morning, and on Wednesday will have a chance to collect the gold medal that has haunted her since the crushing Beijing loss. Her story is the stuff NBC programmers dream of, tailor-made for a fluffy human-interest piece to fill the time between archery and judo and other sports we haven’t thought about for four years.
Next comes the game the U.S. players have been eyeing for more than a year, a rematch with Japan on Thursday at Wembley Stadium with gold on the line. The top-ranked Americans lost to Japan on penalty kicks in the World Cup final last summer.
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