The Olympics

Parent Cafe
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<p>So Lance Armstrong should ride for France in the Olympics?</p>

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<p>bullet, that was Surya Bonali. In the link I posted, there’s a skating fashion retrospective and she’s in there.</p>

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<p>Oh, I loved that fashion link. Sweet to think of the moms at home sewing the skating clothes.</p>

<p>I always enjoyed watching - Surya Bonali you never knew what she would do next. But better suited for the ice shows than competition.</p>

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<p>Just found this:</p>

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<p>Her problem was she appeared to have an attitude and never got the hearts of the fans. Champions on Ice went belly up, but if I recall Scott Hamilton started another type like Champions and that is still going.</p>

<p>On that note where’s Oksana? Too lazy to google!</p>

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<p>b&p, you must have had a “Dorothy Hamill” haircut. (Remember the Short & Sassy vs. Long & Silky ads of that era?) From Wikipedia entry for Dorothy Hamill:</p>

<p>“She is credited with developing a new skating move; a camel spin that turns into a sit spin, which became known as the “Hamill camel.” The bobbed hairstyle that she wore during her Olympic performance started a fad.”</p>

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<p>My college ID showed a very unfortunate version of the wedge, which was more of a bowl cut than a wedge.</p>

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<p>God I remember that ad campaign…do you remember the product PSSST?</p>

<p>Yes, I had the Dorothy Hammil haircut. Here’s a funny story about it. My Mom and I went to MSG for a tennis match, the next day there was a pic of me in the stands in NYT saying Dorothy Hammil was there. My Mom still has the clipping, like everything else in life even the paparazzi gets it wrong!</p>

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<p>Evan is on NBC right now. He just saw the performance for the first time. He hasn’t slept yet.</p>

<p>He looks so different without his hair gelled back.</p>

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<p>You can see why my D is obsessed with him, right? (I personally think the Swiss guy is cuter.)</p>

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<p>Ohhh, love the Swiss guy.</p>

<p>Hamilton is giving Plushenko a little what-for right now. :)</p>

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<p>Has Dick Button surfaced? I was disappointed that they didn’t talk to him last night. (If they did, I slept through it.)</p>

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<p>I think that was mainly a US rule. Russians, for example, were selected, trained, and supported from a very young age. If you’re being supported to train and compete, that sure seems professional to me.</p>

<p>I had some blond feathers, but after having long, straight blond hippie hair most of my life to that point, I decided to go short. Lady Di was my style.</p>

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<p>missy, he was on, but just for a brief moment. The long programs were too long to fit too much of Dick’s commentary. Too bad! He did wear different shoes - shiny, more dress-like. :)</p>

<p>I did not care for Evan’s and Plushenko’s performances. I liked Johhny - I think he is such a sweet boy, and it is amazing that he could speak Russian to his coach! The two Japanese guys were also phenomenal despite their mishaps! The kid who performed the Charlie Chaplin routine and had a shoe lace malfunction - I bet we will see more of him in the future. And did you guys see the 16 yr old Korean boy from Kazakhstan? Dennis Ten, I think, is his name. He placed 10th or something like that overall. He was amazing! The commentators said that when he was little, he had no access to an indoor rink and only could practice in the winter, and then, when they started building skating rinks in shopping malls, he practiced there. Wow. Did you guys see that he did a Sasha Cohen in one of his spins? I bet no one else among the male competitiors could do that! One of his combo jumps was done just 2 seconds before the mid-performance mark, so he did not get any bonus points for it. I hope he stays healthy and gains more international experience, and we will see him on the awards pedestal in Sochi! The Brazilian - French kid is another raising star, IMO.</p>

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<p>I did her, too, after Dorothy.</p>

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<p>I just had to close my office door and watch Brian Boitano’s two programs from 1988 on You Tube. Even now they are pretty darned special. The one difference is that the jumps aren’t combinations. But everything he did expresses the music. He was perfect the night he won the gold.</p>

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<p>Huh? Katarine Witt had triples. She hit five triple jumps and skated the hardest program of all compeitors when she defeated Debbie Thomas for the gold medal. In fact, the last Olympic women’s figure skating champion to NOT jump a triple was Peggy Fleming in 1968. Triples have been a defacto requirement for the women for a long time.</p>

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<p>You are conflating a couple of different skaters. Linda Fratiani was born and raised in the US and skated for the US, winning an Olympic silver medal. You are probably thinking of Dianne De Leuuw, who was born, raised, and trained in California but skated for the The Netherlands because she held dual citizenship thanks to her Dutch father. She was Dorothy Hamill’s great rival and usually defeated Dorothy in the World Championships. But Dorothy turned the tables in the Olympics and brought home the gold.</p>

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<p>Wow, check out the hair on all three of the '76 medalists:</p>

<p>[Google</a> Image Result for <a href=“http://z.about.com/d/figureskating/1/0/L/F/-/-/olympics76.jpg[/url]”>http://z.about.com/d/figureskating/1/0/L/F/-/-/olympics76.jpg](<a href=“http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://z.about.com/d/figureskating/1/0/L/F/-/-/olympics76.jpg&imgrefurl=http://figureskating.about.com/od/olympicchampions/ig/Olympic-Figure-Skating-History/1976-Women-Olympic-Medalists.htm&h=396&w=594&sz=47&tbnid=4yJ5LmgLFx_kGM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3DDianne%2BDe%2BLeeuw&usg=__ZhTs5hBlsGlIdcB_H4MugMb2Ddc=&ei=2_5-S7_XG8v9nAe4zcls&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=7&ct=image&ved=0CBoQ9QEwBg]Google”>http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://z.about.com/d/figureskating/1/0/L/F/-/-/olympics76.jpg&imgrefurl=http://figureskating.about.com/od/olympicchampions/ig/Olympic-Figure-Skating-History/1976-Women-Olympic-Medalists.htm&h=396&w=594&sz=47&tbnid=4yJ5LmgLFx_kGM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3DDianne%2BDe%2BLeeuw&usg=__ZhTs5hBlsGlIdcB_H4MugMb2Ddc=&ei=2_5-S7_XG8v9nAe4zcls&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=7&ct=image&ved=0CBoQ9QEwBg)</a></p>

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It was definitely an Olympic rule. It changed some time in the 1980s. Before that athletes had to be very careful about what they did (they could not be paid to appear in advertisements for instance) if they wanted to be eligible to compete in the Olympics. I was living in the middle east when they changed the rules so was very taken aback when I watched the next Olympics and there were athletes I knew were professional competing.</p>

<p>There was an American athlete, Jim Thorpe, who was stripped of his Olympic track and field medals because he had been a professional football player. Even though his professional sport was a different sport to the one he medaled in, he was a professional athlete so they took his medals away.</p>

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<p>swimcatsmom: But the way I remember it, the rule change just allowed the countries that generally followed the rules to compete on a more even footing with the countries that had, for years, successfully circumvented the rule against non-professional athletes .</p>