Olympic Sayings And Quotes

We need to stop playing Privilege or Oppression Olympics because we’ll never get anywhere until we find more effective ways of talking through difference. We should be able to say, “This is my truth,” and have that truth stand without a hundred clamoring voices shouting, giving the impression that multiple truths cannot coexist.

Oppression Olympics is what smart liberal Americans say to make you feel stupid and to make you shut up. But there IS an oppression olympics going on. American racial minorities - blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Jews - all get shit from white folks, different kinds of shit but shit still. Each secretly believes that it gets the worst shit. So, no, there is no United League of the Oppressed. However, all the others think they're better than blacks because, well, they're not black.

Liam cleared his throat again and turned to fully face me. “So, it’s the summer and you’re in Salem, suffering through another boring, hot July, and working part-time at an ice cream parlor. Naturally, you’re completely oblivious to the fact that all of the boys from your high school who visit daily are more interested in you than the thirty-one flavors. You’re focused on school and all your dozens of clubs, because you want to go to a good college and save the world. And just when you think you’re going to die if you have to take another practice SAT, your dad asks if you want to go visit your grandmother in Virginia Beach.” “Yeah?” I leaned my forehead against his chest. “What about you?” “Me?” Liam said, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “I’m in Wilmington, suffering through another boring, hot summer, working one last time in Harry’s repair shop before going off to some fancy university—where, I might add, my roommate will be a stuck-up-know-it-all-with-a-heart-of-gold named Charles Carrington Meriwether IV—but he’s not part of this story, not yet.” His fingers curled around my hip, and I could feel him trembling, even as his voice was steady. “To celebrate, Mom decides to take us up to Virginia Beach for a week. We’re only there for a day when I start catching glimpses of this girl with dark hair walking around town, her nose stuck in a book, earbuds in and blasting music. But no matter how hard I try, I never get to talk to her. “Then, as our friend Fate would have it, on our very last day at the beach I spot her. You. I’m in the middle of playing a volleyball game with Harry, but it feels like everyone else disappears. You’re walking toward me, big sunglasses on, wearing this light green dress, and I somehow know that it matches your eyes. And then, because, let’s face it, I’m basically an Olympic god when it comes to sports, I manage to volley the ball right into your face.” “Ouch,” I said with a light laugh. “Sounds painful.” “Well, you can probably guess how I’d react to that situation. I offer to carry you to the lifeguard station, but you look like you want to murder me at just the suggestion. Eventually, thanks to my sparkling charm and wit—and because I’m so pathetic you take pity on me—you let me buy you ice cream. And then you start telling me how you work in an ice cream shop in Salem, and how frustrated you feel that you still have two years before college. And somehow, somehow, I get your e-mail or screen name or maybe, if I’m really lucky, your phone number. Then we talk. I go to college and you go back to Salem, but we talk all the time, about everything, and sometimes we do that stupid thing where we run out of things to say and just stop talking and listen to one another breathing until one of us falls asleep—” “—and Chubs makes fun of you for it,” I added. “Oh, ruthlessly,” he agreed. “And your dad hates me because he thinks I’m corrupting his beautiful, sweet daughter, but still lets me visit from time to time. That’s when you tell me about tutoring a girl named Suzume, who lives a few cities away—” “—but who’s the coolest little girl on the planet,” I manage to squeeze out.

It's like practicing pole vaulting your entire life, and then getting to the olympics and saying, ‘what the hell did I want to jump over this stupid bar for?

What if . . . what if . . . "What if it's a harvest camp after all?" says Emby. Connor doesn't tell him to shut up this time, because he's thinking the same thing. It's Diego who answers him. "If it is, then I want my fin gers to go to a sculptor. So he can use them to craft something that will last forever." They all think about that. Hayden is the next to speak. "If I'm unwound," says Hayden, "I want my eyes to go to a photographer — one who shoots supermodels. That's what I want these eyes to see." "My lips'll go to a rock star," says Connor. "These legs are definitely going to the Olympics." "My ears to an orchestra conductor." "My stomach to a food critic." "My biceps to a body builder." "I wouldn't wish my sinuses on anybody." And they're all laughing as the plane touches down.

All those ninnies have it wrong. The best thing about Seattle is the weather. The world over, people have ocean views. But across our ocean is Bainbridge Island, an evergreen curb, and over it the exploding, craggy, snow-scraped Olympics. I guess what I'm saying: I miss it, the mountains and the water.

The only time you don’t find a four-leaf clover,” he liked to say, “is when you stop looking for one.

Nothing could be any worse than having to turn to your friends, your colleagues and your loved ones and say –‘I gave up too soon’.

I gather you yellow-skinned men, despite your triumphs in sewage, drinking water, and Olympic gold medals, still don't have democracy. Some politician on the radio was saying that that's why we Indian are going to beat you: we may not have sewage, drinking water, and Olympic gold medals, but we do have democracy. If I were making a country, I'd get the sewage pipes first, then the democracy, then I'd go about giving pamphlets and statues of Gandhi to other people, but what do I know? I am just a murderer!

Intensive mothering is the ultimate female Olympics: We are all in powerful competition with each other, in constant danger of being trumped by the mom down the street, or in the magazine we're reading. The competition isn't just over who's a good mother--it's over who's the best. We compete with each other; we compete with ourselves. The best mothers always put their kids' needs before their own, period. The best mothers are the main caregivers. For the best mothers, their kids are the center of the universe. The best mothers always smile. They always understand. They are never tired. They never lose their temper. They never say, "Go to the neighbor's house and play while Mommy has a beer." Their love for their children is boundless, unflagging, flawless, total. Mothers today cannot just respond to their kids' needs, they must predict them--and with the telepathic accuracy of Houdini. They must memorize verbatim the books of all the child-care experts and know which approaches are developmentally appropriate at different ages. They are supposed to treat their two-year-olds with "respect." If mothers screw up and fail to do this on any given day, they should apologize to their kids, because any misstep leads to permanent psychological and/or physical damage. Anyone who questions whether this is the best and the necessary way to raise kids is an insensitive, ignorant brute. This is just common sense, right?

While guidebooks might tell you that time collapsed here, another theory says that in Latin America, all of history coexists at once.

My own feeling about JJ, without knowing anything about him, was that he might have been a gay person, because he had long hair and spoke American. A lot of Americans are gay people, aren’t they? I know they didn’t invent gayness, because they say that was the Greeks. But they helped bring it back into fashion. Being gay was a bit like the Olympics: it disappeared in ancient times, and then they brought it back in the twentieth century. Anyway, I didn’t know anything about gays, so I just presumed they were all unhappy and wanted to kill themselves.

The Stadium Have you ever entered an empty stadium? Try it. Stand in the middle of the field and listen. There is nothing less empty than an empty stadium. There is nothing less mute than stands bereft of spectators. At Wembley, shouts from the 1966 World Cup, which England won, still resound, and if you listen very closely you can hear groans from 1953 when England fell to the Hungarians. Montevideo’s Centenario Stadium sighs with nostalgia for the glory days of Uruguayan soccer. Maracanã is still crying over Brazil’s 1950 World Cup defeat. At Bombonera in Buenos Aires, drums boom from half a century ago. From the depths of Azteca Stadium, you can hear the ceremonial chants of the ancient Mexican ball game. The concrete terraces of Camp Nou in Barcelona speak Catalan, and the stands of San Mamés in Bilbao talk in Basque. In Milan, the ghosts of Giuseppe Meazza scores goals that shake the stadium bearing his name. The final match of the 1974 World Cup, won by Germany, is played day after day and night after night at Munich’s Olympic Stadium. King Fahd Stadium in Saudi Arabia has marble and gold boxes and carpeted stands, but it has no memory or much of anything to say.

How can you ask someone to live in the world and not have something to say about injustice?

It is true to say that the secret of a winning formula is the ability to accept that there is a vast area of unexploited potential beyond what you currently perceive to be your maximum.

Here there comes a practical question which has often troubled me. Whenever I go into a foreign country or a prison or any similar place they always ask me what is my religion. I never know whether I should say "Agnostic" or whether I should say "Atheist". It is a very difficult question and I daresay that some of you have been troubled by it. As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods. None of us would seriously consider the possibility that all the gods of homer really exist, and yet if you were to set to work to give a logical demonstration that Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, and the rest of them did not exist you would find it an awful job. You could not get such proof. Therefore, in regard to the Olympic gods, speaking to a purely philosophical audience, I would say that I am an Agnostic. But speaking popularly, I think that all of us would say in regard to those gods that we were Atheists. In regard to the Christian God, I should, I think, take exactly the same line.

Think of friends or family members who loved Jesus and are with him now. Picture them with you, walking together in this place. All of you have powerful bodies, stronger than those of an Olympic decathlete. You are laughing, playing, talking, and reminiscing. You reach up to a tree to pick an apple or orange. You take a bite. It’s so sweet that it’s startling. You’ve never tasted anything so good. Now you see someone coming toward you. It’s Jesus, with a big smile on his face. You fall to your knees in worship. He pulls you up and embraces you.

If you are disabled, it is probably not your fault, but it is no good blaming the world or expecting it to take pity on you. One has to have a positive attitude and must make the best of the situation that one finds oneself in; if one is physically disabled, one cannot afford to be psychologically disabled as well. In my opinion, one should concentrate on activities in which one's physical disability will not present a serious handicap. I am afraid that Olympic Games for the disabled do not appeal to me, but it is easy for me to say that because I never liked athletics anyway. On the other hand, science is a very good area for disabled people because it goes on mainly in the mind. Of course, most kinds of experimental work are probably ruled out for most such people, but theoretical work is almost ideal. My disabilities have not been a significant handicap in my field, which is theoretical physics. Indeed, they have helped me in a way by shielding me from lecturing and administrative work that I would otherwise have been involved in. I have managed, however, only because of the large amount of help I have received from my wife, children, colleagues and students. I find that people in general are very ready to help, but you should encourage them to feel that their efforts to aid you are worthwhile by doing as well as you possibly can.

Well, I did a little research, and I found out that boxers are better for the balls and sperm counts.” “I see,” she replied, fighting the flush that was creeping across her cheeks. “Yeah, the article says it seems to help the swimmers with their mobility, and we want Olympic Gold this time around.

You don’t win an Olympic gold medal with a few weeks of intensive training,” says (Seth) Godin. “There’s no such thing as an overnight opera sensation. Great law firms or design companies don’t spring up overnight…every great company, every great brand, and every great career has been built in exactly the same way: bit by bit, step by step, little by little.” There is no magic solution to success.

Battered and bloody, we join Cassius, Lysander, and Sevro before the door leading out of the Sovereign's inner sanctum as Cassius types in the Olympic code to open the doors. He pauses to sniff the air. 'What's that smell?' 'Smells like a sewer,' I say. Sevro stares intensely at the razors he's taken from Aja, including the one belonging to Lorn. 'I think it smells like victory.' 'Did you shit your pants?' Cassius squints at him. 'You did.' 'Sevro...' Mustang says. 'It's an involuntary muscle reaction when you're fake executed and swallow massive amounts ofhaemanthus oil,' Sevro snaps. 'You think I would do that on purpose?' Cassius and I look at each other. I shrug. 'Well, maybe.' 'Yeah, actually.' He flips us the crux and makes a face, twisting his lips till it looks like he's going to explode. 'What's happening?' I ask. 'Are you... still...' 'No!

I am always amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between the nations, and that if only the common peoples of the world could meet one another at football or cricket, they would have no inclination to meet on the battlefield. Even if one didn't know from concrete examples (the 1936 Olympic Games, for instance) that international sporting contests lead to orgies of hatred, one could deduce it from general principles ... There cannot be much doubt that the whole thing is bound up with the rise of nationalism — that is, with the lunatic modern habit of identifying oneself with large power units and seeing everything in terms of competitive prestige.

I wanted to be perfect,” he said over dinner. “I…need to be perfect.” It’s such a burden to place on yourself. Say you are perfect—who’s going to recognize it? Few things are like the Olympics, where judges hold up score cards. How does one paint perfectly? Or lawyer perfectly? The key is to fill the space between your skill level and perfection with charm. That said, you can’t do it consciously. Charm can’t be constructed that way.

People won’t see you as just another woman any more, but as a white woman who hangs with brownies, and you’ll lose a bit of your privilege, you should still check it, though, have you heard the expression, check your privilege, babe? Courtney replied that seeing as Yazz is the daughter of a professor and a very well-known theatre director, she’s hardly underprivileged herself, whereas she, Courtney, comes from a really poor community where it’s normal to be working in a factory at sixteen and have your first child as a single mother at seventeen, and that her father’s farm is effectively owned by the bank Yes but I’m black, Courts, which makes me more oppressed than anyone who isn’t, except Waris who is the most oppressed of all of them (although don’t tell her that) In five categories, black, Muslim, female, poor, hijab bed She’s the only one Yazz can’t tell to check her privilege Courtney replied that Roxane Gay warned against the idea of playing ‘privilege Olympics’ and wrote in Bad Feminist that privilege is relative and contextual, and I agree, Yazz, I mean, where does it all end? Is Obama less privileged than a white hillbilly growing up in a trailer park with a junkie single mother and a jailbird father? Is a severely disabled person more privileged than a Syrian asylum-seeker who’s been tortured? Roxane argues that we have to find a new discourse for discussing inequality Yazz doesn’t know what to say, when did Court read Roxane Gay - who’s amaaaazing? Was this a student outwitting the master moment? #whitegirltrumpsblackgirl

You would fain be victor at the Olympic Games, you say. Yes, but weigh the conditions, weigh the consequences; then and then only, lay to your hand-if it be for your profit. You must live by rule, submit to diet, abstain from dainty meats, exercise your body perforce at stated hours, in heat or in cold; drink no cold water, nor, it may be, wine. In a word, you must surrender yourself wholly to your trainer, as though to a physician.

He loathed Jimmy Carter, whom he called a “big-toothed cretin.” In 1980, when we were still in Kabul, the U.S. announced it would be boycotting the Olympic Games in Moscow. “Wah wah!” Baba exclaimed with disgust. “Brezhnev is massacring Afghans and all that peanut eater can say is I won’t come swim in your pool.

It is circumstances (difficulties) which show what men are. Therefore when a difficulty falls upon you, remember that God, like a trainer of wrestlers, has matched you with a rough young man. For what purpose? you may say. Why, that you may become an Olympic conqueror; but it is not accomplished without sweat. In my opinion no man has had a more profitable difficulty than you have had, if you choose to make use of it as an athlete would deal with a young antagonist.

Harry says Niall farts a lot and not the regular amount you would think when he says 'a lot' he says it's to the point where if farting was an Olympic sport Niall would be a guaranteed gold medalist 39.)

Most of all he missed the times he and his father would sit out at night on the cabin’s porch and stare up into the astonishing swirls of stars shimmering in the black vault of the Idaho night sky, saying

We need to get to a place where we discuss privilege by way of observation and acknowledgment rather than accusation. We need to be able to argue beyond the threat of privilege. We need to stop playing Privilege or Oppression Olympics because we’ll never get anywhere until we find more effective ways of talking through difference. We should be able to say, “This is my truth,” and have that truth stand without a hundred clamoring voices shouting, giving the impression that multiple truths cannot coexist. Because at some point, doesn’t privilege become beside the point?

nothing, just being together, breathing in the cold air, waiting for a falling star to wish upon. “Keep on watching,” his father would say. “Keep your eyes peeled. You never know when one is going to fall. The only time you don’t see them is when you stop watching for them.” Joe missed that, something terrible. Sitting alone on

You're really not frightened of what might happen" "No, I mean, of course I am," he says. "It definitely stays a secret until after the election. And I know it'll be messy. But if we can get ahead of the narrative, wait for the right time and do it on our own terms, I think it could be okay." "How long have you been thinking about this?" "Consciously? Since, like, the DNC. Subconsciously, in total denial? A long-ass time. At least since you kissed me." Henry stares at him from the pillow. "That's... kind of incredible." "What about you?" "What about me?" Henry says. "Christ, Alex. The whole bloody time." "The whole time?" "Since the Olympics." "The Olympics." Alex yanks Henry's pillow out from under him. "But thats', that's like --" "Yes Alex, the day we met, nothing gets past you, does it?" Henry says, reaching to steal the pillow back. "'What about you,' he says, as if he doesn't know--" "Shut your mouth," Alex says, grinning like an idiot, and he stops fighting Henry for the pillow and instead straddles hima nd kisses him into the mattress. He pulls the blankets up and they disappear into the pile, a laughing mess of mouths and hands, until Henry rolls onto the phone and his ass presses the button on the voicemail. "Diaz, you insane, hopeless romantic little shit," says the voice of the President of the United States, muffled on the bed. "It had better be forever. Be safe.

Allison says: September 26, 2009 at 6:01 pm Bruce! You’re a genius! I hadn’t thought of the safety benefits. I’ll pass that on to Janette; I’m sure she’ll be jazzed to hear that short hair makes her a zombie-dodging ninja superstar. Good luck in the library. And what’s this about no weapons? Get yourself a solid dictionary and throw that sucker like it’s the motherfucking Olympics.

If you want to understand what a year of life means, ask a student who just flunked his end-of-the-year exams. Or a month of life: speak to a mother who has just given birth to a premature baby and is waiting for him to be taken out of the incubator before she can hold him safe and sound in her arms. Or a week: interview a man who works in a factory or a mine to feed his family. Or a day: ask two people madly in love who are waiting for their next rendezvous. Or an hour: talk to a claustrophobia sufferer stuck in a broken-down elevator. Or a second: look at the expression on the face of a man who has just escaped from a car wreck. Or one-thousandth of a second: ask the athlete who just won the silver medal at the Olympic Games, and not the gold he trained for all his life. Life is magic, Arthur, and I know what I'm saying because since my accident I appreciate the value of every instant. So I beg you, let's make the most of all the seconds that we have left.

You know...give peace a chance, not shoot people for peace. All we need is love. I believe it. it's damned hard but I absolutely believe it. We're not the first to say 'Imagine no countries' or 'Give peace a chance' but we're carrying that torch, like the Olympic torch, passing it from hand to hand, to each other, to each country, to each generation. That's our job...I've never claimed divinity. I've never claimed purity of soul. I've never claimed to have the answer to life. I can only put out songs and answer questions as honestly as I can, but only as honestly as I can, no more, no less. "I used to think that the world was doing it to me and that the world owed me something, and that either the conservatives or the socialists or the fascists or the communists or the Christians or the Jews were doing something to me, and when you're a teenybopper that's what you think. I'm 40 now. I don't think that anymore, 'cause I found out it doesn't fucking work. The thing goes on anyway and all you're doing is jacking off and screaming about what your mommy or daddy or society did...I have found out personally...that I am responsible for it as well as them. I am part of them.

I’m so stressed that a weird Olympic-style commentary starts up in my head. And here we have Zelah Green, the fourteen-year-old champion of rituals, attempting the afternoon toilet-touching event for the first time … I take my first faltering step towards the rim. And she’s approaching the target, booms the voice. Steady approach, good footwork … My right hand, naked and trembling, is now hovering over the inside of the toilet. Will she set a new world record? screams the voice. Will Zelah Green take the gold medal for bravery and/or total stupidity? ‘I’m going in!’ I say. I skim the curved cool surface of the bowl with the fingertips of my right hand and jump back as if I’ve been electrified. And she’s done it! shrieks the commentator. Zelah Green wins the gold medal for toilet touching!

On a trip to Paris one day, little Sophie Met a giant lady lighting up the night sky "What's your name, you magical monster?" "My many visitors call me the Eiffel Tower." "In all your attire, don't your sometimes tire Of being seen only as a humdrum tower? You, a dragon, a fairy watching over Paris, An Olympic torch held aloft in grey skies?" "How you flatter me! So few poets these days Ever sing the praises of my Parisian soul, As did Cocteau, Aragon, Cendrars, Trénet and Apollinaire... Since you're so good At seeing beneath the surface, you could -If you like, when you're back from France- Take up your pen and write down Why you like me -it would be nice and fun!" "You can count on me! There's so much to say! I'll write twenty lines... but who will read them?" "Well, I know a man who'll read your verse." "Really? Who?" "The President of France

Do you consider yourself athletic? How would you rate yourself, say, as a swimmer? Average, below average, maybe a little above average? So-so? Terrible? Well, I’ve got news for you: whether you know it or not, you are a world-class super-Olympic gold medal swimmer. I’m not kidding. You know how I know that? Because I took anatomy, physiology, bacteriology, and chemistry in college, as part of my science minor. And here’s what I learned: we all start out the same way, as tiny sperm cells. In order for you to be born, assuming your daddy had an average sperm count, you had to have out-swum some 200,000 other sperm. And it was uphill all the way. Now, I do not know what motivated you, but that little tail was wiggling like mad, and you were screaming, “Out of my way! Out of my way! I want to teach school! I want to dance! I want to be in real estate! I want to be a journalist!” or whatever it was you were screaming at the top of your little sperm voice.

I still had moments when my nerves got to me, but whenever I’d start to get anxious, Kyla Ross would remind me, “Simone, just do what you do in practice.” And before I went out for each event, she’d high-five me and say, “Just like practice, Simone!” I’d say the same thing to her when it was her turn to go up. “Just like practice” became our catchphrase. As I walked onto the mat to do my floor exercise, I held on to that phrase like it was a lifeline, because I was about to perform a difficult move I’d come up with in practice—a double flip in the layout position with a half twist out. The way it happened was, I’d landed short on a double layout full out earlier that year during training, and I’d strained my calf muscle on the backward landing. Aimee didn’t want me to risk a more severe injury, so she suggested I do the double layout—body straight with legs together and fully extended as I flipped twice in the air—then add a half twist at the end. That extra half twist meant I’d have to master a very tricky blind forward landing, but it would put less stress on my calves. I thought the new combination sounded incredibly cool, so I started playing around with it until I was landing the skill 95 percent of the time. At the next Nationals Camp, I demonstrated the move for Martha and she thought it looked really good, so we went ahead and added it to the second tumbling pass of my floor routine. I’d already performed the combination at national meets that year, but doing it at Worlds was different. That’s because when a completely new skill is executed successfully at a season-ending championship like Worlds or the Olympics, the move will forever after be known by the name of the gymnast who first performed it. Talk about high stakes! I’ll cut to the chase: I nailed the move, which is how it came to be known as the Biles. How awesome is that! (The only problem is, when I see another gymnast perform the move now, I pray they don’t get hurt. I know it’s not logical, but because the move is named after me, I’d feel as if it was my fault.)

I've defined myself, privately and abstractly, by my brief, intense years as an athlete, a swimmer. I practiced five or six hours a day, six days a week, eating and sleeping as much as possible in between. Weekends were spent either training or competing. I wasn't the best; I was relatively fast. I trained, ate, traveled, and showered with the best in the country, but wasn't the best; I was pretty good. I liked how hard swimming at that level was- that I could do something difficult and unusual. Liked knowing my discipline would be recognized, respected, that I might not be able to say the right things or fit in, but I could do something well. I wanted to believe that I was talented; being fast was proof. Though I loved racing, the idea of fastest, of number one, of the Olympics, didn't motivate me. I still dream of practice, of races, coaches and blurry competitors. I'm drawn to swimming pools, all swimming pools, no matter how small or murky. When I swim now, I step into the water as though absentmindedly touching a scar. My recreational laps are phantoms of my competitive races

Porridge is our soup, our grits, our sustenance, so it's pretty much the go-to for breakfast. For the first time, I ate with a bunch of other Taiwanese-Chinese kids my age who knew what the hell they were doing. Even at Chinese school, there were always kids that brought hamburgers, shunned chopsticks, or didn't get down with the funky shit. They were like faux-bootleg-Canal Street Chinamen. That was one of the things that really annoyed me about growing up Chinese in the States. Even if you wanted to roll with Chinese/Taiwanese kids, there were barely any around and the ones that were around had lost their culture and identity. They barely spoke Chinese, resented Chinese food, and if we got picked on by white people on the basketball court, everyone just looked out for themselves. It wasn't that I wanted people to carry around little red books to affirm their "Chinese-ness," but I just wanted to know there were other people that wanted this community to live on in America. There was on kid who wouldn't eat the thousand-year-old eggs at breakfast and all the other kids started roasting him. "If you don't get down with the nasty shit, you're not Chinese!" I was down with the mob, but something left me unsettled. One thing ABCs love to do is compete on "Chinese-ness," i.e., who will eat the most chicken feet, pig intestines, and have the highest SAT scores. I scored high in chick feet, sneaker game, and pirated good, but relatively low on the SAT. I had made National Guild Honorable Mention for piano when I was around twelve and promptly quit. My parents had me play tennis and take karate, but ironically, I quit tennis two tournaments short of being ranked in the state of Florida and left karate after getting my brown belt. The family never understood it, but I knew what I was doing. I didn't want to play their stupid Asian Olympics, but I wanted to prove to myself that if I did want to be the stereotypical Chinaman they wanted, I could. (189) I had become so obsessed with not being a stereotype that half of who I was had gone dormant. But it was also a positive. Instead of following the path most Asian kids do, I struck out on my own. There's nature, there's nurture, and as Harry Potter teaches us, there's who YOU want to be. (198) Everyone was in-between. The relief of the airport and the opportunity to reflect on my trip helped me realize that I didn't want to blame anyone anymore, Not my parents, not white people, not America. Did I still think there was a lot wrong with the aforementioned? Hell, yeah, but unless I was going to do something about it, I couldn't say shit. So I drank my Apple Sidra and shut the fuck up. (199)

Pedro Algorta, a lawyer, showed me the fat dossier about the murder of two women. The double crime had been committed with a knife at the end of 1982, in a Montevideo suburb. The accused, Alma Di Agosto, had confessed. She had been in jail more than a year, and was apparently condemned to rot there for the rest of her life. As is the custom, the police had raped and tortured her. After a month of continuous beatings they had extracted several confessions. Alma Di Agosto's confessions did not much resemble each other, as if she had committed the same murder in many different ways. Different people appeared in each confession, picturesque phantoms without names or addresses, because the electric cattle prod turns anyone into a prolific storyteller. Furthermore, the author demonstrated the agility of an Olympic athlete, the strength of a fairground Amazon, and the dexterity of a professional matador. But the most surprising was the wealth of detail: in each confession, the accused described with millimetric precision clothing, gestures, surroundings, positions, objects..... Alma Di Agosto was blind. Her neighbours, who knew and loved her, were convinced she was guilty: 'Why?' asked the lawyer. 'Because the papers say so.' 'But the papers lie,' said the lawyer. 'But the radio said so too,' explained the neighbours. 'And the TV!

So look out a window. Take a walk. Talk with your friend. Use your God-given skills to paint or draw or build a shed or write a book. But imagine it—all of it—in its original condition. The happy dog with the wagging tail, not the snarling beast, beaten and starved. The flowers unwilted, the grass undying, the blue sky without pollution. People smiling and joyful, not angry, depressed, and empty. If you’re not in a particularly beautiful place, close your eyes and envision the most beautiful place you’ve ever been—complete with palm trees, raging rivers, jagged mountains, waterfalls, or snow drifts. Think of friends or family members who loved Jesus and are with him now. Picture them with you, walking together in this place. All of you have powerful bodies, stronger than those of an Olympic decathlete. You are laughing, playing, talking, and reminiscing. You reach up to a tree to pick an apple or orange. You take a bite. It’s so sweet that it’s startling. You’ve never tasted anything so good. Now you see someone coming toward you. It’s Jesus, with a big smile on his face. You fall to your knees in worship. He pulls you up and embraces you. At last, you’re with the person you were made for, in the place you were made to be. Everywhere you go there will be new people and places to enjoy, new things to discover. What’s that you smell? A feast. A party’s ahead. And you’re invited. There’s exploration and work to be done—and you can’t wait to get started.

Cohen continued to struggle with his own well-being. Even though he had achieved his life’s dream of running his own firm, he was still unhappy, and he had become dependent on a psychiatrist named Ari Kiev to help him manage his moods. In addition to treating depression, Kiev’s other area of expertise was success and how to achieve it. He had worked as a psychiatrist and coach with Olympic basketball players and rowers trying to improve their performance and overcome their fear of failure. His background building athletic champions appealed to Cohen’s unrelenting need to dominate in every transaction he entered into, and he started asking Kiev to spend entire days at SAC’s offices, tending to his staff. Kiev was tall, with a bushy mustache and a portly midsection, and he would often appear silently at a trader’s side and ask him how he was feeling. Sometimes the trader would be so startled to see Kiev there he’d practically jump out of his seat. Cohen asked Kiev to give motivational speeches to his employees, to help them get over their anxieties about losing money. Basically, Kiev was there to teach them to be ruthless. Once a week, after the market closed, Cohen’s traders would gather in a conference room and Kiev would lead them through group therapy sessions focused on how to make them more comfortable with risk. Kiev had them talk about their trades and try to understand why some had gone well and others hadn’t. “Are you really motivated to make as much money as you can? This guy’s going to help you become a real killer at it,” was how one skeptical staff member remembered Kiev being pitched to them. Kiev’s work with Olympians had led him to believe that the thing that blocked most people was fear. You might have two investors with the same amount of money: One was prepared to buy 250,000 shares of a stock they liked, while the other wasn’t. Why? Kiev believed that the reluctance was a form of anxiety—and that it could be overcome with proper treatment. Kiev would ask the traders to close their eyes and visualize themselves making trades and generating profits. “Surrendering to the moment” and “speaking the truth” were some of his favorite phrases. “Why weren’t you bigger in the trades that worked? What did you do right?” he’d ask. “Being preoccupied with not losing interferes with winning,” he would say. “Trading not to lose is not a good strategy. You need to trade to win.” Many of the traders hated the group therapy sessions. Some considered Kiev a fraud. “Ari was very aggressive,” said one. “He liked money.” Patricia, Cohen’s first wife, was suspicious of Kiev’s motives and believed that he was using his sessions with Cohen to find stock tips. From Kiev’s perspective, he found the perfect client in Cohen, a patient with unlimited resources who could pay enormous fees and whose reputation as one of the best traders on Wall Street could help Kiev realize his own goal of becoming a bestselling author. Being able to say that you were the

She reported that a member of Churchill’s inner circle, whom she did not identify, “has been to me and told me there is a danger of your being generally disliked by your colleagues & subordinates because of your rough sarcastic & overbearing manner.” She assured her husband that the source of this complaint was “a devoted friend,” with no ax to grind. Churchill’s private secretaries, she wrote, seemed to have resolved simply to take it and shrug it off. “Higher up, if an idea is suggested (say at a conference) you are supposed to be so contemptuous that presently no ideas, good or bad, will be forthcoming.” Hearing this shocked and hurt her, she said, “because in all these years I have been accustomed to all those who have worked with & under you, loving you.” Seeking to explain the degradation in Churchill’s behavior, the devoted friend had said, “No doubt it’s the strain.” But it was not just the friend’s observations that drove Clementine to write her letter. “My Darling Winston,” she began, “—I must confess that I have noticed a deterioration in your manner; & you are not so kind as you used to be.” She cautioned that in possessing the power to give orders and to “sack anyone & everyone,” he was obliged to maintain a high standard of behavior—to “combine urbanity, kindness and if possible Olympic calm.” She reminded him that in the past he had been fond of quoting a French maxim, “On ne règne sur les âmes que par le calme,” meaning, essentially, “One leads by calm.” She

For years before the Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps won the gold at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, he followed the same routine at every race. He arrived two hours early.1 He stretched and loosened up, according to a precise pattern: eight hundred mixer, fifty freestyle, six hundred kicking with kickboard, four hundred pulling a buoy, and more. After the warm-up he would dry off, put in his earphones, and sit—never lie down—on the massage table. From that moment, he and his coach, Bob Bowman, wouldn’t speak a word to each other until after the race was over. At forty-five minutes before the race he would put on his race suit. At thirty minutes he would get into the warm-up pool and do six hundred to eight hundred meters. With ten minutes to go he would walk to the ready room. He would find a seat alone, never next to anyone. He liked to keep the seats on both sides of him clear for his things: goggles on one side and his towel on the other. When his race was called he would walk to the blocks. There he would do what he always did: two stretches, first a straight-leg stretch and then with a bent knee. Left leg first every time. Then the right earbud would come out. When his name was called, he would take out the left earbud. He would step onto the block—always from the left side. He would dry the block—every time. Then he would stand and flap his arms in such a way that his hands hit his back. Phelps explains: “It’s just a routine. My routine. It’s the routine I’ve gone through my whole life. I’m not going to change it.” And that is that. His coach, Bob Bowman, designed this physical routine with Phelps. But that’s not all. He also gave Phelps a routine for what to think about as he went to sleep and first thing when he awoke. He called it “Watching the Videotape.”2 There was no actual tape, of course. The “tape” was a visualization of the perfect race. In exquisite detail and slow motion Phelps would visualize every moment from his starting position on top of the blocks, through each stroke, until he emerged from the pool, victorious, with water dripping off his face. Phelps didn’t do this mental routine occasionally. He did it every day before he went to bed and every day when he woke up—for years. When Bob wanted to challenge him in practices he would shout, “Put in the videotape!” and Phelps would push beyond his limits. Eventually the mental routine was so deeply ingrained that Bob barely had to whisper the phrase, “Get the videotape ready,” before a race. Phelps was always ready to “hit play.” When asked about the routine, Bowman said: “If you were to ask Michael what’s going on in his head before competition, he would say he’s not really thinking about anything. He’s just following the program. But that’s not right. It’s more like his habits have taken over. When the race arrives, he’s more than halfway through his plan and he’s been victorious at every step. All the stretches went like he planned. The warm-up laps were just like he visualized. His headphones are playing exactly what he expected. The actual race is just another step in a pattern that started earlier that day and has been nothing but victories. Winning is a natural extension.”3 As we all know, Phelps won the record eight gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. When visiting Beijing, years after Phelps’s breathtaking accomplishment, I couldn’t help but think about how Phelps and the other Olympians make all these feats of amazing athleticism seem so effortless. Of course Olympic athletes arguably practice longer and train harder than any other athletes in the world—but when they get in that pool, or on that track, or onto that rink, they make it look positively easy. It’s more than just a natural extension of their training. It’s a testament to the genius of the right routine.

Rebecca Wallace-Segall, who teaches creative-writing workshops for kids and teens as director of Writopia Lab in New York City, says that the students who sign up for her classes “are often not the kids who are willing to talk for hours about fashion and celebrity. Those kids are less likely to come, perhaps because they’re less inclined to analyze and dig deep—that’s not their comfort zone. The so-called shy kids are often hungry to brainstorm ideas, deconstruct them, and act on them, and, paradoxically, when they’re allowed to interact this way, they’re not shy at all. They’re connecting with each other, but in a deeper zone, in a place that’s considered boring or tiresome by some of their peers.” And these kids do “come out” when they’re ready; most of the Writopia kids read their works at local bookstores, and a staggering number win prestigious national writing competitions. If your child is prone to overstimulation, then it’s also a good idea for her to pick activities like art or long-distance running, that depend less on performing under pressure. If she’s drawn to activities that require performance, though, you can help her thrive. When I was a kid, I loved figure skating. I could spend hours on the rink, tracing figure eights, spinning happily, or flying through the air. But on the day of my competitions, I was a wreck. I hadn’t slept the night before and would often fall during moves that I had sailed through in practice. At first I believed what people told me—that I had the jitters, just like everybody else. But then I saw a TV interview with the Olympic gold medalist Katarina Witt. She said that pre-competition nerves gave her the adrenaline she needed to win the gold. I knew then that Katarina and I were utterly different creatures, but it took me decades to figure out why. Her nerves were so mild that they simply energized her, while mine were constricting enough to make me choke. At the time, my very supportive mother quizzed the other skating moms about how their own daughters handled pre-competition anxiety, and came back with insights that she hoped would make me feel better. Kristen’s nervous too, she reported. Renée’s mom says she’s scared the night before a competition. But I knew Kristen and Renée well, and I was certain that they weren’t as frightened as I was

A brick could be used to help you become an Olympic swimmer. Tie the brick around your legs and have a friend drop you off someplace, say the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and then simply swim back to shore. By the time you hit the beach, you’ll be able to swim faster than a shark. In fact, you’ll have to if you plan on making it home.


ANDREW: You can take it from me that Tea's an engaging little trollop, and she suits me mightily. Mind you, she takes a bit of keeping up with, it's a good thing I'm pretty much of an Olympic sexual athlete. MILO: I suppose these days you're concentrating on the sprints rather than on the long distance stuff. ANDREW: Not so, dear boy. I'm in the pink of condition. I could copulate for England at any distance. MILO: Well, they do say in Olympic circles, that the point is to take part, rather than to win, so I suppose there's hope for us all.

Every Saturday, heat or cold, rain or shine, Milly would see Avery running up their road, her long blond ponytail swishing in time with her legs, just as the sun was making gemstones out of the fields and the hills and the bales of hay scattered across the landscape. Twiss would still be snoring away upstairs. Years of sleep remedies had failed to subdue her; she still slept like a wild animal and woke like one, too. On warm mornings, Milly would take her cup of tea out to the porch to watch Avery run by. Though she'd never been a runner herself- she didn't like the sensation of breathlessness, or the hard thunk of her heart- she'd loved to watch Twiss run. And Avery was an even better runner than Twiss had been, and certainly more graceful. She'd run first on the Spring Green high school team and then on the university team and now was training to run the marathon in the Olympic trials. In an interview, when a reporter from the 'Gazette' asked her why she ran, Avery said, "Why does anybody do anything?" which had made Milly like Avery even more. Each Saturday morning, after she passed the driveway, Avery would pick up speed in order to crest the upcoming hills. Sometimes she ran with a yellow music player and matching headphones, but most of the time, she ran without them. "Something comes in and something goes out," Avery had added in the interview, as if she'd been playing at being coy but couldn't really play when it came to running. "I'd keep running forever if my legs would let me." "Tell me about the routes you run in Spring Green," the reporter had said. "My favorite is my Saturday route," Avery said. "There's this little purple meadow I pass on my way up into the hills. When I was little, my grandpa used to say it was enchanted. He said if you walked through it, you'd never be the same person again." "Where did he hear the story?" the reporter asked. "I guess he used to know the people who lived in that house," Avery said. "The bird sisters?" the reporter said. "All I know is, when I pass that meadow, suddenly I can run faster," Avery said. "Are you superstitious?" "I visualize the meadow during all of my races, if that's what you mean." "Have you ever walked through it?" "I believe in it too much," Avery said. "Can you be more specific?" the reporter asked. "No," Avery said.

Just about every kid in America wished they could be Kyle Keeley. Especially when he zoomed across their TV screens as a flaming squirrel in a holiday commercial for Squirrel Squad Six, the hysterically crazy new Lemoncello video game. Kyle’s friends Akimi Hughes and Sierra Russell were also in that commercial. They thumbed controllers and tried to blast Kyle out of the sky. He dodged every rubber band, coconut custard pie, mud clod, and wadded-up sock ball they flung his way. It was awesome. In the commercial for Mr. Lemoncello’s See Ya, Wouldn’t Want to Be Ya board game, Kyle starred as the yellow pawn. His head became the bubble tip at the top of the playing piece. Kyle’s buddy Miguel Fernandez was the green pawn. Kyle and Miguel slid around the life-size game like hockey pucks. When Miguel landed on the same square as Kyle, that meant Kyle’s pawn had to be bumped back to the starting line. “See ya!” shouted Miguel. “Wouldn’t want to be ya!” Kyle was yanked up off the ground by a hidden cable and hurled backward, soaring above the board. It was also awesome. But Kyle’s absolute favorite starring role was in the commercial for Mr. Lemoncello’s You Seriously Can’t Say That game, where the object was to get your teammates to guess the word on your card without using any of the forbidden words listed on the same card. Akimi, Sierra, Miguel, and the perpetually perky Haley Daley sat on a circular couch and played the guessers. Kyle stood in front of them as the clue giver. “Salsa,” said Kyle. “Nachos!” said Akimi. A buzzer sounded. Akimi’s guess was wrong. Kyle tried again. “Horseradish sauce!” “Something nobody ever eats,” said Haley. Another buzzer. Kyle goofed up and said one of the forbidden words: “Ketchup!

Just about every kid in America wished they could be Kyle Keeley. Especially when he zoomed across their TV screens as a flaming squirrel in a holiday commercial for Squirrel Squad Six, the hysterically crazy new Lemoncello video game. Kyle’s friends Akimi Hughes and Sierra Russell were also in that commercial. They thumbed controllers and tried to blast Kyle out of the sky. He dodged every rubber band, coconut custard pie, mud clod, and wadded-up sock ball they flung his way. It was awesome. In the commercial for Mr. Lemoncello’s See Ya, Wouldn’t Want to Be Ya board game, Kyle starred as the yellow pawn. His head became the bubble tip at the top of the playing piece. Kyle’s buddy Miguel Fernandez was the green pawn. Kyle and Miguel slid around the life-size game like hockey pucks. When Miguel landed on the same square as Kyle, that meant Kyle’s pawn had to be bumped back to the starting line. “See ya!” shouted Miguel. “Wouldn’t want to be ya!” Kyle was yanked up off the ground by a hidden cable and hurled backward, soaring above the board. It was also awesome. But Kyle’s absolute favorite starring role was in the commercial for Mr. Lemoncello’s You Seriously Can’t Say That game, where the object was to get your teammates to guess the word on your card without using any of the forbidden words listed on the same card. Akimi, Sierra, Miguel, and the perpetually perky Haley Daley sat on a circular couch and played the guessers. Kyle stood in front of them as the clue giver. “Salsa,” said Kyle. “Nachos!” said Akimi. A buzzer sounded. Akimi’s guess was wrong. Kyle tried again. “Horseradish sauce!” “Something nobody ever eats,” said Haley. Another buzzer. Kyle goofed up and said one of the forbidden words: “Ketchup!” SPLAT! Fifty gallons of syrupy, goopy tomato sauce slimed him from above. It oozed down his face and dribbled off his ears. Everybody laughed. So Kyle, who loved being the class clown almost as much as he loved playing (and winning) Mr. Lemoncello’s wacky games, went ahead and read the whole list of banned words as quickly as he could. “Mustard-mayonnaise-pickle-relish.” SQUOOSH! He was drenched by buckets of yellow glop, white sludge, and chunky green gunk. The slop slid along his sleeves, trickled into his pants, and puddled on the floor. His four friends busted a gut laughing at Kyle, who was soaked in more “condiments” (the word on his card) than a mile-

Maybe to you it seems arrogant or selfish to think of yourself on a podium. You were trained to hold the door open for others, to be kind, thoughtful, sacrificial, and helpful. You were taught that the last would be first. Nothing is wrong with any of that. And as an Olympic athlete, I can say with confidence that the best way to help people—maybe even the only way to help anyone—is to start chipping away at the part of you that worries you don’t have much to offer. Become someone who is worthy of winning, and you’ll have a wider, greater impact than you ever dreamed possible. In addition to this idea that winners are selfish and losers are the good guys, we also have the idea that winners and losers are preselected, and that doesn’t feel fair. Yes, some of us are born with more resources than others, more access, more opportunities. But only one qualification makes someone more likely to win: they choose to win. The number-one predictor for whether you will be a winner is if you decide to be one. It’s a choice only you can make. And once you make it, nothing will be able to stop you.

For the billionaires, champagne baths every morning and new Lamborghinis every afternoon couldn’t deplete the fathomless amount of cash on hand. “Your entire philosophy of money changes,” writes author Richard Frank in his book, Richistan. “You realize that you can’t possibly spend all of your fortune, or even part of it, in your lifetime, and that your money will probably grow over the years even if you spend lavishly.” There are dotcom entrepreneurs who could live top 1 percent American lifestyles and not run out of cash for 4,000 years. People who Bill Simmons would call “pajama rich,” so rich they can go to a five-star restaurant or sit courtside at the NBA playoffs in their pajamas. They have so much money that they have nothing to prove to anyone. And many of them are totally depressed. You’ll remember the anecdote I shared in this book’s introduction about being too short to reach between the Olympic rings at the playground jungle gym. I had to jump to grab the first ring and then swing like a pendulum in order to reach the next ring. To get to the third ring, I had to use the momentum from the previous swing to keep going. If I held on to the previous ring too long, I’d stop and wouldn’t be able to get enough speed to reach the next ring. This is Isaac Newton’s first law of motion at work: objects in motion tend to stay in motion, unless acted on by external forces. Once you start swinging, it’s easier to keep swinging than to slow down. The problem with some rapid success, it turns out, is that lucky breaks like Bear Vasquez’s YouTube success or an entrepreneur cashing out on an Internet wave are like having someone lift you up so you can grab one of the Olympic rings. Even if you get dropped off somewhere far along the chain, you’re stuck in one spot. Financial planners say that this is why a surprisingly high percentage of the rapidly wealthy get depressed. As therapist Manfred Kets de Vries once put it in an interview with The Telegraph, “When money is available in near-limitless quantities, the victim sinks into a kind of inertia.

There were certainly multiple factors contributing to these men’s post-moonwalk slump, but the question What do you do after walking on the moon? became a gigantic speed bump. The trouble with moonwalkers and billionaires is when they arrive at the top, their momentum often stops. If they don’t manage to find something to parlay, they turn into the kid on the jungle gym who just hangs from the ring. Not coincidentally, this is the same reason that only one-third of Americans are happy at their jobs. When there’s no forward momentum in our careers, we get depressed, too. As Newton pointed out, an object at rest tends to stay at rest. So how does one avoid billionaire’s depression? Or regular person’s stuck-in-a-dead-end-job, lack-of-momentum-fueled depression? Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile took on the question in the mid-2000s in a research study of white-collar employees. She tasked 238 pencil pushers in various industries to keep daily work diaries. The workers answered open-ended questions about how they felt, what events in their days stood out. Amabile and her fellow researchers then dissected the 12,000 resulting entries, searching for patterns in what affects people’s “inner” work lives the most dramatically. The answer, it turned out, is simply progress. A sense of forward motion. Regardless how small. And that’s the interesting part. Amabile found that minor victories at work were nearly as psychologically powerful as major breakthroughs. To motivate stuck employees, as Amabile and her colleague Steven J. Kramer suggest in their book, The Progress Principle, businesses need to help their workers experience lots of tiny wins. (And as we learned from the bored BYU students in chapter 1, breaking up big challenges into tiny ones also speeds up progress.) This is helpful to know when motivating employees. But it also hints at what billionaires and astronauts can do to stave off the depression that follows the high of getting to the top. To get out of the funk, say Joan DiFuria and Stephen Goldbart, cofounders of the Money, Meaning & Choices Institute, depressed successes simply have to start the Olympic rings over. Some use their money to create new businesses. Others parlay sideways and get into philanthropy. And others simply pick up hobbies that take time to master. Even if the subsequent endeavors are smaller than their previous ones, the depression dissipates as they make progress.

Jewish guy did not know this, but 'oppression olympics' is what smart liberal Americans say, to make you feel stupid and to make you shut up.

At the hospital, an attendant brought down a wheelchair for me. Steve somehow managed, without a forklift, to get me out of the truck and into the wheelchair. The birth progressed a lot faster than it had with Bindi. I wasn’t worried because I had Steve with me, and I knew everything would be fine, as long as we were together. I pushed like an Olympic baby pusher. I should have gotten the gold for my pushing. I think I pushed until I was nearly inside out. The baby came. Steve said, “It’s a boy!” and brought him to me. I remember my son’s tiny pink mouth. He looked like a baby bird with his eyes closed and his mouth open. He immediately began feeding. Steve cried tears of joy. Once we got settled, the proud papa headed for Sunshine Coast Grammar School to tell Bindi the news. “You’ve got a little brother,” he told her. Bindi was elated, in spite of the fact that she had spent every night saying her prayers for a little sister. Steve brought her to the hospital, where she took her little brother in her arms and looked at him lovingly. “How do you know he’s a boy?” she asked. “Bindi,” Thelma said, “they’re not born with clothes on.” “I think I will name him Brian,” Bindi said. “His name is Robert,” Steve told her. “Oh, well,” Bindi said. “I’m going to call him Brian for short.” It was a Sunday, December 1, 2003, and we had all just received the best Christmas present ever. Robert Clarence Irwin. Baby Bob.

This is it?” he asked. “Yeah,” Megan replied. “Wow. I thought girls were notorious for overpacking.” “I’m not much of a girl,” Megan replied. What? What did you just say? He looked her up and down and smiled. “Could’ve fooled me.” If the human form could melt spontaneously, Megan would have turned to a puddle of liquid skin right then and there. This six-foot-four, gorgeous hunk of half-naked hottie was flirting with her! Inarticulate, tomboyish, freckle-nosed Megan Meade! He hoisted the mesh bag of soccer balls out of the trunk and flung it over his shoulder. With his other hand he grabbed the large suitcase, leaving only her laptop bag and the smaller suitcase, filled with Megan’s underwear, bras, and pj’s, for her. Even though he had no idea what was in it, Megan was glad that she didn’t have to watch him carry her lingerie up to the house. “I’m Evan, by the way,” he said as she reached up to slam the door. Megan almost choked. “No.” Evan laughed. “Uh…yeah.” “You’re Evan?” Pudgy, stringy-haired, snot-bubble-blowing Evan had morphed into this WB-worthy god of Olympic proportions? “Yeah, I am,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “Didn’t you hit me over the head with a baseball bat once?” “It was a wiffleball bat,” she said. “And I think you hung me from a tree first.” “Huh. I always thought it was a baseball bat,” Evan said. “I’m freakishly strong,” she said. Right. Stop talking now. Stop…talking…now! But Evan was, in fact, still smiling. They started up the lawn toward the rest of the family. But Evan was, in fact, still smiling. They started up the lawn toward the rest of the family. “So, you’re a soccer player, huh?” Evan said as they approached. “Good thing. You’re gonna need to be quick to survive this crowd.

And now he’s called for men to compete openly against women, in order to prove… what? Nothing at all. Why does he want to see female players losing to vast, dangling male players? To embarrass them? I notice he doesn’t call for Paralympians to compete openly against Olympic gold-medallists. Is that because he respects the different classes in that case, recognising that weight and strength divisions don’t equate to quality divisions? No, it’s just because he wouldn’t so enjoy the sound of himself saying it.

I'm saying that it's a big decision. Your first love is important. It's part of your story The story you'll tell yourself, the one you'll tell about yourself, for the rest of your life.

66. The Will To Win Means Nothing Without The Will To Train I have met a lot of people over the years who professed that they would do whatever it took to win a race or climb a big mountain. But sometimes the will to win just isn’t enough. In fact, the will to win means nothing if you don’t also have the will to train. The day of the race is the easy bit: all eyes are on you and the adrenalin is running high. But the race or the battle is really won or lost in the build-up: the unglamorous times when it is raining at 5:30 a.m. and you don’t want to get out of your warm bed to go for a run. So, don’t fall into the trap of trying hard but lacking the skills or resources that you can only gain through training. I love the story of Daley Thompson, the decathlete who won gold at two Olympics. He used to say his favourite day of the year to train was Christmas Day, as he knew it would be the only day his competitors wouldn’t be training. That is commitment, and it is part of why he won - he saw it as a chance to get 1/365th quicker than his rivals! So, remember that our goals are reached by how we prepare and train in the many months before crunch time. Train right, and the summit or gold medal will be the inevitable culmination of your commitment. I like that, because it means the rewards go to the dogged rather than the brilliant.

As early as November 1966, the Red Guard Corps of Beijing Normal University had set their sights on the Confucian ancestral home in Qufu County in Shandong Province. Invoking the language of the May Fourth movement, they proceeded to Qufu, where they established themselves as the Revolutionary Rebel Liaison State to Annihilate the Old Curiosity Shop of Confucius. Within the month they had totally destroyed the Temple of Confucius, the Kong Family Mansion, the Cemetery of Confucius (including the Master’s grave), and all the statues, steles, and relics in the area... In January 1967 another Red Guard unit editorialized in the People’s Daily: To struggle against Confucius, the feudal mummy, and thoroughly eradicate . . . reactionary Confucianism is one of our important tasks in the Great Cultural Revolution. And then, to make their point, they went on a nationwide rampage, destroying temples, statues, historical landmarks, texts, and anything at all to do with the ancient Sage... The Cultural Revolution came to an end with Mao’s death in 1976. In 1978 Deng Xiaoping (1904–97) became China’s paramount leader, setting China on a course of economic and political reform, and effectively bringing an end to the Maoist ideal of class conflict and perpetual revolution. Since 2000, the leadership in Beijing, eager to advance economic prosperity and promote social stability, has talked not of the need for class conflict but of the goal of achieving a “harmonious society,” citing approvingly the passage from the Analects, “harmony is something to be cherished” (1.12). The Confucius compound in Qufu has been renovated and is now the site of annual celebrations of Confucius’s birthday in late September. In recent years, colleges and universities throughout the country—Beijing University, Qufu Normal University, Renmin University, Shaanxi Normal University, and Shandong University, to name a few—have established Confucian study and research centers. And, in the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics, the Beijing Olympic Committee welcomed guests from around the world to Beijing with salutations from the Analects, “Is it not a joy to have friends come from afar?” and “Within the fours seas all men are brothers,” not with sayings from Mao’s Little Red Book. Tellingly, when the Chinese government began funding centers to support the study of the Chinese language and culture in foreign schools and universities around the globe in 2004—a move interpreted as an ef f ort to expand China’s “soft power”—it chose to name these centers Confucius Institutes... The failure of Marxism-Leninism has created an ideological vacuum, prompting people to seek new ways of understanding society and new sources of spiritual inspiration. The endemic culture of greed and corruption—spawned by the economic reforms and the celebration of wealth accompanying them—has given rise to a search for a set of values that will address these social ills. And, crucially, rising nationalist sentiments have fueled a desire to fi nd meaning within the native tradition—and to of f set the malignant ef f ects of Western decadence and materialism. Confucius has thus played a variety of roles in China’s twentieth and twenty-first centuries. At times praised, at times vilified, he has been both good guy and bad guy. Yet whether good or bad, he has always been somewhere on the stage. These days Confucius appears to be gaining favor again, in official circles and among the people. But what the future holds for him and his teachings is difficult to predict. All we can say with any certainty is that Confucius will continue to matter.

Like I said, I don’t want my daughter getting attached to you, for you to disappear on her.” I know just how much it hurts, having Zeus in your life, and for him to one day be gone. The look he throws my way sears right through me. “I won’t disappear on her.” “You said those exact words to me,” I toss back at him. “At the airport, the first time you left to go to the Olympics. ‘I’m not gonna disappear on you, Dove,’ ” I say, imitating his voice.

On Writing The most important is that the writer’s original perception of a character or characters may be as erroneous as the readers. Running a close second was the realization that stopping a piece of work just because it’s hard, either emotionally or imaginatively is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes you’re doing god work when it feels like all you’re managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position. The idea that creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time. Four twentieth century writers; Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson and the poet Dylan Thomas. They are the writers who largely formed our vision of an existential English speaking wasteland where people have been cut off from one another and live in an atmosphere of strangulation and despair. These concepts are very familiar to most alcoholics; the common reaction to them is amusement. Substance abusing writers are just substance abusers - common garden variety drunks and druggies, in other words. Any claims that the drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit…. for an addict, the right to the drink or drug of choice must be preserved at all costs. Hemingway and Fitzgerald didn’t drink because they were creative, alienated, or morally weak. They drank because that’s what alkies are wired up to do. Creative people probably do run a greater risk of alcoholism and addiction than those in some other jubs, but so what? We all look pretty much the same when we’re puking in the gutter. You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair - the sense that you can never completely put on the pages what’s in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you, or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again, you must not come lightly to the blank page. I am not asking you to come reverently or unquestioningly; I’m not asking you to be politically correct or to cast aside your sense of humor (please God you have one). This isn’t a popularity contest, it isn’t the moral olympics and it’s not church. But it’s writing, damn it, not washing the car. If you take it seriously, we can do business. If you can’t or won’t, it’s time for you to close the book and do something else.

Women’s track and field is under provisional status for these Olympic Games, and officials have given some indication that the ladies will not be asked to return because these feats of endurance can be too strenuous for the fairer sex." Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its second president, always a staunch advocate of banning women from athletic participation, has made his vision of feminine participation clear by saying, “At the Olympic Games, a woman’s role should only be to crown the victors.

We need to stop playing Privilege or Oppression Olympics because we’ll never get anywhere until we find more effective ways of talking through difference. We should be able to say, “This is my truth,” and have that truth stand without a hundred clamoring voices shouting, giving the impression that multiple truths cannot coexist. Because at some point, doesn’t privilege become beside the point?

For a year I had a weekly segment on French radio with CKAC, covering current events (and being their official 2004 Olympics correspondent from Athens), which gave me the chance to get to know the Quebec media and cultural scene from the inside. It also taught me how powerful radio can be as a means of connecting with people. You can’t be phony on radio: your voice and tone will give you away. And people don’t care what your name is after the first ten seconds. All that matters is what you have to say, how you say it, and that you’re speaking to people, not at them.

In this instance, she’d not heard him count. He’d not hit a wall, unless the brick-headed stubbornness of Dmitri’s face counted. Thwack! “Yay.” Yes, that was her cheering for her Pookie aloud. Since it seemed he hadn’t heard, she said it louder, yodeled it as a matter of fact. “You get him, Pookie. Show him who’s the biggest, baddest pussy around.” Leo turned his head at that, narrowing his blue gaze on her. Totally annoyed. Totally adrenalized. Totally hot. “Vex!” How sexy her nickname sounded when he growled it. She could tell he totally dug the encouragement. She waggled her fingers at him and meant to say, “You’re welcome,” but instead shouted, “Behind you!” During that moment of inattention— which really Leo should have known better than to indulge in— Dmitri threw a mighty hook. Had she mentioned just how sigh-worthy big her Pookie was? The perfectly aimed blow hit Leo in the jaw, and the force snapped his head to the side. But it certainly didn’t fell him. Not even close. On the contrary, the punch brought the predator in him alive. As he rotated his jaw, Leo’s gaze flicked her way, his eyes lit with a wildness, his lip quirked, almost in amusement, and then he acted. His fist retaliated then his elbow, snapping Dmitri in the nose. Any other man, even shifter, might have quickly succumbed, but the Russian Siberian tiger was more than a match for the hybrid lion/ tiger. Put them in a ring and they’d have brought in a fortune. They certainly put on a good show. Blood trailed from Dmitri’s lip from where Leo’s fist struck him. However, that didn’t stop the Russian from giving as good as he got. Size-wise, Leo held a slight edge, but what Dmitri lacked in girth, he made up for in skill. Even if Meena wasn’t interested in marrying him, it didn’t mean she couldn’t admire the grace of Dmitri’s movement and his uncanny intuition when it came to dodging blows. Leo wasn’t too shabby either. While he’d obviously not grown up on the mean streets of Russia, he knew how to throw a punch, wrestle a man, and look totally hot in defense of his woman. Sigh. A man coming to her rescue. Just like one of those romance novels Teena likes to read. Luna sidled up alongside her. “What did you do this time?” Why did everyone assume it was her fault? “I didn’t do anything.” Luna snorted. “Sure you didn’t. And it also wasn’t you who put Kool-Aid in Arik’s mom’s shampoo bottle and turned her hair pink at the family picnic a few years ago.” “I thought the short spikes she sported after she got it shaved looked awesome.” “Never said the outcome wasn’t worth it. Just like I’m totally intrigued about what’s happening here. That is Leo laying a smackdown on that Russian diplomat, right? Since I highly doubt they’re sparring over who makes the better vodka or who deserved the gold medal in hockey at the last winter Olympics, then that leaves only one other possibility.” Luna fixed her with a gaze. “This is your fault.” Meena’s shoulders hunched. “Okay, so maybe I’m a teensy tiny bit responsible. Like maybe I made sure my ex-fiancé and current fiancé got to meet.” “Duh. I already knew about that part. What I’m talking about is, how the hell did you get Leo to lose his shit? I mean when he gets his serious on, you couldn’t melt an ice cube in his mouth. Leo never loses control because to lose control is to lose one’s way, or some such bullshit. He’s always spouting these funny little sayings in the hopes of curbing our wild tendencies.” Pookie had the cutest personality. “What can I say?” Meena shrugged. “I guess he got jealous. Totally normal, given we’re soul mates.

The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say 'no' to almost everything.”—Warren Buffett

This is not to cast Barbie as a New Traditionalist. Even in retrograde times, she has never stayed at home against her will. The jobs on her 1989 resume—physician, astronaut, veterinarian, fashion designer, executive, Olympic athlete—are impressive; a little girl could do worse than identify with such a doll. Her move away from demeaning stereotypes can also be documented. Compared with, say, the 1973 Barbie Friend Ship, in which Barbie is forced to play scullery maid to a painted-on pilot, the 1990 Flight Time Barbie, developed in 1989, is herself an aviatrix. But Flight Time Barbie is also a Day-to-Night doll, and her after-hours outfit, vastly more girlish than what she wore in 1985, undercuts her authority. In five years, her homeovestite behavior has intensified, suggesting that her achievements have left her fraught with anxiety.

Gymnasts don’t become dizzy, because they have kinesthetic body awareness, which is a fancy way of saying they know where they are at all times. Gymnastics made me so flexible that I could do the splits. It made me so strong that at one point I

Sarcasm duly noted. What happened? You were fine this morning.” Camille hated to see her sister in obvious pain. It had been four years since she shattered her kneecap during a practice session for the Olympic volleyball team. Their world had been rocked and almost destroyed, along with their relationship. Without their parents around, Camille had taken onto her shoulders the role of mothering her sister, something Paige had not enjoyed. It had been a tenuous rebuild for them, but they were slowly getting there. Needless to say, though, Paige still did not like Camille’s mothering tactics. “I’m fine. It’s just a little stiff.” “But

I’m taking thirty to shower and give myself a full body lift. You’ll thank me later,” she parroted back to her sister. “Says the sister who was born looking like an Olympian. Wah-wah.” Kerry stood and stretched, stifling a groan as every muscle in her body protested. So much for the restorative powers of sleep. She grabbed her last fresh pair of khaki shorts, decided which of her already worn T-shirts was the least questionable, made a mental note to take her laundry basket with her when she left, then sighed as she caught sight of her restless night, wild-child hair once again in the mirror. If only Cooper could see your oh-so-sexy self now, she thought, he’d book the next flight out. “Kerry?” “Well,” she said, making a face at herself in the mirror, “if there was an Olympic even for bed head, I’d take the gold right now, no question. Even the Russian judge would have to cave and give me a ten.” “I’d say give me a break, but come to think of it, I have seen you in the morning.” “Bite me.” “Oh, and because you brought it up,” Fiona added, her voice dripping with sugar once again, “make sure you book some extra time to tell us every last detail about your dead-sexy Aussie fiancé.” “He’s not my--” “Hurry!” Fiona interrupted as group laughter echoed through the phone from somewhere behind her; then she hung up. Kerry looked at the dead phone, then tossed it on the bed, mumbling swear words in several languages under her breath.

From age 14 through the Beijing Olympics, Phelps trained seven days a week, 365 days a year. He figured that by training on Sundays he got a 52-training-day advantage on the competition. He spent up to six hours in the water each day. “Channeling his energy is one of his great strengths,” said Bowman. Not to oversimplify, but it’s not a stretch to say that Phelps channeled all of his energy into one discipline that developed into one habit—swimming daily.

People say that when they win an Olympic medal—“My life has been leading up to this moment,” they say. But that’s true of every moment. Even if you’re only doing the washing up, your whole life’s still been building up to that moment.

If you’d like to have more mental clarity, it is suggested by many physicians that you eat healthier foods. In today’s health-conscious society it almost goes without saying, but sometimes we forget these things when it comes time for memorizing the word of God. If you want more mental clarity then it is a good idea to be eating well. But if you’re going to eat well you need to do so for long periods of time before you feel the mental effects. Much like an Olympic runner one needs to be well conditioned in all things. They’re well-conditioned in body but we should be well conditioned in mind. There are many various things that can help us exercise towards a well-conditioned mind. For example cardio exercise in itself helps bring mental clarity. Although all these things may not be necessary to memorize well, they definitely help and therefore have been included in the discussion of step one. For myself, I choose to eat healthy, jog often, and keep a relaxed peaceful state of heart. When we focus on the aspects of a Christian walk which lead to a heart of peace it is easier to have a clear mind. It is not that we should exercise ourselves towards godliness only for the sake of memorizing the Bible. But through the natural course of the Christian walk, as we take our walks seriously and exercise ourselves in the peace of God, clarity of mind will come naturally, and so will memorizing the word of God. In this step we are preparing our minds for memorizing by putting our thoughts to rest. A long stressful day can make it difficult to memorize. So it does good to bring peace back in our minds first. If we maintain the healthy habits and tips stated above it will be easier to follow through with this step as time goes on. Ultimately the first step is to bring your mind to a place of peace. Take a mental rest and let your thoughts dwell on the lord. Meditate for a period of time to wrangle your thoughts and corral them in. A stressed out or overly active mind will keep you from memorizing the word of God.

OLYMPICS 2012 Great Britain be proud, be blessed, be bold! Your time has come to be the host of the Massive event in the whole world, It is the time to arise from your slumber, Great Britain be proud, be blessed, be proud! The time has come to put things in order, To put aside your differences, To join hands in one accord and say, We can do this, we can win this, Build the walls of unity, peace, joy And press towards the goal. This is the time to bring back your dignity. Great Britain be proud, be blessed, be bold! This is the time to sing a new song, This is the time to pray and believe That Great Britain team will do wonders. Great Britain be proud, be blessed, be bold! Show the world what you are made of, Show them your are made of gold not of bronze. Be proud, be blessed, be bold!

The very notion that beauty is something we need to be protected from is insulting. [...] When you watch Olympic athletes in competition, does your self-esteem plummet? Of course not. On the contrary, you feel wonder and admiration; you're inspired that such exceptional individuals exist. So why can't we feel the same way about beauty? Feminism would have us apologize for having that reaction. It wants to replace aesthetics with politics, and to the extent it's succeeded, it's impoverished us. Being in the presence of a world-class beauty can be as thrilling as listening to a world class soprano. Gifted individuals aren't the only ones who benefit from their gifts; we all do. Or, I should say, we all can. Depriving ourselves of that opportunity would be a crime.

Even supermotivated people who’re working to exhaustion may not be doing deliberate practice. For instance, when a Japanese rowing team invited Olympic gold medalist Mads Rasmussen to come visit, he was shocked at how many hours of practice their athletes were logging. It’s not hours of brute-force exhaustion you’re after, he told them. It’s high-quality, thoughtful training goals pursued, just as Ericsson’s research has shown, for just a few hours a day, tops. Noa Kageyama, a performance psychologist on the faculty of the Juilliard School of Music, says he’s been playing the violin since he was two but didn’t really start practicing deliberately until he was twenty-two. Why not? There was no lack of motivation—at one point, young Noa was taking lessons with four different teachers and, literally, commuting to three different cities to work with them all. Really, the problem was just that Noa didn’t know better. Once he discovered there was an actual science of practice—an approach that would improve his skills more efficiently—both the quality of his practice and his satisfaction with his progress skyrocketed. He’s now devoted himself to sharing that knowledge with other musicians.

And so how does Um-Helat exist? How can such a city possibly survive, let alone thrive? Wealthy with no poor, advanced with no war, a beautiful place where all souls know themselves beautiful . . . It cannot be, you say. Utopia? How banal. It’s a fairy tale, a thought exercise. Crabs in a barrel, dog-eat-dog, oppression Olympics—it would not last, you insist. It could never be in the first place. Racism is natural, so natural that we will call it “tribalism” to insinuate that everyone does it. Sexism is natural and homophobia is natural and religious intolerance is natural and greed is natural and cruelty is natural and savagery and fear and and and . . . and. “Impossible!” you hiss, your fists slowly clenching at your sides. “How dare you. What have these people done to make you believe such lies? What are you doing to me, to suggest that it is possible? How dare you. How dare you.” Oh, friend! I fear I have offended. My apologies. Yet . . . how else can I convey Um-Helat to you, when even the thought of a happy, just society raises your ire so? Though I confess I am puzzled as to why you are so angry. It’s almost as if you feel threatened by the very idea of equality. Almost as if some part of you needs to be angry. Needs unhappiness and injustice. But . . . do you? Do you?

How can such a city possibly survive, let alone thrive? Wealthy with no poor, advanced with no war, a beautiful place where all souls know themselves beautiful … It cannot be, you say. Utopia? How banal. It’s a fairy tale, a thought exercise. Crabs in a barrel, dog-eat-dog, oppression Olympics—it would not last, you insist. It could never be in the first place. Racism is natural, so natural that we will call it “tribalism” to insinuate that everyone does it. Sexism is natural and homophobia is natural and religious intolerance is natural and greed is natural and cruelty is natural and savagery and fear and and and … and.

According to my orientation classes, the one thing I needed to know about America above everything else was this: “There is no such thing as hakuna matata in America.” I laughed the first time the instructor said this. Hakuna matata means “no worries.” In Africa, it is more than a catchy saying. It is a way of life in the camp. Time simply does not matter. From presidents and kings and judges all the way down to boys in a refugee camp, arriving somewhere “on time” is a very foreign concept. If you say, “Be here by nine,” that means, to us, “Show up sometime before noon.” If you are late, hakuna matata—no worries. In Africa, no one expects you to show up on time, anyway.

Think of friends or family members who loved Jesus and are with him now. Picture them with you, walking together in this place. All of you have powerful bodies, stronger than those of an Olympic decathlete. You are laughing, playing, talking, and reminiscing. You reach up to a tree to pick an apple or orange. You take a bite. It’s so sweet that it’s startling. You’ve never tasted anything so good. Now you see someone coming toward you. It’s Jesus, with a big smile on his face. You fall to your knees in worship. He pulls you up and embraces you. At last, you’re with the person you were made for, in the place you were made to be. Everywhere you go there will be new people and places to enjoy, new things to discover. What’s that you smell? A feast. A party’s ahead. And you’re invited. There’s exploration and work to be done—and you can’t wait to get started.

By any measure, the PiL show was a catastrophe for the band, but they left the Olympic with a new resolve. Says Pérez, “Because it was kind of a big deal for us, our wives came with us, and everyone in the family came, and they were all hanging out in the wings of the backstage area. We went around the curtain and went back. Our families were in tears. I had spit hanging from my chin. But

Flanagan doesn't know yet what she'll say this time at the start to her friend, teammate, and yes, her competitor, but they will both carry that fighting sentiment from the Olympics with them. Let's do this thing.

And how could it be otherwise? I am always amazed when I hear people saying that sport creates goodwill between the nations, and that if only the common peoples of the world could meet one another at football or cricket, they would have no inclination to meet on the battlefield. Even if one didn’t know from concrete examples (the 1936 Olympic Games, for instance) that international sporting contests lead to orgies of hatred, one could deduce it from general principles.

Fans who had only just seen the team win the 2015 World Cup probably weren’t aware of what the players had been through in the past—boycotting games to earn comparable pay to the men, threatening to retire in the face of a lawsuit, asking the U.S. Olympic Committee to intervene, and so on. These sorts of battles were built into the DNA of the team. Their drive to win and their drive to stand up for themselves seemed to go hand in hand. For Lloyd, the appearance on the Today show and the public decision to file the EEOC claim gave the players a chance to help people understand that this sort of substandard treatment was the reality of the women’s national team. She laments that some people mistook the players’ stance as fighting against the men’s team itself, but she says it shined a light on the issues confronting the women’s team. “A lot of people didn’t realize the history of this team and what we’ve had to fight for,” Lloyd says. “When I first joined the team in 2005, they were fighting for salaries, healthcare, pregnancy leave—basic stuff.” Like many American women, the players had their own struggles with equal pay, fair treatment, maternity leave, and other issues that are as endemic in the United States as they are disheartening. As it turned out, even World Cup champions faced the same challenges as other women.

LFC’s changing room in the Olympic stadium was ‘like a sickbay’ after their final defeat by Real Madrid, he says. Mohamed Salah, back from an X-ray of his shoulder injury at a nearby hospital, sat crying; for everyone else, the hurt was merely psychological but no less piercing. ‘You’re so disappointed, you can’t stop the tears.’ They heard their triumphant opponents singing next door. Worse than that, the team of referees were loudly celebrating, too. ‘We saw a crate of beer going in and they were partying. I can’t tell you why. But they were partying.’ Krawietz

The USOC told U.S. Soccer officials they had to cooperate with the team, and after some back-and-forth, the federation agreed to send the team to the 2005 Algarve Cup. “They were incredibly reluctant to cooperate until the USOC told them they had to cooperate,” Langel says. Tiffeny Milbrett, who returned to the team after April Heinrichs left, says the ordeal reinforced a second-class status for the women’s national team with the federation. “U.S. Soccer had to be threatened by the Olympic Committee that they weren’t managing their governing status toward the women appropriately,” she says. “It was like, Why do we have to deal with this discrimination and these attitudes? It was the Olympic Committee that changed things, not these men at the federation saying, Yes, the women deserve it.

By the 59th minute, the match was still scoreless when German striker Alexandra Popp ran down a lofted ball into the box. Julie Johnston, chasing, tugged her from behind. Popp fell, and the whistle blew. Penalty kick for Germany. This was it. This was the moment, it seemed, the Americans would lose the World Cup. It was a given, of course, that Germany would score this penalty kick. The Germans never missed in moments like this, and a goal would shift the momentum of the match. Hope Solo did the only thing she could do: stall. As Célia Šašić stepped up to the spot to take the kick, Solo sauntered off to the sideline slowly and got her water bottle. She took a sip. Paused. Scanned the crowd. Another sip. She strolled back slowly toward goal. She still had the water bottle in her hand. She wanted to let this moment linger. She wanted Šašić to think too much about the kick and let the nerves of the moment catch up to her. Finally, Solo took her spot. The whistle blew, and without even a nanosecond of hesitation, Šašić ran up to the ball and hit it, as if she couldn’t bear another moment of waiting. Solo guessed to the right, and Šašić’s shot was going left. But it kept going left and skipped wide. The pro-USA crowd at Olympic Stadium in Montreal erupted into a thunderclap that made the stands shake. The American players cheered as if they had just scored a goal. “We knew right then and there that we were going to win the World Cup,” Ali Krieger says. “That was it. That’s when we knew: This is ours.

Chastain had watched teammates like Mia Hamm and Julie Foudy end their careers with testimonial matches—the special farewell games that important players earn—but she was never going to get one. Her last game was the final stop of the post-Olympics victory tour in 2004, the same last game as Hamm and Foudy, only Chastain didn’t know it at the time. “It wasn’t on my radar—it wasn’t supposed to happen like that,” Chastain says. “He was the assistant coach. I’m not sure how he became coach of the national team, to be honest, and there was no discussion.” Shannon MacMillan, another veteran, tells a similar story. She, too, was surprised to find herself left off rosters, but in her case, it was because Greg Ryan had reassured her that she was in his plans. As time went on and she still hadn’t gotten a call, at age 31 she gave up hope of ever returning to the team. Her career ended at 176 caps. “I was like, Enough’s enough,” she says. “That’s kind of what forced my hand into retiring. I just got sick and tired of the politics and the B.S.

With a quiet post-Olympics year ahead, U.S. Soccer secretary general Dan Flynn informed the players that the national team would “go dark” for 2005 and play between four and six games total that year. Rather than schedule the usual slate of games, the federation would instead focus on scouting new players. “If there are no games, where will the women play?” Langel asked. “The W-League,” replied Flynn. “Are you kidding me?” Langel said. The W-League wasn’t a professional league. It was a development league that included amateur, unpaid players. There was no comparison between playing international opponents with the national team and competing in the W-League. “We told them we don’t necessarily need a residency camp, but we don’t have anywhere to play at all,” says Cat Whitehill, who graduated from the University of North Carolina with a degree in communications. “They wanted nothing to do with us.” U.S. Soccer argued the next World Cup wasn’t for another three years and there were no major events the team needed to prepare for. It would be similar to the team’s schedule in 2001, when U.S. Soccer hosted just two home games for the national team. But for the players who had now made soccer their living and didn’t have the WUSA anymore, that was unacceptable. It’s not as if U.S. Soccer was simply scaling back friendlies. The federation said it had no plans to send the team to the annual Algarve Cup in Portugal, which the team always competed in. A team wouldn’t be sent to the Four Nations Tournament in China either, despite the competition being a usual fixture on the team’s calendar.

With a quiet post-Olympics year ahead, U.S. Soccer secretary general Dan Flynn informed the players that the national team would “go dark” for 2005 and play between four and six games total that year. Rather than schedule the usual slate of games, the federation would instead focus on scouting new players. “If there are no games, where will the women play?” Langel asked. “The W-League,” replied Flynn. “Are you kidding me?” Langel said. The W-League wasn’t a professional league. It was a development league that included amateur, unpaid players. There was no comparison between playing international opponents with the national team and competing in the W-League. “We told them we don’t necessarily need a residency camp, but we don’t have anywhere to play at all,” says Cat Whitehill, who graduated from the University of North Carolina with a degree in communications. “They wanted nothing to do with us.” U.S. Soccer argued the next World Cup wasn’t for another three years and there were no major events the team needed to prepare for. It would be similar to the team’s schedule in 2001, when U.S. Soccer hosted just two home games for the national team. But for the players who had now made soccer their living and didn’t have the WUSA anymore, that was unacceptable. It’s not as if U.S. Soccer was simply scaling back friendlies. The federation said it had no plans to send the team to the annual Algarve Cup in Portugal, which the team always competed in. A team wouldn’t be sent to the Four Nations Tournament in China either, despite the competition being a usual fixture on the team’s calendar. The players demanded to know how U.S. Soccer could justify skipping the tournaments. Flynn replied that it was “the technical director’s recommendation” to play a lighter schedule. The technical director? April Heinrichs. The players wanted to figure out if Heinrichs really believed the team should play so few games in 2005, so Julie Foudy reached out to her. “Is that true? Did you tell U.S. Soccer we should only play five games?” Foudy asked. “I never said anything like that,” Heinrichs told her. “I told them you should play 20 games.” If Heinrichs hadn’t recommended such a sparse schedule and, in fact, recommended around 20 games, it seemed that U.S. Soccer was making a decision that went against what was best for the players. The players saw a clear double standard—the men’s team hadn’t played so few games since 1987, almost two decades earlier. They concluded U.S. Soccer’s real reason was the same one behind most disputes between the players and the federation: money. The federation, it appeared, did not want to spend the money for training camps, player stipends, and travel for overseas competitions, even as it was sitting on a $30 million surplus at the time. “In 2005, they had no plans for us and wanted us to go quiet so they didn’t have to pay us the entire year,” says defender Kate Markgraf.

By this point, Solo was hardly a stranger to controversy within the national team. The world had seen how she’d criticized Greg Ryan’s decision at the 2007 World Cup and was kicked off the team. During the 2012 Olympics, she’d called out Brandi Chastain, who was a commentator for NBC, tweeting: “Lay off commentating about defending and goalkeeping until you get more educated @brandichastain. The game has changed from a decade ago.” Now, her arrest and assault charges were front-page news. But there was a history within the team of things involving Solo that needed to be dealt with, even if they were never made public. Pia Sundhage admits she had to deal with a couple of issues while she coached Solo, but she didn’t let it become the focus of what she was doing. “There were one or two things, but you have to be respectful, you have to be smart, and you have to just talk to people,” Sundhage says. “We worked it out. We wanted to train. We wanted to improve the game.

Why did silver-medaling Olympic competitors in the study feel as if they’d failed, while their bronze-medaling counterparts felt a measure of success? Psychologists say it’s caused by “counterfactual thinking”—the human tendency to frame events in terms of “what if” or “if only.” The silver medalists, disappointed at not having won gold, framed their performance as a failure relative to winning gold. Those who came in third place framed the result as a success—they earned a medal at the Olympics! They were acutely aware of how easily they might have missed the chance to stand on the Olympic podium in glory and not come home with a medal at all. The bronze medalists had reframed their result—from a loss to a gain. That simple—and scientifically valid—reframe gave them joy instead of regret.

Hongdari watched my tears drop to the floor and began to sob, his shoulders shaking out of control. In between his sobs, I said, “They say that the heavens decide when we have to go. In the meantime, let’s have a drink.” He shoved the bottle of Ballantine’s to me, and I took it. I drank a mouthful straight from the bottle. I reflected on what he was saying and asked him, “Are you asking me to decide between this way and that way? Or between this, that, and none of the above?

From what I’ve been told, there are several growth phases in a natural sleep cycle. Studies have shown that at 1:30 or 2 a.m., kids begin to secrete the growth hormone,” he says. “If somebody interrupts that secretion cycle to get you up to train at 5 in the morning throughout your childhood, what does that do to your body?

My dad's always been horrified by it," I say. "He doesn't want me to define myself by my illness or whatever." Sasha widens his eyes. "Healthy people are so weird about that." "Right?" "I don't know how they've developed this fear of it," he says. "Was there an after school special they all saw? Like, at some point every healthy person saw some TV show about how you shouldn't let sick people define themselves by their illness, whatever the fuck that even means, and they were all sitting there taking notes like uh-huh, oh yes, very smart, thank you. I will not let them." "Well, okay," I say. "To be fair to healthy people -" "Ugh." "-you can define yourself by your illness...as long as you're an Olympic athlete who's overcoming it." "Yes! You either have to be overcoming it or you have to be completely disconnected from it. God forbid it be an important part of your identity that you're just living with. Why is that?" "It's because they can't imagine it," I say. "They think it's completely ridiculous that a person can just...have a sick life and be fine with it. So they have to build this story around you kicking the illness's ass. You can't coexist with it. You can't incorporate it into yourself. Because they don't. So you can't.

the midst of that fog of confusion and misdirection, a leak to The Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima cut through with an unequivocal statement. Her headline: “Russian Spies Hacked the Olympics and Tried to Make It Look Like North Korea Did It, U.S. Officials Say.” Again, the Post cited anonymous U.S. intelligence sources—two of them—who claimed that the GRU’s Main Center for Special Technology was behind the attack, the same hackers responsible for NotPetya. Olympic Destroyer, it seemed to follow, was the work of Sandworm, or at least its colleagues at the same agency.

now, deep in the folds of false flags wrapped around the Olympic malware, Soumenkov had found one flag that was provably false. It was now perfectly clear that someone had tried to make the malware look North Korean and only failed due to a slipup in one instance and through Soumenkov’s fastidious triple-checking. “It’s a completely verifiable false flag. We can say with 100 percent confidence this is false, so it’s not the Lazarus Group,” Soumenkov would later say in a presentation at the Kaspersky Security Analyst Summit, using the name for the hackers widely believed to be North Korean. Still,