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Tuesday, August 12, 2008

1996 Olympics Day 4

I'm going to speed through this issue so I can try to get the Day 5 magazine posted tonight and get caught up. This issue is dominated by swimming as is evident by Tom Dolan's cover photo. The cover story features the rivalry between Dolan and Eric Namesnik and their battle in the 400 individual medley. There's a couple of mentions of the Chinese swim team and the new anti-steroid rules that the writers seemed convinced were going to get the entire China contingent banned. The rules are detailed in the Scorecard section and they are pretty ridiculous. If four swimmers from a nation fail a drug test, all the swimmers from that country get a ban for four years. Even better, it's not the country where they are from that was important, but the nation where they trained. Sounds perfectly fair to me, I can't see how that could ever get abused by a nation sending a few scrub swimmers to train in a rival country only to purposefully get caught to wipe out their rival's entire program. Do the anti-doping nazis even think about the bass-ackward rules they make? Sheesh. Finally there is a great article on Janet Evans, which is completely ruined by an ad for toenail fungus medicine right in the middle of it. With graphic photo!

The other focus in the magazine is on the gymnastic team, with a one page article on the female squads and a photo essay on gymnasts' hands and feet. That is where the fungus ad should have gone. The United States takes the lead in the medal count with 2 golds and 10 overall. Poland has the most gold medals at 4 with some victories in judo and wrestling. Two days in, the United Kingdom is the nation that is most surprisingly not on the medal board, although Ireland has a gold medal.

Ben was right about Kosuke Fukudome playing in the 1996 Olympics. The third baseman (?!) is featured stretching for a line drive in the recap of Japan's 8-7 loss to powerhouse Cuba. Japan nearly knocked off the Cuban team for the first time in international competition since 1983, but the Cubans scored two runs in the bottom of the tenth. Legendary Cuban pitcher Pedro Luis Lazo faced off against Hitoshi Ono in the game which featured a mammoth home from from Cuban cleanup hitter Orestes Kindelan. The 521 foot homer was the longest in the history of Atlanta-Fulton County stadium. Think about that a minute. The women's softball team doesn't get a fancy write up but their victory over Puerto Rico is acknowledged with this photo of Dot Richardson celebrating after a homer.

1 comment:

Chris Mays said...

The softball stuff in 96 was great. They were held in my old home town, Columbus and those young ladies were the toast of the town.

On an unrelated note, any idea what this product is? http://www.blowoutcards.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=2214