Credited as the face of American speed skating, Apolo Anton Ohno has done much to bring the sport out of obscurity. According to the United States Olympic Committee, Ohno holds the record for most medals won by a U.S. Winter Olympian: two golds, two silvers, and four bronze. This compelling edition provides a balanced biographical overview of Apolo Anton Ohno. Chapters discuss his childhood being raised by a single father, his decision to pursue speed skating, and his appearances at the 2002, 2006, and 2010 Winter Olympic games.
Heavily illustrated with fabulous action photos, this sports almanac also features a 16-page, four-color insert that contains photos of the year's thrilling moments and memorable athletes. Full color.
Think you know all there is to know about Sasha Cohen? Well, did you know that: * She grew up in southern California? * Ice cream is one of her favorite foods? * She won a gold medal at the 2006 U.S. National Championships? Sasha Cohen fell in love with figure skating when she was seven years old. She quickly became a fierce competitor and by age fifteen, she was skating with the best in the world. At the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, Utah, she finished in fourth place—just missing a medal. She spent the next four years working to improve. See how this elegant skater made it to the top!
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The superbly researched, spellbindingly told story of athlete, showman, philosopher, and boundary breaker Leroy “Satchel” Paige “Among the rare biographies of an athlete that transcend sports . . . gives us the man as well as the myth.”—The Boston Globe Few reliable records or news reports survive about players in the Negro Leagues. Through dogged detective work, award-winning author and journalist Larry Tye has tracked down the truth about this majestic and enigmatic pitcher, interviewing more than two hundred Negro Leaguers and Major Leaguers, talking to family and friends who had never told their stories before, and retracing Paige’s steps across the continent. Here is the stirring account of the child born to an Alabama washerwoman with twelve young mouths to feed, the boy who earned the nickname “Satchel” from his enterprising work as a railroad porter, the young man who took up baseball on the streets and in reform school, inventing his trademark hesitation pitch while throwing bricks at rival gang members. Tye shows Paige barnstorming across America and growing into the superstar hurler of the Negro Leagues, a marvel who set records so eye-popping they seemed like misprints, spent as much money as he made, and left tickets for “Mrs. Paige” that were picked up by a different woman at each game. In unprecedented detail, Tye reveals how Paige, hurt and angry when Jackie Robinson beat him to the Majors, emerged at the age of forty-two to help propel the Cleveland Indians to the World Series. He threw his last pitch from a big-league mound at an improbable fifty-nine. (“Age is a case of mind over matter,” he said. “If you don’t mind, it don’t matter.”) More than a fascinating account of a baseball odyssey, Satchel rewrites our history of the integration of the sport, with Satchel Paige in a starring role. This is a powerful portrait of an American hero who employed a shuffling stereotype to disarm critics and racists, floated comical legends about himself–including about his own age–to deflect inquiry and remain elusive, and in the process methodically built his own myth. “Don’t look back,” he famously said. “Something might be gaining on you.” Separating the truth from the legend, Satchel is a remarkable accomplishment, as large as this larger-than-life man.
David Wright is the All-Star third baseman for the New York Mets. Off the field, Wright began the David Wright Foundation after the 2005 season. He became most involved in the fight against multiple sclerosis, a disease that attacks the central nervous system consisting of the brain, spinal cord and optic nerves. It can lead to numbness or even paralysis and blindness.
In 2008 China plans to use the Olympic Games to remake its national identity in the global marketplace. In so doing China treads the path blazed by the United States. For more than a century the U.S. has used the Olympic Games to construct national identity, create communal memory, and craft patriotic mythology. From opening parades where the American team refuses to dip its flag in order to signal American exceptionalism to the closing ceremonies where the U.S. media trumpet that their team owes its medals not to superior athleticism but to the nation’s peerless social and political systems, Olympic Games have served as sites to bolster American nationalism. More than any other nation, the United States has politicized its Olympic participation. In the process a host of myths about American superiority in global encounters has emerged through the Olympics. In memorializing and mythologizing their Olympic teams Americans have revealed the contours of the racial, gender, and class dynamics that animate their peculiar nationhood. These essays explore the history of expressions of American national identity in Olympic arenas. This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.
From concussion doctors pushing “science” that benefits their hidden business interests to lawyers clamoring for billion-dollar settlements in scam litigation, America’s game has become so big that everybody wants a cut. And those chasing the dollars show themselves more than willing to trash a great sport in hot pursuit of a buck. Everything they say about football is wrong. Football players don’t commit suicide at elevated levels, die younger than their peers, or suffer disproportionately from heart disease. In fact, professional players live longer, healthier lives than American men in general. More than that, football is America’s most popular sport. It brings us together. It is, and has been, a rite of passage for millions of American boys. But fear over concussions and other injuries could put football on ice. School districts are already considering doing away with football as too dangerous. Parents who used to see football as character-building now worry that it may be mind-destroying. Even the president has jumped on the pile by fretting that he might prevent a son from playing if he had one. But as author Daniel J. Flynn reports, football is actually safer than skateboarding, bicycling, or skiing. And in a nation facing an obesity crisis, a little extra running, jumping, and tackling could do us all good. Detailing incontrovertible fact after incontrovertible fact, The War on Football: Saving America’s Game rescues reality from the hype—and in doing so may just ensure that football remains America’s game.
