Races, Games, and Olympic Dreams

Races, Games, and Olympic Dreams
Author: Tom Hammond
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2024-08-20
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1985901021

In sports, not all the long shots who succeed are athletes. In 1984, Tom Hammond, a forty-year-old sportscaster who had primarily worked in Kentucky and the Southeast, got an unlikely opportunity to appear on the NBC Sports telecast of the inaugural Breeders' Cup. Assigned to report from the stall area on what was supposed to be a single broadcast, Hammond performed so well that an NBC executive offered him a chance to call NFL games on the spot. That broadcast launched Hammond's thirty-four-year career with NBC Sports and his rise to the top levels of American television sportscasting. Along with cowriter Mark Story, Hammond pulls back the curtain to reveal how a Kentucky native who started out reading horse racing results on Lexington radio went on to broadcast from thirteen Olympic Games. While covering Thoroughbred racing for NBC, Hammond broadcast sixteen Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes races and eleven runnings of the Belmont Stakes, including American Pharoah's historic 2015 Triple Crown victory. Hammond offers glimpses into his time as the play-by-play voice for Notre Dame football, calling NBA and NFL games, and his long-running stint announcing Southeastern Conference men's basketball for the league's syndicated TV package. Races, Games, and Olympic Dreams is an intimate and gripping look at Hammond's experiences, including his coverage of Olympic track and field, figure skating, speed skating, ice dancing, diving, and basketball events. Hammond worked with broadcasting luminaries such as Dick Enberg, Bob Costas, Cris Collinsworth, and Bill Walton, and encountered world-class athletes like Allyson Felix, Michael Jordan, Sarah Hughes, and Peyton Manning. Although his career has spanned the nation and the world, Hammond's roots have always remained firmly planted in the Bluegrass State.

Women and the Olympic Dream

Women and the Olympic Dream
Author: Maria Kaj
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2022-07-14
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1476686475

On an April morning in 1896, unemployed single mother Stamata Revithi ran the 40 kilometers from Marathon to Athens, finishing in 5 hours 30 minutes. Barred from the first Olympic marathon, she was determined to prove herself. Through more than a century of Olympic Games history, women athletes--who were held back from swimming because long skirts were required, limited to running single-lap races because of fallacies about fragility, or forced to endure invasive gender exams--competed in spite of endless challenges. From Athens 1896 to Tokyo 2020, this history of women's participation in the Olympic Games centers on athletes who overcame entrenched inequity to gain inclusion.

The Olympic Dream

The Olympic Dream
Author: Cynthia Holzschuher
Publisher: Teacher Created Resources
Total Pages: 82
Release: 1997-08
Genre:
ISBN: 1576902005

In 1951 the University of San Francisco football team (The Dons) went undefeated and untied. Yet, despite being among the best college football teams of all time, the squad was not invited to play in a post season bowl game because two of its players were African-American. The team was offered the chance to compete without the players, but they unanimously refused on principle.They were the 'magnificent eleven' that no one had ever heard of. The team exhibited a roster of players and personnel that read like a 'who's who' of gridiron heroes. This '51 team produced nine future NFL players; five made it to the Pro Bowl and three of those five were inducted into the Hall of Fame; the most ever from a single college team. Undefeated, Untied, and Uninvited goes behind the scenes to explore the successes and challenges as well as the unpredictable events that faced the Dons. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

An Olympic Dream

An Olympic Dream
Author: Reinhard Kleist
Publisher: SelfMadeHero
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016-04-12
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 9781910593097

The image of Samia Yusuf Omar running for last place at the 2008 Beijing Olympics will forever be imprinted in the minds of all who saw it: The lean Somalian, wearing knee-length leggings and a baggy T-shirt, came in seconds behind her competitors. What the cheering crowd couldn't know then was what it took to get there. An Olympic Dream follows Omar's second attempt to represent her country at the Olympics, this time in London. Reinhard Kleist pictures the athlete training in one of the most dangerous cities in the world; her passage through Sudan and into Libya; and her fateful attempt to reach Europe. By telling the story of one remarkable woman, Kleist gives voice to the thousands of migrants who risk their lives daily for a better future.

Olympic Dream

Olympic Dream
Author: Henry Rono
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2007-10-02
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1463462867

In a span of 81 days in 1978, Henry Rono broke four world records, committing the most ferocious assault on the track-and-field record books by a middle-distance runner in the history of the sport. This is what Henry Rono is known for. However, it is not who Henry Rono is. Henry Rono was born a poor Nandi in Kenya's Rift Valley. After an accident when he was two, doctors believed he would never again walk. This would be the first of countless obstacles Rono would have to overcome in order to pursue his two life goals: to first become the greatest runner in the world and then to become the best teacher he could be. Rono's first goal was accomplished in 1978, when he was considered not only the greatest track-and-field athlete in the world, but also by many to be the world's greatest athlete period. His second and greater goal, to become a teacher, was more difficult in coming. Once Rono became a star, coaches, agents, meet directors, and corrupt Kenyan athletic officials (whose boycotts of the 1976 and 1980 Olympics turned Rono's dreams of Olympic gold into Olympic smoke rings), wanted him to serve as their personal moneymaker, and so they did everything they could to discourage Rono's pursuit of an education and dream of teaching. The corruption and discouragement Rono encountered, as well as his alienation and exile from his homeland and family, pushed him to 20 years of alcoholism and even occasional homelessness. This is the life story of Henry Rono, whose descent from triumph to abyss, and whose subsequent ascent from abyss to triumph, are perhaps steeper than those of any track-and field athlete in history.

Olympic Dreams

Olympic Dreams
Author: Guoqi Xu
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2008-05-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780674028401

Drawing on archival sources to analyze a hundred-year perspective on sports in China, this book explores why the country became obsessed with Western sports at the turn of the twentieth century, and how it relates to China's search for a national and international identity.

The 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games

The 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games
Author: Matthew Llewellyn
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2017-10-02
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1317502469

The 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games stand as the most profitable and arguably the most important event in the history of the modern Olympic movement. Fresh off the back of the financially disastrous Montreal Games of 1976 and the politically controversial Moscow Games of 1980, the Olympic movement returned to the United States for the sixth time in an attempt to salvage the economic viability and global prestige of the Olympics. The Los Angeles Olympics proved to be both provocative and polarizing. On the one hand they have been heralded as an overwhelming, transformative success, ushering the Olympic movement into the modern commercial age. On the other hand, critics have repudiated the Games as a manifestation of commercial excess and a platform for western political and cultural propaganda. In conjunction with the 30th anniversary of the Los Angeles Olympics, this volume examines their legacy. With an international collection of contributing scholars, this volume will span a range of global legacies, including the increasing commercialization of the Games, the changing participation of women, the Communist boycott movement, nationalism and sporting identity, and the modernization and California-cation of the Games. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

Momentum

Momentum
Author: Peter Vordenberg
Publisher: Out Your Backdoor
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2002-01-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781892590565

"Momentum: Chasing the Olympic Dream" is a memoir that people are calling the best-ever look into ski culture. Pete Vordenberg is already a favorite writer in the XC ski magazine scene. Here he pulls out all the stops and opens skiing to all of life in a way we haven't seen before. Vordenberg is a two-time Olympian, NCAA Champ, and a current US Team Coach on a team which has, not coincidently, become the winningest team we've seen in decades. "Momentum" is about spirit and camaraderie. If you're tired of sports ego-mania and doping scandals, the big little world of American XC ski racing offers a breath of cold, fresh air."Momentum" is a non-linear voyage traveling the world, crossing from childhood to the edge of adulthood. It shares the quixotic humor, excitement, and poignancy inherent in the pursuit of something as unlikely as an American gold medal in XC. Americans in XC ski racing have to make their stand with little support, and great, continuous effort, for a long time -- about 15 years before they can expect best results. How to endure for that long? Vordenberg shows us that you can't make it without your family, friends and coaches. In "Momentum" we see friendships like we know sports can show us, but we also feel what it's like to be hanging in the wind oceans away from home and help. Why dedicate your life to such slim chances for victory and even less for livelihood? Vordenberg says: "This is not a retelling of the little engine that could. Rather, it is about why the little engine even tried." Bob Woodward, veteran ski journalist, says "The marvel of Vordenberg's book is that it appeals to the non-skier as well as to ski racers past and present. Healthy doses of self-revelation, touches of *On The Road*, and remarkable insights make this a unique book. It's supposedly about skiing--but it's more about life and seizing it."

Olympic Legacies: Intended and Unintended

Olympic Legacies: Intended and Unintended
Author: J A Mangan
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2013-10-18
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1317966627

For more than a century, the Olympics have been the modern world's most significant sporting event. Indeed, they deserve much credit for globalizing sport beyond the boundaries of the Anglo-American universe, where it originated, into broader global realms. By the 1930s, the Olympics had become a global mega-event that occupied the attention of the media, the interest of the public and the energies of nation-states. Since then, projected by television, funded by global capital and fattened by the desires of nations to garner international prestige, the Olympics have grown to gargantuan dimensions. In the course of its epic history, the Olympics have left numerous legacies, from unforgettable feats to monumental stadiums, from shining triumphs to searing tragedies, from the dazzling debuts on the world's stage of new cities and nations to notorious campaigns of national propaganda. The Olympics represent an essential component of modern global history. The Olympic movement itself has, since the 1990s, recognized and sought to shape its numerous legacies with mixed success as this book makes clear. It offers ground-breaking analyses of the power of Olympic legacies, positive and negative, and surveys the subject from Athens in 1896 to Beijing in 2008, and indeed beyond. This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.