Olympic Skater
Olympic Skater
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Olympic Skater Carol Heiss $79.99 Olympic Skater Carol Heiss Premium Photographic Print by Peter Stackpole. Product size approximately 12 x 16 inches. Available at Art.com. Embrace your Space – your source for high quality fine art posters and prints. |
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Skater $10 Skater |
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Ice Skate Figure Skating Hockey Metal Cookie Cutter $1.95 … |
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Dance! – The World’s Favorite Ice-Skating Music $10.94 All products are BRAND NEW and factory sealed. Fast shipping and 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed…. |
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Torvill & Dean – Path To Perfection: World Ice Dancing Champions [VHS] $19.99 This fascinating chronicle tells the story of World Ice Champions Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean. Their rise to the top featuring interviews and exciting ice footage from three World Championships and more!… |
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My Sergei [VHS] $7.90 My Sergei is a romantic reverie delving deeply into the love and tragedy of Russian ice skaters Sergei Grinkov and Ekaterina Gordeeva. Paired in the early 1980s, Gordeeva and Grinkov matured into world and Olympic champions, and the working relationship blossomed into friendship, love, marriage, and parenthood. In November 1995, their fairy-tale life dissolved when Grinkov suffered sudden heart fa… |
TITLE: The Olympic Games Are Due Into London In Less Than Five Hundred Days, But Will They Really Live Up To Expectations Or Will The Bad Side Of Sport Spoil The Party
I’ve been into various sports since I was at junior school, having been introduced to football by my buddy when I was approximately eight years old. John was fortunate enough to get a ticket for the F.A. Cup Final one season, and I, with childish optimism, spent the afternoon following the match on a television screen in the hope that I would be able to see him in the stands. Of course, I didn’t notice him, but I had got drawn in by the spectacle of the big match. In my teens I became an obsessive football fan, with the results round-up at five o’clock|5pm|tea-time on a Saturday afternoon impacting on my wellbeing for what remained of the weekend. Fortuitously for others in the house, I followed a team who won more often than they lost!
Over the years, I set out to watch a lot of other sports on television. Test cricket rapidly became a favourite at a time when a bout of glandular fever left me shut away at home during a series in the West Indies, snooker was dragged from the pubs and clubs of the UK and mutated into primetime viewing by way of some creative marketing and the realisation that here was a game that was relatively cheap and simple to televise. And then there was the Olympic Games, an incredible sporting spectacle which came around every four years and in which all the world competed on the same terms. Or so we were told.
Given that my earliest recollection of anything relating to the Olympics was the horrific events which occured in Munich in 1972, it’s maybe strange that I adored the whole idea of the event so much. But the Munich games also delivered Mark Spitz’s outstanding collection of seven gold medals in the swimming pool – an achievement only bettered thirty-six years later by Michael Phelps. Hours of seeing East European athletes effortlessly defeating everyone else aided by performance enhancing drugs which were not identified didn’t dent my enthusiasm either, and I have fanatically watched as much footage as I have been able to in past years – until now. (Is it surprising that I now use glasses to see properly and am considering having Laser eye surgery? Too many years spent watching sport on the TV!)
It doesn’t matter how much I try, I’m finding it impossible to find any enthusiasm for the London Games. Even acquaintances who usually don’t enjoy sport think that they’d quite like to go and see a couple of events, as it will be the only chance to do so that that they have in their lifetime, yet I, who claim to be such an avid sports fan, and can reach the main Olympic arena in less than an hour from my house, have no inclination to buy tickets.
I think that there are a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, I am tired of the number of scandals and less than savoury events that have begun to sully many sports – pub fight footballers, bribed cricketers, drug cheat athletes, jockeys taking backhanders, and behind them all, the shady criminals who do much of the damage and who create such havoc entirely for personal financial gain.
Secondly, big business has forced its way into on so many events now. Everything has corporate branding, events are timed to fit in with television executives wishes rather than the fans, sportsmen and women are told what clothes they may wear and which products they are obliged to endorse, including diet supplements and Laser eye treatments – aren’t these actually ‘legal’ cheating? But the reality for the real fans is paying stupid prices to watch a tournament in order to fill the corporate pockets of those who are running the sport, and without necessarily being sure if teams or competitors are genuinely participating against each other on equal terms. The golfer who is advertising Laser eye surgery - doesn’t the treatment give him an unfair advantage? The football team whose directors have taken on some obscure sort of therapist – is everything he expects the team to do totally above board?
Finally, I don’t notice the wealth of personalities in sport any longer. There are a small number of characters who might be referred to as entertaining, but due to the money now involved, many sportspeople don’t think that they can say a few crazy things every now and then because anything they do or say could impact on their contract. I find myself longing for another Kriss Akabusi, James Hunt, Tommy Smith, Joe Bugner or John McEnroe (though I can believe that he’d probably be advertising Laser eye treatment if he was still playing at his peak now – but for the tennis officials rather than himself!)
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A Letter for Daria $1.99 New - In this wise and loving book, Olympic gold medal-winning skater Ekaterina Gordeeva talks to her young daughter, Daria, about the strength of family life and tradition as well as about a mother's hopes for her daughter. Illustrated with wonderful photos and Daria's drawings, this is a special book that mothers and daughters will want to share with each other. |
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Alexei Urmanov $55.2 New - Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Alexei Yevgenyevich Urmanov is a Russian figure skater, who currently works as a coach. He is the 1994 Olympic champion and an Honoured Masters of Sports of the Russian Federation. Urmanov was born in Leningrad, Soviet Union, and started skating at the age of four. Competed for the Soviet Union, he won the silver medal at the 1990 World Junior Championships. After |