|
RIO DE JANEIRO -- After Michelle Carter made history Friday night, it momentarily appeared as if Carter was crying. Instead, it turned out she was applying her lip gloss.Thats Michelle, her father, Michael, joked. She thinks about her looks first.Earlier, Michelle stepped into the Olympic Stadium shot-put circle wearing red lipstick, blue spandex and her trademark false eyelashes, her hair pulled into a frothy black cloud over her head. She had one throw left to overtake the greatest thrower of the last decade. One chance to seize a moment that might never come again.Carter heaved the 8.8-pound metal sphere farther than she ever had before. It landed 20.63 meters away, 67 feet, 8 1/4 inches, and Carter became the first U.S. woman to win an Olympic gold medal in the event.All I could do is just pray in that moment. You know what Michelle, you have to give it your all. I asked the Lord, Please help me give it my all, she said.With her sixth and final throw, Carter broke her own American record and overtook Valerie Adams of New Zealand, the older sister of NBA center Steven Adams. Adams won the silver with a toss of 20.42 meters. The only other American woman to win an Olympic shot-put medal was Earlene Brown, who took bronze in 1960.I wasnt nervous, Carter said, because at the end of the day I was able to bring all that energy into the middle and do what I needed to do. If I was to get nervous, then Im wasting my energy. Ive been to three Olympics. I hope I learned something. I was trying to pull from my experience.And she hopes her experience on and off the track will work even more to instill confidence in women with similar bodies to her 5-foot-9, 210-pound frame.Im in a sport that people dont think, dont look at us like women, Carter said. They dont look at us as being girly or feminine. But Ive been girly all my life. I couldnt separate the two, being a woman and being an athlete. I put the two together and do what I love to do. I love hair, I love makeup, I love fashion and I love throwing the shot put.One of my sayings is, you look good, feel good, do good.Which brings us back to the post-victory lip gloss. Aside from competing on the international track-and-field circuit, the 30-year-old Carter is a professional makeup artist; proprietor of ShotDiva.com, which sells clothes and makeup services; and promoter of the You Throw Girl sports confidence camp. She has also appeared in ESPNs Body Issue and often posts swimsuit photos on Instagram.Carters father is former NFL nose tackle and Olympic silver-medal shot-putter Michael Carter, the only man to win an Olympic medal and Super Bowl in the same year. He won three NFL titles with the 49ers but said what his daughter accomplished is harder. Football you have a chance to win it every year, he said. This only comes around once every four years, or once in a lifetime. .ca NBA Power Rankings, ahead of the Miami Heat and San Antonio Spurs. . The 15th-ranked Canadian men lost the opening two games of their European tour: 19-15 to No. 17 Georgia and 21-20 to No. . Its the second straight game Bell has scored in extra time for Kelowna, which beat the Brandon Wheat Kings 6-5 on Friday, and he now has four game-winning goals on the season. . -- Sergey Tolchinksy scored his second goal of the game 3:56 into overtime as the Sault Ste. . McPhee said that Ovechkins father Mikhail is in stable condition after having the surgery this week and is no longer in intensive care. "Weve told him to stay as long as necessary with your dad," he said. Ovechkin and his Russian national team were eliminated from the mens hockey tournament in Sochi on Wednesday with a 3-1 quarter-final loss to Finland. RIO DE JANEIRO -- Michael Phelps won more medals than anyone else, again. And then he said farewell, also again.Usain Bolt kissed the finish line goodbye after enhancing his Olympic legacy. Simone Biles and Katie Ledecky delivered under the burden of enormous expectations. Two strangers went from rivals to forever-linked by a display of kindness, an entire island seemed to celebrate a tennis match, and a gold medalist scampered home to avoid legal issues after a robbery story unraveled.And then the home team won soccer gold.The Rio de Janeiro Olympics were not perfect.But there were moments -- some great, some dreadful and some downright ugly -- that will not, and should not, be forgotten.Heres a look:---MEDAL LEADERSThe U.S. dominated the medal count, a rare romp in a non-boycotted games. Theres still more medals to win Sunday, but the margin of overall victory could be the most in a fully attended games in 68 years. Phelps won six medals, five of them gold, to increase his career haul to 23 Olympic titles and 28 medals overall. Ledecky and Biles each won five medals; Biles will carry the U.S. flag into the closing ceremony. And U.S. shooter Kim Rhode has now won a medal in six consecutive Olympics -- and she might not be done.---BEST FINISHBolt kissing the finish line after his ninth and final Olympic gold -- in nine final races -- was a perfect ending. He ran the anchor leg of the 4x100-meter relay for Jamaica, won emphatically to become the third athlete ever with nine golds in track and field, and insists that this will be the end of his Olympic career.Nothing left to prove, Bolt said.Hes right.I am the greatest, he added.Right again.---BEST ACT OF SPORTSMANSHIPAn easy pick.In the womens 5,000-meter heat, Abbey DAgostino of the U.S. and New Zealands Nikki Hamblin -- strangers before that day -- were involved in a tumble. DAgostino helped Hamblin up, encouraging her to finish the race. DAgostino tore a knee ligament in the fall and obviously couldnt finish. Hamblin wound up finishing last of 17 in the 5,000 final, so neither left with a medal.Instead, they got so much more.That girl is the Olympic spirit right there, Hamblin said of DAgostino. Ive never met her before. Like I never met this girl before. And isnt that just so amazing?Yes, it is.---BIGGEST EMBARRASSMENTAnother easy pick, even in a games where an Egyptian was sent home after failing to shake an Israeli judo opponents hand.Ryan Lochte is a 12-time Olympic medalist, and the odds that hell have a chance to ever swim for a 13th are as murky as some of the pools were in these Rio Games. Lochtes story that a robber put a gun to his head quickly unraveled, his three teammates who were companions that night all were left to answer legal questions after he scurried home, and more repercussions from the U.S. Olympic Committee are likely coming.Its traumatic to be out late with your friends in a foreign country -- with a language barrier, read part of the apology that Lochte released on social media Friday.Maybe so, but it bears noting that language barrier or no language barrier, the incident occurred after Lochte left a night out at ... Club France. So it would seem like not all foreign atmospheres struck him as traumatic before now.---BREAKOUT STARWe asked. You voted.Narrowing the list of potential candidates to four -- Simone Manuel (four swimming medals), Joseph Schooling (beat Phelps for a gold in the pool), Monica Puig (whose tennis gold was Puerto Ricos first Olympic title in any sport) and Ibtihaj Muhammad (the barrier-breaking fencing medalist) -- AP asked its Twitter followers to have a say in deciding this one.The response was overwhelming, and one-sided: Puig is the breakout star of these games.Reduced to tears many times after draping the Puerto Rican flag across her body after the gold-medal match, Puig beat two of the worlds best five players to win the title.To do this ... is everything, Puig said.The Olympic ideal, personified.---BEST COACHDue respect to Mike Krzyzewski, Geno Auriemma, Martha Karolyi and the Japanese wrestling coach who found himself getting body-slammed twice in celebration by womens gold medalist Risako Kawai, thiss one goes to Ans Botha -- the 74-year-old great-grandmother who guided South Africas Wayde Van Niekerk to Olympic gold and a world record in the mens 400 sprint.ddddddddddddHer style is simple. When the smile goes away and the voice gets stern, its time to get serious. Sort of like most great-grandmothers.Shes an amazing woman, Van Niekerk said. Her work ... I think it speaks for itself.---BEST COUPLEDecathlon champion Ashton Eaton of the U.S. and his wife, heptathlon bronze medalist Brianne Thiesen-Eaton of Canada, would be a very easy selection here.But what Kate Richardson-Walsh and Helen Richardson-Walsh did was even more rare.Theyre married, and played for the same gold-medal winning British womens field hockey team. In a games that had more openly gay athletes than ever before, theirs was a moment that surely resonated with many around the world who dont know the first thing about
|
