Watching the Olympic Games, which officially kick off Friday, is a chance for Lindsey P. to see women play soccer–for a change.
Lindsey is one of two girls playing on a boys soccer team. And when she wants to catch soccer on TV, women’s games are never on. “Boys are on all the time. [But] it’s fun to see someone else play,” says Lindsey, 11, of Lombard. “It’s fun to watch the women and see how they play differently.”
The Olympics have lots of females competing, but girls were not allowed at the first modern Games in 1896. Like the 1896 Olympics, the 2004 games are in Athens, but a lot has changed over the years.
Swimmers in the 1896 games had to hop into the ocean to compete. Modern swimmers will have the luxury of temperature-controlled pools with no waves.
The prizes also have been upgraded. In 1896, victors received a bronze medal and a crown made of olive branches. Olympians in 2004 will go for the gold, silver and bronze medals. They’ll also get that way cool chance to hear their country’s national anthem played while the world watches.
With 296 events, the chances for a medal are greater at the 2004 games. But there’s also a lot more competition. Only 241 men from 14 countries competed in the 1896 games. This year, 10,500 athletes from 202 countries want to win.
And the fact that there are 202 countries competing is what makes the Olympics so popular, says sports sociologist James LaPoint of the University of Kansas.
“Kids dream of representing their country as an athlete,” he says.
The competitive atmosphere is what draws Maddie S., 11, of Deerfield to the television.
“I like the fact that it’s very competitive and people who try really hard get a chance to win,” she says. “It’s exciting for the fans if the person they are rooting for wins.”
A person doesn’t have to be wearing red, white and blue to get cheers from Americans. LaPoint says Americans love to support the underdog. So a gymnast from Russia might be the fave if the athlete’s story is compelling and the struggle seems real.
The best athletes will get Richie P.’s cheers, but he says some of the sports won’t get his attention. “Basketball, javelin, they’re just not my thing,” says Richie, 14, of Des Plaines.
Richie is a foil fencer and says that one of the few times fencing is televised is during the Olympics. “It’s really the only time I can watch master foil fencers doing their thing,” he says.
Watching the fencers is a highlight for Richie, but gabby announcers and random athlete profiles try his nerves. “When they pause the action to give us the biographies, it’s just not right,” he says.
Maddie agrees the Olympics can sometimes get a bit boring. But once the games end, she wishes they would start again.
“It’s sad because it’s only once in four years . . . I wish it was more like once a year,” she says.
Soccer, swimming and softball will keep Lindsey busy until the 2008 Olympics. She says watching the games is a huge motivator. “It inspires me to work as hard as they do,” she says. “The Olympics have taught me that young people can set goals too.”
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Additions to the sports roster
Lazy English aristocrats in the 1890s couldn’t be bothered to trudge out to the lawn for an after-dinner tennis match. So they took the game indoors, set it up on a table and, voila, table tennis was created. The sport caught on and finally made to the Olympics in 1988, almost 100 years later.
Wondering why people started flipping off diving boards or dancing in the water? Here’s how it happened:
– Diving: Divers have been twisting and somersaulting into water since the 17th Century. German and Swedish gymnasts moved their workouts to the beach during summer-time. The 1904 Olympics included platform diving–people called it “fancy diving.”
– Volleyball: Volleyball wasn’t exactly the ancient Greeks’ thing. That’s because the game wasn’t invented until 1895, at a YMCA in Massachusetts. William G. Morgan was a college student and YMCA director and called the game “Mintonette.” Spiking and bumping caught on, and the sport finally made it to the Olympics in 1964. The Sydney 2000 Games served up the beach version.
– Water polo: This sport started as water rugby in 1800s England, but developed into an aquatic version of soccer. The game was so popular it was part of the 1900 Olympics. But women’s water polo wasn’t added until the 2000 Games.
– Synchronized swimming: A late addition to the Olympic Games, synchro wasn’t an event until 1984. The sport started in Canada in the 1920s and spread to the United States a decade later. Popularity swelled after MGM had “aqua musicals” in the 1940s featuring musical numbers with synchronized swimmers.
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City sites
Here’s where the Summer Games have been and where they’ll go:
1896: Athens
1900: Paris
1904: St. Louis
1908: London
1912: Stockholm
1920: Antwerp
1924: Paris
1928: Amsterdam
1932: Los Angeles
1936: Berlin
1948: London
1952: Helsinki
1956: Melbourne/Stockholm
1960: Rome
1964: Tokyo
1968: Mexico City
1972: Munich
1976: Montreal
1980: Moscow
1984: Los Angeles
1988: Seoul
1992: Barcelona
1996: Atlanta
2000: Sydney
2004: Athens
2008: Beijing
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Aiming high in Athens
Who cares if they’ll have a curfew in Athens? These young Olympians are going to Greece:
– At 17 years old, Rau’Shee Warren of Ohio is the youngest member of the boxing team. When he was 6, he followed his older brothers to the gym and cried until they let him fight.
– Katie Hoff, 15, of Maryland is the swim team’s youngest member. She started swimming 10 years ago and now logs 40 miles a week in the water.
– Whitney Ping has been beating her dad at table tennis since she was 10. Now the 17-year-old from Oregon trains six hours a day and can smack the ball to 80 m.p.h.
– Sixteen-year-old Carly Patterson began tumbling 10 years ago. Nicknamed “Snarly” by her teammates, Carly lives in Texas and trains about 32 hours a week.
– California runner Allyson Felix didn’t start track until she was 14 years old. Four years later, she’s often called “the world’s fastest teenager.”
– Emily Jacobson, 18, of Georgia comes from a family of fencers (her older sis, Sada, 21, also is bound for Athens). She just graduated high school and trains six days a week and fences her sister daily.
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Wing it: Jet Hawk glider takes fun to new heights
We recently tested the Jet Hawk 1 Air Powered Glider by Uncle Milton ($29.99; available at Toys “R” Us, Target and WalMart). The Jet Hawk is the perfect toy to bring to a picnic. It’s an awesome high-flying plane that comes with an air-pressurized “strato launcher.”
When you launch the Jet Hawk, the wings are folded in. Part way through the flight, the “pop-wing” technology kicks in, and the wings flip out so that it glides. Once launched, the Jet Hawk can fly up to 500 feet. It can swoop up in a loop, circle around or just fly straight before landing.
The launching device is an air pump that you pump by hand 10 to 20 times before each flight. It’s worth the effort when the Jet Hawk soars through the air. You can adjust the “elevators” (flaps on the tail fins) to vary the glider’s flight path. A slight adjustment can make a big difference: After adjusting the elevators, the Jet Hawk stayed up in the air twice as long, flew higher and did several loop-the-loops.
The glider is light to enable it to fly well. The wings and tail fins are made of plastic foam, which makes the craft delicate, and it can break if handled roughly. But landings don’t break the glider, because there’s a rubber nose cone.
Here’s our advice when flying the Jet Hawk:
– Read the instructions carefully.
– Be careful when launching and handling it.
– When flying it long distances, point the launcher (with the Jet Hawk on it) up, according to instructions.
– The Jet Hawk flies over a wide area, so you need to use it outside, in a large, open grassy space.
–Daniel Z., 12, and Krish J., 10, KidNews Scoop Troopers
