Our Favorite Olympic Athletes (so far)_ One of Four

Wow! A blog entry about a tweet from 2008 women's American Olympic gymnast Shawn Jonson has drawn very, very hits so far. Hopefully, that will not be the case with this one.

We are looking at some of our favorite Olympic athletes. Today, we start with American male athletes, but we will also include international athletes as well:

1) Tony Azevedo, 31, water polo, Long Beach, Calif. (was born in Brazil), Stanford University (pictured top): The United States water polo captain is one of many American athletes born on foreign soil, but fortunately even fringe right-wingers will accept athletes representing the United States irregardless of where their birth certificate is from. Team America (3-2) faces an uphill challenge as they lost to Hungary 11-6 yesterday. They lost by the same score earlier to Serbia. This result will pit the United States against Croatia (5-0) in the quarter-finals. Azevedo is part of the team that won silver at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

2) Justin Gatlin, 30, sprinter, Brooklyn, NY, University of Tennessee (pictured center)_ Gatlin who won gold in the 100-meter relay at the 2004 Athens Olympics, had the misfortune of running against the legendary Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt who has won the same event in the last two Olympics during the current summer games (Gatlin did not participate in Beijing). Gatlin raced the event in an impressive 9.79 seconds. Bolt's Jamaican teammate Yohan Blake took silver in the 100-meters. The National Zoo in Washington, DC, named a male cheetah cub after Gatlin.

3) Richard Lambourne, 37, indoor volleyball, Louisville, Kentucky, Brigham Young University (pictured below)_ Lambourne who has played professionally in Belgium, Greece and Poland is the libero of a so far undefeated United States team that won gold in 2008, and last defeated Tunisia.

4) Ryan Lochte, 28, Daytona Beach, Florida, University of Florida_Lochte has had both the fortune and misfortune of being on the same national swimming team as Michael Phelps. But, Lochte will leave London with two golds, two silvers and one bronze medal.

5) Chris Paul, 27, Winston-Salem, NC, Wake Forest University_ Paul is a local hero in the Winston-Salem area where he went to high school at West Forsyth, where we imagine his number is retired. Yesterday, Paul, who now plays for the Los Angeles Clippers in the NBA, scored 17 points in Team America's 126-97 win over Argentina, in which the United States only had a one-point lead at half-time against an Argentinian which has beat them in a shocking semi-final result at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

6) Galen Rupp, 26, track (10,000-meters), Portland, Oregon, University of Oregon_ Rupp won silver in the 10,000-meter race finishing second to Mo Farah of Great Britain on Saturday.

http://www.usawaterpolo.org

http://www.gostanford.com

http://www.usatf.org

http://www.usavolleyball.org

http://www.teamusa.org

http;//www.nationalzoo.si.org

http://wfu.edu

Olympics Mosaic_ Canada Wins First Gold on Trampoline

With so much going on at once, it is virtually impossible to keep track, yet alone blog about the 2012 London Olympics. And, since we are in Providence, Rhode Island, (not where we're really at) we are virtually the last people in the world to see the Olympics live.

But, we will try our best here:

1) In the women's trampoline final, Rosannagh MacLennan, 23, (pictured above) won Canada's first gold medal thanks in part to a hop from China's Huang Shanshan, who finished with silver. Another Chinese trampolinist He Wenna got bronze. And, Canada's Karen Cockburn finished fourth. MacLennan cried as she heard the playing of "O Canada," the country's national anthem.

2) An Aryan white supremacist in the United States boasted of his attraction to the very gorgeous Czech Republic beach volleyball players Kristina Kolocova (center, left) and Marketa Slukova (center right) who upset the Brazilian duo of Maria Antonelli and Talita Antunes yesterday in Olympic play. The fringe right-wing extremist will undoubtedly have to reconcile the fact that the Czech team will next face the American duo of Jennifer Kessy and April Ross.

3) Iranian men's weightlifter Saed Mohammadpourkarkaragh, 19,  has perhaps assured himself of having the longest name of any athlete at the games, but gold in his event went to Ilya Ilyin of Kazakhstan, a country with a reputation of long surnames of their own.

4) Chinese women's diver He Zi, 21, has perhaps assured herself of having the shortest name of any athlete at the games and she will be taking a silver medal home too; we were amused when the NBC announcer said the diver, quite an attractive athlete, did not have a boyfriend because she doesn't have time for that. Her teammate Wu Minixa won the gold, while Laura Sanchez Soto of Mexico came in the third today. Italian diver Tania Lagnotto finished a respectable close fourth. We were also impressed with American diver Cassidy Krug (pictured below), a Stanford University alum and one of our favorite American athletes; she finished seventh in an event that featured many amazing dives.

5) We conclude with another water sport as the United States beat Italy 9-6 in women's water polo in a quarter-final match. Melissa Seidemann, who like Cassidy Krug is a graduate of Stanford University, had a hat trick in the win.

http://www.olympic.ca

www.usawaterpolo.org

http://www.usadiving.org

http://www.gostanford.com

http://www.kolocova-slukova.cz

Olympic Stories- Anna Li Making Best of Olympics After Bad Injury

Anna Li, 23, had overcome concerns that she was too old, too tall at 5'4 and too injury-prone as she had two surgically repaired broken feet, yet she qualified for the women's Olympics gymnastics team as an alternate for the squad that would head to London.

Li was a stand-out at traditional powerhouse UCLA where she helped guide the Bruins to the school's sixth NCAA title in 2010. UCLA narrowly lost to the University of Alabama this year at the NCAA championships this spring.

On July 28, Li blogged about her Olympics experience in an entry that was posted on uclabruins.com; alas, Li suffered a devastating injury when she feel from the uneven bars during the team's second workout. Li will be wearing a neck brace in the coming weeks and she thanked everyone for their get-well wishes.

But, the former UCLA gymnast was upbeat about her time in the United Kingdom, and she talked about how it took her a moment to realize that when the team's plane landed at 7 a.m. local time in England, that it was 1 a.m. in her home state of Illinois, where Li, the daughter of two Chinese Olympic gymnasts, went to Waubonise High School in the Chicago-suburb of Aurora.

In the years since graduating from UCLA, Li has performed as a stunt woman.

Li said the initial workout occurred at 8:00 a.m. and lasted for close to four hours, and that she took a nap at the team's hotel from noon until 2:50 p.m. for that second workout, where the injury resulted.

The gymnast is one of several UCLA alumni or active Bruins  in the 2012 London Olympics. Yesterday, former Bruin Courtney Mathewson, who helped UCLA to four consecutive NCAA titles, scored three vital goals in Team USA's narrow 14-13 win over Hungary in women's water polo.

As for women's gymnastics, Team USA had a shocking development on Sunday as defending world all-around champion Jordyn Wieber, 16, did not qualify for the all-around at the Olympics due to a highly controversial rule that only allows for two gymnasts from each country irregardless of the gymnast's score.

Gabby Douglas and Aly Raisman are the two gymnasts who qualified for all-arounds. Wieber will still compete for the team in the team finals which are happening tonight, surprisingly early for gymnastics which has traditionally been held in the middle of the Olympic games.

According to a survey from bleacherreport.com, some 70-percent of those surveyed felt that the Olympic gymnastics rule should be scrapped. 

http://www.annali.us/

http://www.uclabruins.com

http://www.bleacherreport.com

Things We Learned on Twitter Today- England to Compete in Water Polo

According to a tweet from OlympicNews2012, Great Britain will compete in both men's and women's water polo at the 2012 London Summer Olympics. The country has not fielded an Olympic team in the sport since 1956.

For an image to go with this entry, we were hoping to post a photo of a very attractive Katie Zakula, a sophomore from San Mateo, Calif., who is a member of the University of Cal State Santa Barbara women's water polo team, but that proved to be very complicated.

Along with her teammates Kristin Kulakowski and Michelle Beaudrau, both seniors, Zakula and the Gauchos (love that nickname) have two matches in Los Angeles tomorrow, including a day game with rival Loyola (Calif.).

In other tweeterville news, WTJU (91.1-FM, Charlottesville, Va.), the student run college radio station for the University of Virginia said that the bluegrass band Bearfoot, which performed in Roanoke last night, will be playing at Mockingbird in Staunton tonight.

On the band's web site (www.bearfootband.com), the group describes themselves as 'string band music for the 21st century.' I was also quite surprised to learn that the band is not from Virginia, North Carolina or Tennessee, but Alaska!