Alex Morgan & Sydney Leroux Dress As Gymnasts
TALENT
Alex Morgan and Sydney Leroux of the US women’s national soccer team decided to trade cleats for leotards for a Halloween party and looked damn good doing so.
Gabby Douglas Honored With Mural In Hometown
Gabby Douglas is really big in her hometown and now painted on a wall. The gold-medal-winning gymnast has a giant mural painted in her honor in Virginia Beach, Va.
Brothers Todd and Eric Lindbergh spent four days painting the 9-by-30 foot mural on the outside wall of a sports bar. Todd Lindbergh says he found out that Douglas was from Virginia Beach, and the idea behind the mural came the moment he saw her on television at a medals ceremony.
Epke Zonderland The Flying Dutchman
Gymnast Epke Zonderland of the Netherlands is really amazing on the horizontal bar. Zonderland took his routine to gravity defying new heights to the Netherlands first Olympic gold medal for a male gymnast.
Jalen Rose Pissed U.S. Gymnasts Nicknamed Fab Five
TALENT
Jalen Rose is pissed the nickname given to Jordyn Wieber, Gabby Douglas, McKayla Maroney, Aly Raisman and Kyla Ross the U.S. women’s gymnastics team were dubbed the “Fab Five” after winning the women’s all-around gold medal.
The “Fab Five” nickname was originally given to the five freshmen of the 1991 Michigan basketball team that competed for a national championship in consecutive years.
“To use the nickname just points and screams of lazy journalism by the national media, that’s really what it is,” Rose told 97.1′s Jamie Samuelsen. “We were the first and there is only one, I really wish they would have come up with an even more creative tag for them but to use our nickname after the success we had with it is not fair to us.
Rose, covering the Olympics as a commentator for ESPN, was a part of Michigan’s “Fab Five” along with Chris Webber, Juwan Howard, Jimmy King and Ray Jackson and finished as NCAA runners-up in 1992 and 1993.
“Once the media decides what they’re going to call you, that’s your name,” Rose said. “I think I’ve heard they (gymnasts) wanted to be called ‘Furious Five’ or something different which leads me to believe that’s a tag the media put on them.”
NBC Apologizes For Airing Monkey Commercial After Gabby Douglas Win
NBC apologized for the timing of one of its commercials that featured a monkey on the Olympic rings. The commercial was promoting NBC’s upcoming sitcom “Animal Practice” and it aired immediately after Bob Costas discussed Gabby Douglas’ gold-medal winning effort in the women’s all-around gymnastics. NBC has apologized for it.
“Gabby Douglas’ gold medal performance last night was a historic and inspiring achievement,” NBC said in a statement on Friday.
“This spot promoting ‘Animal Practice,’ which has run three times previously, is one in a series with an Olympic theme which have been scheduled for maximum exposure. Certainly no offense was intended.”
Nastia Liukin Olympic Dreams Come Crashing Down
Nastia Liukin laid face-first on the mat as her hopes of making a second Olympic team officially gone and she knew it.
Brady Quinn Leaves Team To Be With Girlfriend
TALENT
Gymnast Alicia Sacramone is saluting her boyfriend and Denver Broncos backup quarterback Brady Quinn for flying to be by her side during surgery for her ruptured Achilles tendon while in Tokyo preparing for the world championships. Since he can’t compete to be the Broncos starting quarterback job now that head coach John Fox has given Tim Tebow, third quarterback on the depth chart, the starting job he may as well earn the title of the best boyfriend.
Sacramone tweeted Monday:
Best boyfriend award goes to @BQ9 for taking the red eye from Denver to be here for my surgery today…just another reason why I love him.
Quinn hasn’t taken a snap in a regular-season pro game since 2009, and he has been completely marginalized in the Broncos quarterback discussion
Under Armour Signs Alicia Sacramone
TALENT
Olympic gymnast Alicia Sacramone announced a multiyear marketing deal with Under Armour. The athletic company says in a press release she’s the first gymnast to sign as an endorser for the brand. Sacramone, a member of the silver medal-winning U.S. Olympic team in 2008, will be a key part of Under Armour’s marketing strategy at the 2012 Olympic Summer Games in London. Terms of the endorsement deal were not disclosed.
Other Under Armour Olympic endorsers include champion swimmer Michael Phelps, as well gold medal skier Lindsey Vonn.
Auburn Gymnast Strikes Heisman Pose In Crimson Tide Territory
We don’t cover gymnastics on this site but did stumble upon this video of Auburn University gymnast Rachel Inniss who struck a Heisman pose during her routine at the NCAA Regionals that where held in Tuscaloosa, home of the Alabama Crimson Tide where the crowd let her have it.
Roll Tide won the regional and Innis came in second in here event.
Olympic Gold Medalist Gymnast Shannon Miller Is Now Cancer Free
Real Champion
Shannon Miller is the most decorated American gymnast having won five medals at the 1992 Barcelona Games, the World Championship and Pan Am all-around titles from 1993-95, and a pair of golds at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 is now cancer-free after doctors recently discovered a baseball-sized cyst on an ovary and removed the tumor last month.
The cyst, which turned out to be a germ cell malignancy, was discovered during an annual exam. Miller, 33, said she felt perfectly fine at the time of the checkup and is as fit as she was 15 years ago, when she won two golds at the Atlanta Games.
Miller has opted to do nine weeks of preventive chemotherapy that will improve her cure rate to 99 percent which begins treatment March 7.
Miller now hopes sharing her story will encourage other women.
“Early detection was so key in my situation. If I hadn’t gone in for the exam, it could have been another year, which would have been a completely different prognosis,” Miller told The Associated Press. “Make your health a priority. Do not delay. Do not reschedule. We talk about it constantly, but we still find ourselves creating excuses or simply running out of time to go in and go see our doctors.
“Personally, I want people to know that I’m OK,” she added. “I definitely have my pity-party days. I definitely have my days when I think about losing my hair and not being able to do all of the things I want to do the next few months. When I start getting upset about it, I think, ‘Wow, I’m so blessed they caught it this early, and I have such a positive prognosis. If that means nine weeks of chemo, a year from now, is that going to matter when I’m here for my son and I’m here for my family?’ It’s all going to be OK.”
After retiring she got her law degree and was in high demand as a motivational speaker. But she found her niche advocating for healthy lifestyles, particularly for women. Her “Shannon Miller Lifestyle” website provides tips on a range of health topics including exercise, nutrition and pregnancy, and she does a radio show that focuses on health issues.
