Tag: champion
Six-Time Figure Olympia Champion Cydney Gillon Shares Ab Training Tips
Many champions don’t just want to win titles — they want to help others become their best as well. One example of a champion that does as such is six-time Figure Olympia winner Cydney Gillon. Outside of her competitive career, the former “Survivor” contestant trains and coaches other athletes. She also shares training tips for her social media…
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Chess has a New World Champion: China’s Ding Liren
The Magnus Carlsen era is over. Ding Liren becomes China’s first world chess champion. The country now can boast the men’s and women’s titleholders: an unthinkable outcome during the Cultural Revolution when it was banned as a game of the decadent West.
After 14 games which ended in a 7-7 draw, the championship was decided by four “rapid chess” games — with just 25 minutes on each players clock, and 10 seconds added after each move. Reuters reports that the competition was still tied after three games, but in the final match 30-year-old Ding capitalized on mistakes and “time management” issues by Ian Nepomniachtchi.
Ding’s triumph means China holds both the men’s and women’s world titles, with current women’s champion Ju Wenjun set to defend her title against compatriot Lei Tingjie in July… Ding had leveled the score in the regular portion of the match with a dramatic win in game 12, despite several critical moments — including a purported leak of his own preparation. The Chinese grandmaster takes the crown from five-time world champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway, who defeated Nepomniachtchi in 2021 but announced in July he would not defend the title again this year…
[Ding] had only been invited to the tournament at the last minute to replace Russia’s Sergey Karjakin, whom the international chess federation banned for his vocal support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Ding ranks third in the FIDE rating list behind Carlsen and Nepomniachtchi.
It’s the second straight world-championship defeat for Nepomniachtchi, the Guardian reports:
“I guess I had every chance,” the Russian world No 2 says. “I had so many promising positions and probably should have tried to finish everything in the classical portion. … Once it went to a tiebreak, of course it’s always some sort of lottery, especially after 14 games [of classical chess]. Probably my opponent made less mistakes, so that’s it.”
Ding wins €1.1 million, The Guardian reports — also sharing this larger story:
“I started to learn chess from four years old,” Ding says. “I spent 26 years playing, analyzing, trying to improve my chess ability with many different ways, with different changing methods. with many new ways of training.”
He continues: “I think I did everything. Sometimes I thought I was addicted to chess, because sometimes without tournaments I was not so happy. Sometimes I struggled to find other hobbies to make me happy. This match reflects the deepness of my soul.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
I’m a 63-year-old eight-time bodybuilding champion… I love my medals and trophies but here’s my biggest reward
A BODYBUILDING legend who won eight championships has revealed his biggest reward.
The champion athlete Lee Haney, 63, took to Instagram to tell his loyal followers that being a father has brought him more joy than anything else – including his eight Mr Olympia wins.
Lee Haney is highly revered in the bodybuilding world for his record-defying career[/caption]
Haney’s showed a painting of him and his daughter placed above all of his many medals[/caption]
Haney beat Arnold Schwarzenegger’s record by winning eight Mr Olympias in a row[/caption]
The veteran bodybuilder made it clear his priorities lie firmly with his family and posted an adorable painting of him holding his daughter as a small baby.
The dad wrote: “Out of all that I’ve accomplished, being a father is my greatest reward.
“Far above any worldly riches, the strength of a man is his children. As ordained by God. My daughter, Olympia.”
The US athlete miraculously managed to rule the bodybuilding world despite ensuring the sport came second to his family.
Throughout his decade-long career he held the Mr Olympia title a whopping eight times between 1984-1991, establishing himself as one of the most decorated athletes in the game.
Haney, known as Hercules, had an incredible streak that rivalled the likes of Ronnie Coleman thanks to his incredible physique and phenomenal work ethic.
He even broke Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s record of seven wins in a row.
He favoured a three-day on, one-day off training routine throughout his career – which allowed him to juggle his responsibilities as a dad.
And yet, even with all his talent and regimented routine the star admits that he suffered with the pressure.
“When you’re on top, there is nowhere to go but down,” Haney revealed in an interview with the founder of Labrada Nutrition, Lee Labrada.
“The pressure of how do I stay here, what can I do differently to bring about a better package than the last time.”
Hercules continued: “All of those things run through your mind – and if you don’t keep it together, that can create a lot of stress.”
The ex-athlete explained that he was only able to “maintain his sanity” due to the unwavering support from his beloved wife Shirley.
“My wife was there with me,” he continued. “I was a husband, I was a father. I had two kids while I was still competing.
“I guess some people could say that was a distraction, but for me, it helped me maintain my sanity.
“It got my mind off of how many sets and how many reps, time and time again.”
The 63-year-old retired at the age of 31, before turning to personal training and working with athletes like boxer Evander Holyfield.
Now, he posts a lot about his family online as well as offering tips and advice to his keen-to-learn followers.
He also promotes clean eating and healthy lifestyle but still kills it at the gym.
His long-time fans showed the recent post a lot of love and support for his family-man approach.
One follower responded: “Instantly became my favourite Mr. Olympia with this post alone.”
Another said: “I love that you placed fatherhood above your medals.”
Haney in his MR Olympia winning days[/caption]
Sir Geoff Hurst backs fight for older people’s tsar to champion OAP rights
Angel Reese is a national champion, not the villain
It didn’t begin with a hand gesture. Long before the closing seconds of the NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship game, when Louisiana State University (LSU) star player Angel Reese raised the “you can’t see me” hand wave to Iowa player Caitlin Clark, sparking a torrent of rebuke on social media for her “poor” sportsmanship, anti-Black bubbles were already coming to the surface.
It began in the lead-up to LSU’s Final Four contest with South Carolina, a team noted for its tough play. Clark, a highly decorated junior, the Naismith College and AP Player of the Year and this year’s John R. Wooden Award winner, downed 41 points to achieve the NCAA Tournament’s first 40-point triple-double and raise her team to the next round, thereby allowing her to burst onto the mainstream sports landscape. While her performance became a key story from the game, a post-game interview with South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley sparked controversy.
Asked by a reporter about her team’s style of play, Staley responded, “Some of the people in the media, when you’re gathering in public, you’re saying things about our team and you’re being heard. And it’s being brought back to me, OK?” She continued, “We’re not thugs. We’re not monkeys. We’re not street fighters. This team exemplifies how you need to approach basketball, on the court and off the court. And I do think that that’s sometimes brought into the game, and it hurts.”
Those words, a rebuke of the racist and misogynoir coverage of her team, words by the media that clearly posed her mostly Black team as unprofessional in comparison to the mostly white Iowa team, would roar back in stunning rapidity to Reese.
The furor met by Reese, mostly from white critics, such as Keith Olbermann, is emblematic of the pervasive dehumanization of Black folks that was supposedly negated by white people assigning themselves reading lists during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s a familiar image of gender inequality, white fragility, anti-Black rhetoric, and Black erasure played out on social media and in the White House.
Sports is a fraught road for women.
It’s almost laughably ironic that Reese’s firebrand gesture originally found cultural prominence in the hands of a white man. For those who don’t know, the “you can’t see me” wave was a calling card of WWE wrestler John Cena, who used Black aesthetics — a backwards baseball cap, long jean shorts, a literal chain necklace — and the language of hip-hop, to rise to superstardom. Since then, its usage has proliferated in popular culture, particularly in sports. While the NFL and NBA have rules that punish taunting, it’s also an act that’s inextricably part of the entertainment value integral to the game.
Taunting furthers narratives and rivalries between players and even fosters passion to either hate or cheer for said athlete on the part of the fans. It’s a celebrated tradition of gamesmanship…unless you’re a woman. The double standard inherent of being a woman athlete is as American as apple pie: The ballplayers in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (which ran from 1943-1954) were required to maintain feminine standards in public and in private by agreeing to wear skirts for uniforms, take etiquette classes, and never wear their hair short or smoke or drink in public.
Athletes in the WNBA were also expected to present themselves as reductively feminine. This led to lesbian ballplayers remaining closeted for fear of losing their careers and damaging the league. In American sports, if a woman decides to move outside of the strict gender normative boundaries imposed by men she is ridiculed, punished, erased, and debased.
It’s a big reason why women’s sports often receive less financial and municipal support and attention. WNBA players have discussed how the majority of the league being LGBTQ and Black has caused homophobia and misogynoir to impede the game’s popularity. “And on top of that, that trope — that whole ‘butch lesbian, I-hate-men’ trope — is something that’s been used for decades to get women not to play sports, to get women to stay home,” WNBA player Imani McGee-Stafford told Andscape.
Who is Angel Reese?
The depressed popularity of women’s sports is why, before the NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship game, very few of the people who criticized Reese on social media or across the nation knew who she was, even though her accomplishments this past season — as a Southeastern Conference (SEC) All-Defensive Team, First-team All-SEC, and unanimous First-team All-American selection — should have positioned her as an immediate star. It’s a strange turn of events, then, to think about how the “you can’t see me” gesture is what catapulted Reese toward being visible on the national stage.
In the face of misogynoir, however, she was not seen as a young, talented woman hailing from Maryland and positioned as a leader on her team — or a champion. She instead was dubbed a “Bayou Barbie,” morphed into a classless thug who dared display her excitement, her jubilation, and confidence to a white woman. For many, seeing a white athlete, one hoisted as a national darling, defeated by a Black woman was horror enough. But to see a Black person take glee in her victory? That was a bridge too far. For her part, Clark told ESPN’s Outside the Lines that Reese “should never be criticized for what she did. I competed, she competed.”
The double standard has been apparent throughout the tournament: Clark, a noted trash talker, was lauded when she similarly used the “you can’t see me” hand gesture in a game against Louisville. Even Cena approved.
It’s also telling that Iowa’s head coach Lisa Bluder was the one who likened playing South Carolina to going into a bar fight, the comments Staley criticized in her post-game interview. Rather than interrogate her own words, Bluder disregarded Staley’s criticism. While some in the national media pursued the story, it didn’t stop Clark and Iowa heading into the championship game to ascend as the country’s feel-good story. Nor was it taken into account when Reese’s “you can’t see me” sent shockwaves across social media. Instead, many hung the albatross of victimhood around a mostly white Iowa team.
The White (fragility) House steps in.
In the immediate aftermath of Iowa’s loss, white fragility also sprang from the White House when first lady Jill Biden offered the idea of inviting Iowa to the White House too. The practice of championship teams visiting the nation’s capital can be traced back to 1963, when John F. Kennedy invited the Boston Celtics. It’s an honor only reserved for winning squads. So when Biden threw out the proposal to Iowa, the losing team, it appeared to be another instance of white fragility leading to the erasure of Black achievement.
Was Biden so enamored by the popularity of Clark that she mindlessly shirked tradition? That would be a generous interpretation of her proposition. Even if that were true, however, it doesn’t negate the fact that she had Clark’s feelings on her mind and not how her words might cause LSU to feel abandoned and erased.
While the first lady did walk back the comments, Reese wasn’t buying it. “I don’t accept the apology because you said what you said… You can’t go back on certain things that you say… They can have that spotlight. We’ll go to the Obamas’. We’ll go see Michelle. We’ll see Barack,” she told the I AM ATHLETE podcast.
Reese also didn’t want LSU to make the customary visit to the White House. The school has said they will accept the invite, which opens more questions: Shouldn’t the institution stand behind one of its students when they’ve clearly been insulted? Is respectability politics, the fear of criticizing the first lady, really worth more than the emotional and mental well-being of their student-athlete?
Ultimately, Reese decided that, as team captain, she would accept the invitation after all, but she made it clear it was still a sore spot.
“In the beginning we were hurt — it was emotional because we know how hard we worked all year for everything,” Reese told SportsCenter. “You don’t get that experience ever, and I know my team probably wants to go for sure and my coaches are supportive of that, so I’m going to do what’s best for the team and we’ve decided we’re going to go. I’m a team player. I’m going to do what’s best for the team.”
Maybe one of the lessons in all of this is a need for a separation of sports and state. The image of politicians inviting athletes to the White House, in a bid to confer their political approval in exchange for cultural cache, reeks of gladiatorial times, when the emperor bestowed their attention upon the person who recently laid their body on the line for their entertainment. It’s a transaction that only allows the politician to profit; apart from a memory, the athlete receives little from it.
A proximity to greatness isn’t solely a political desire either. We all like to associate ourselves with winners: from people posing for pictures with Oscar statuettes they didn’t win, to rabid celebrity fandoms, to fervent sport allegiances. Culturally we’ve made other people’s victories a reflection of our national prestige, our morality, our self-righteousness, our self-worth, our racial pride. We’ve made their losses a mirror of our wounded pride too, our neglect and our deferred dreams.
For the athletes, particularly student-athletes, it ain’t that deep. It’s telling that Clark didn’t feel jilted by Reese’s gesture, that Iowa wasn’t asking to visit the White House, that the only people offended by the outcome of the game were racist white people aghast by a blow to their white confidence.
It’s worth returning to Staley’s post-game press conference. “If you really knew them, if you really knew them, like you really want to know other players that represent this game, you would think differently. So don’t judge us by the color of our skin. Judge us by how we approach the game,” said the South Carolina coach.
Reese is still waiting to be judged on her own merits, on her approach to what sports should be: as not just there to build legacies, but to build character and lifelong bonds and friendships among teammates, to work diligently to achieve a singular goal, and to celebrate your victories while processing your defeats.
Reese is a national champion. It shouldn’t feel like she’s the only one who lost.
2023 Siberian Power Show Results — Dmitrii Skosyrskii Becomes Three-Time Champion
Dmitri Skosyrskii is the winner of the 2023 Siberian Power Show (SPS). In the Russian strongman competition, showcasing some of the sport’s finest in the Eastern hemisphere, Skosyrskii successfully repeated as the champion. He is now a dominant three-time winner of the competition (2019, 2022-2023) that has only occurred since the year 2019. The only other winner in…
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Ken Buchanan: Scotland’s first undisputed boxing world champion dies at 77
Two-time Olympic champion rower Helen Glover plots path to Paris Olympics with Team GB
OCCASIONALLY, Helen Glover flippantly wishes a serious injury could have ended all this madness.
Some form of physical setback or problem that could have forced her into retirement and ultimately given “closure” on her passion for rowing.
It is one thing being a mum to three children under five, including a set of twins, and “literally just keeping my head above water” with everything that entails.
It is a completely different matter altogether doing that AND trying to prepare for another rollercoaster Olympics campaign.
But in truth, the competitive fire inside Glover – a two-time Olympic champion – had not diminished following her crack at the 2021 Tokyo Games.
And while she remains physical able to compete with the world’s best, the desire to go one more time, 12 years on from the London triumph, stoked her ambitions over the winter.
As she plots her path to the Paris 2024 Olympics, she hopes she can inspire other women that it is possible to combine motherhood and sporting excellence.
It was on the school run last October when her husband Steve Backshall – the respected BBC TV wildlife presenter – noticed that the oars were not ready to be hung up just yet.
Glover, 36, recalled: “We were driving with the kids in the back, discussing where my next goal would be.
“In terms of a practical sense, I fully intended on leaving it there after Tokyo.
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“I had done some coastal rowing and it reminded me how much I loved the training and having a focus.
“I was thinking, maybe I’ll join a CrossFit club, maybe I’ll do a triathlon.
“It was a few weeks from the November rowing trial and Steve said: ‘I think you should trial again.’
“I said: ‘You do know if I do well at the trials, I’ll be doing it again…’
“He said: ‘Absolutely. I have seen you, you’re not done!’
“I never would have done that off my own back. It was really Steve picking up on that, witnessing it.
“I’m finding it hard to walk away clearly. And it sounds crazy that when I first thought about retirement, I was thinking: ‘It’d be great to have a career-ending injury.’
“One that would take the decision away from me.”
Glover honestly thought she would turn up for those internal winter trials, get beaten and “that would really help close the door”.
Yet according to insiders at British Rowing, her numbers that day and ever since have been exceptional.
Glover is married to Steve Backshall, who presents wildlife programmes for the BBC[/caption]
She has not lost any of the strength or willpower that propelled her to successive Olympic gold medals with Heather Stanning.
The Cornwall-born star said: “There will be a time when I cannot do it anymore.
“That time is probably not too far away. I’ll be 38 at the next Games.
“There will be a day where I’m physically no longer capable.
“Until that day comes, I feel like if I’m enjoying it, if it’s making me a better parent and person, then I should be doing it.”
Her 2023 targets will be the European Championships in Slovenia in May and then there are two World Cup regattas before the World Championships in Belgrade in September.
Glover – who finished fourth in Tokyo with qualified doctor Polly Swann – wants to be in “whatever the top British boat is” in the French capital.
British Rowing have given her permission to complete gym ‘land’ sessions at home – not at their training HQ – after she has put the children to bed.
She said: “When I think about Paris, the podium is definitely what I’m aiming for.
“I almost think of it that I don’t want to come home empty-handed.
“To see myself on the podium with my kids there. It’s quite ambitious, it’s a lot of hard work ahead of me, but to be on the podium is definitely a goal.”