Sports Poets Society

https://www.operazionenostalgia.com/atlanta-1996-tutti-i-protagonisti-di-argentina-nigeria/ La storica finale del torneo olimpico di Atlanta: da un lato l’Argentina di Passarella, dall’altro le Super Aquile di West e compagni. Tutti i nomi dei cavalieri di quella storica impresa (e degli sconfitti) Operazione nostalgia - 26 Marzo 2021 Un “quasi Mondiale” per la qualità dei talenti messi in campo, vinto da un collettivo animato da una sana follia, da una ottima tecnica, da furore agonistico e da una straripante superiorità atletica. È il 1996 e durante le Olimpiadi di Atlanta si assiste a quello che possiamo definire con certezza un evento storico: la prima volta che una nazionale non europea e nemmeno sudamericana a vincere la medaglia d’oro, una ascesa che si intravedeva già due anni prima, quando a USA '94 quei ragazzi con la maglia verde avevano decisamente ben impressionato. Avete indovinato? Vi stiamo riportando indietro di 25 anni, quando la Nigeria usciva vincitrice dal duri...

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-08-04-ss-31332-story.html By MIKE PENNERAug. 4, 1996 12 AM PT TIMES STAFF WRITER ATHENS, Ga. — Nigeria’s Olympic soccer players have a proposal for Johannes Bonfrere , the reluctant coach who quit the Nigerian team for five weeks this spring in a dispute over back pay owed him: Will he accept gold as payment instead? With their second stirring 16-minute rally in as many games, Nigeria’s “Super Eagles” became the first African nation to win a soccer gold medal Saturday by upsetting Argentina, 3-2, in a wild, controversial final before a sellout crowd of 86,117 at Sanford Stadium. Three days after scoring three goals in 16 minutes to defeat tournament favorite Brazil , Nigeria erased a 2-1 deficit against Argentina with goals by Daniel Amokachi and Emmanuel Amunike in the 74th and 89th minutes, although the Argentines will be griping about Amunike’s for quadrennials to come. A minute before the end of regulation time, Nigeria had a free kick ...

All eyes on Biles: American in dazzling return despite injury ‘They shuffled in, pursued by the flashing red dots of a thousand phone cameras’    -  Jonathan Liew on the celebrity crowd 29 Jul 2024 - The Guardian Tumaini Carayol - Bercy Arena As Simone Biles offered herself a few final quiet words of encouragement by the balance beam before she returned to compete in front of the world once again, the entire spectacle could have been so overwhelming. Bercy Arena was exploding with excitement whenever her name was mentioned. Countless celebrities, from Tom Cruise to Ariana Grande, lined the stands and flashed up on the screens. All eyes were on Biles, and she knew it. The competition draw that Biles and her US teammates received was also unhelpful. They were required to start on the balance beam, the most unpredictable apparatus and the event that exposes all tension and uncertainty. If you cannot control your nerves, you will fall. But Biles effortlessly worked her way th...

Basketball LeBron James has invested completely into Team USA’s campaign CHRISTINA PAHNKE/GETTY IMAGES Kevin Durant is unplayable at times as Americans dismantle rivals Serbia 110-84 in riotous pantomime 29 Jul 2024 - The Guardian Jonathan Liew Stade Pierre Mauroy Perhaps the pivotal moment in this game – tonally, if not competitively – came right at the end of the third quarter. Anthony Edwards sends Nikola Jokic to the shoe shop with an outrageous feint and slip, drains a simple two, and as he peels away he sees pretty much the entire bench doing impressions of him, spinning and reeling, consumed in fits of laughter. That, in hindsight, was probably the point at which a potentially tricky Olympic basketball opener against the world’s No 4 side dissolved fully into riotous, uproarious pantomime. So no, it’s fair to say Team USA did not get the memo. They are not burdened by your expectations. They are not keeping themselves up at night worrying about how they measure up against 1992....

Few other nations would have had the temerity to  stage an opening ceremony in such ambitious fashion ALEX PANTLING/GETTY IMAGES▲  Much of the outside world sees France as fractured 29 Jul 2024 - The Guardian Philippe Auclair Let’s face it, it was a failure . The rain, as if unleashed by a vengeful Olympian god upset at seeing what had become of the original Games, failed to derail the extravaganza devised by Thomas Jolly , as Poseidon’s storms had failed to prevent Odysseus from reaching Ithaca. The saboteurs who paralysed most of France’s TGV system on the eve of the opening ceremony failed too. One way or another, hundreds of thousands of drenched onlookers found a way to line the banks of the Seine to salute athletes and artists alike. And so did the rightwingers who had choked in their café crème when they’d heard that French-Malian Aya Nakamura was to perform on the big night, which she did, horror of horrors, with the Republican Guard in full parade garb, closing her s...

‘Kind, mischievous, brave’: Irish writer Edna O’Brien dies aged 93 ‘She was one of the first writers to provide  a true voice to the experiences of women in Ireland’    - Michael D Higgins President of Ireland 29 Jul 2024 - The Guardian Richard Lea The Irish writer Edna O’Brien , who explored the complications and contradictions of women’s lives in a literary career lasting more than half a century, has died aged 93 after a long illness, her agent has announced. In a series of novels beginning with The Country Girls that were at first banned in Ireland but feted abroad, O’Brien gave voice to women struggling with the oppressive and hypocritical expectations of rural life . Her focus widened in later works such as House of Splendid Isolation and The Little Red Chairs , but always maintained the keen intelligence and daring that made Philip Roth once hail her as “the most gifted woman now writing fiction in English”. Her publisher, Faber, said she was “one of the greates...

Kevin Durant, l’ailier des Phoenix Suns, toujours irrésistible avec les États-Unis, a signé un retour éclatant hier face à la Serbie, pour un net succès. "Il a un talent sans commune mesure"    - LEBRON JAMES, AILIER DES ÉTATS-UNIS "Je l’ai taquiné sur son seul tir raté.  Je suis sûr qu’il était furieux"    - DEVIN BOOKER, ARRIÈRE DES ÉTATS-UNIS 29 Jul 2024 - L'Équipe YANN OHNONA (avec S. Sa.) VILLENEUVE-D’ASCQ – Une clameur et un brouhaha indescriptibles ont envahi les travées du stade Pierre-Mauroy quand, au buzzer de la mi-temps, la longue silhouette de Kevin Durant s’est étirée dans les airs pour inscrire, sur un service de son ami LeBron James, un panier à reculons de classe mondiale. Après avoir tenu le choc un quart-temps et demi face aux autoproclamés «Avengers» américains, la Serbie, candidate à la médaille d’or, a peu à peu plié (49-58, 20e) . Avant de céder (84-110) sous les coups du natif de Washington, auteur d’une mitemps en forme de récital (21 po...

Aveva 93 anni. Sfidò la retorica di un Paese retrivo e maschilista per dare voce alle donne Maestra - Raccontare la verità, la vita, senza preoccuparsi delle conseguenze: la sua lezione di libertà Impavida A 88 anni volò in Africa per scrivere sulle ragazzine rapite dalle belve di Boko Haram 29 Jul 2024 - Corriere della Sera dal nostro inviato Matteo Persivale - © RIPRODUZIONE RISERVATA LONDRA «Quando uscirò di scena, voglio farlo da persona che ha detto la verità». Ci sono scrittori, e libri, che cambiano la letteratura, che segnano la linea di confine tra un prima e un dopo. Poi ci sono scrittori, e libri, che cambiano le vite dei lettori. Edna O'Brien, scomparsa l’altro ieri a 93 anni, appartenne a entrambe le categorie. La sua trilogia di romanzi — l’esordio Ragazze di campagna (1960), La ragazza dagli occhi verdi (1962) e Ragazze nella felicità coniugale (1963) — finì bandita dalla censura irlandese che reagì con furia all’oltraggio perpetrato da quella giovane donna che invec...