Three Way News
Your Source. For everything. Really.
Contributors
- Hammer
- Jambo
- Libby Mae
Current Poll
Recurring features
Hammer's Favorites
- Dobson v. Sponge-Bob
- Calvin, the nest egg
- Pat's predictions
- Bachmann spins Cupertino
- 205 atheists assume the bench
- Fox spins Oil for Food
- Fact check: highest taxed state
- Gen. Myers v. Reality
- Janice Rogers Brown
- Killing Field
- Kline hates Big Bird
- Vote Luca Brasi!
- Cornyn's Stalinist Supreme Court
- Rumsfeld's hidden metrics
Jambo's Favories
- Dolphin research updates
- We all shine on
- If you have to write...
- Columnist NY Times should have
- Truth about taxes
- Fourth of July
- Movie objects
- Lost in supermarket
- Dysfunctional Farmer Labor party
- Punks you hated
- Some preacher from east
- Winning issues
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
The parable of Kerri Strug
Kevin Drum has a list of the top 10 sports moments he has witnessed in person or live on television. Here's number 7:
Kerri Strug limping to the line with a sprained ankle in the 1996 Olympics and then sticking her final vault to give the U.S. women's gymnastics squad its first ever team gold medal.
Except, of course, that Strug's second vault was unnecessary. On her first vault, Strug scored a 9.162 while injuring her left leg. That score was high enough to win the team gold. Not knowing the gold was already won, Strug vaulted again. She scored a 9.71 on her second vault. The strain of landing the second vault made certain that Strug would not be able to compete in the individual competitions.
Thus the parable of Kerri Strug. A young woman put her team ahead of her own interests. She bravely fought through incredible pain to produce a remarkable achievement. This young American's great personal accomplishment stands betrayed -- but undiminished -- by a gross failure of leadership which did not recognize that her heroic self-sacrifice was unnecessary.
Who can recall such failure of leadership and heroic self-sacrifice without thinking of maps such as these?
