London 2012 Olympic pictures feature in Welwyn Garden City photo ... - Times 24

AppId is over the quota
WGC Photo Club exhibition By Alan Davies Friday, September 14, 2012
11:55 AM

IT’S been a spectacular summer of sport, with both the London 2012 Olympics and the Paralympics entertaining millions around the country.

WGC Photo Club exhibition

And Welwyn Garden City Photographic Club’s forthcoming exhibition is partly inspired by the Olympics.

Now that London 2012 has drawn to a close, some of the memories are captured in photos on display at the Howard Centre, in WGC, this weekend.

They are included in an exhibition staged by WGC Photo Club on Saturday and Sunday.

Club chairman Colin Mahoney said: “Our September show in the Howard Centre is always a popular annual event. Visitors to the centre like to see the variety of members’ photos exhibited.

WGC Photo Club exhibition

“It’s no surprise perhaps that some of this summer’s events have been photographed by our members.”

The WGC Photographic Club meets at 8pm every Tuesday at the Terrace Suite in Campus West, WGC, from September through to May 21, 2013, except Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.

The club currently has more than 100 avid snappers – and is open to members who share an interest in photography.

The membership includes a mix of beginners through to more advanced photographers.

As well as London 2012, this year is also a special one for the club itself. Colin said: “The club celebrates its 75th anniversary this year.

“We have more than 100 members, and local interest in the club remains very strong.”

The club’s latest exhibition runs over the weekend during Howard Centre opening hours.

* Further club information is available from the website www.welwynphotoclub.org.uk

London 2012 Paralympics: London gives athletes, Olympics 'insane ... - Taipei Times

It was “mindblowing,” it was “crazy,” it was “insane.” The athletes who brought home 185 medals and inspired hundreds of thousands of people to flood the streets of London struggled to find the words to describe a celebratory trip of just under 3km that was the end of a rather longer journey for most of them.

It was, as London Mayor Boris Johnson put it — in a show-stealing speech on the Mall that again left the prime minister, David Cameron, in the shade — the “final tear-sodden juddering climax” to Britain’s Olympic summer.

Sir Chris Hoy, for whom it marked the end of an Olympic career that has brought six gold medals, said: “I got a little more emotional. You’re on the streets and suddenly it hits you. You just saw the joy on people’s faces. It was unbelievable.”

After dismounting from the stage, Olympic and Paralympic athletes, from runners to wheelchair rugby players, lined up to reflect on a golden summer that will soon be over.

“It was only second to that Olympic final,” said Greg Rutherford, who won gold in the long jump on the first “Super Saturday” in the Olympic Stadium. “It was absolutely out of this world, the crowds were incredible. Everybody was amazing and I got so teary so many times going round it.”

For rower Kath Grainger, who with Anna Watkins finally won gold in London at the fourth attempt in what many picked as their moment of the Olympics, the parade was “hugely enjoyable.”

“There were so many wonderful people. It was slow enough that you could make eye contact with people who were genuinely touched and passionate and excited about reliving the Olympics all over again,” she said.

“You just think: ‘Wow, how lucky are we. How lucky are we to be athletes at this time, in this country, at a home Games and performing at this level.’”

Johnson paid direct tribute to the athletes who had helped make the Olympic and Paralympic Games such a success in a speech that elicited loud cheers.

“You brought this country together. You routed the doubters and for the first time in living memory, you caused Tube passengers to break into spontaneous conversation,” he said.

“You showed that success is not just about talent and luck, but about grit and determination. You produced such a combination of tears and joy on the sofas of Britain that you not only inspired a generation, but you probably helped create one as well,” Johnson said.

For David Weir, the wheelchair-racing phenomenon who won four gold medals at a Paralympics that transformed the perception of disabled athletes, the parade represented a chance to begin the process of taking stock of all he had achieved.

“I had a good cry yesterday after the marathon,” he said. “It was quite tough afterwards. I feel like a rock star or a footballer at the moment. To go through the crowds of people saying my name and holding up banners, it’s incredible.”

Twenty-one floats crawled along the route from Guildhall to the Mall, carrying 750 of the 900 athletes who have become such distinctive figures in their Great Britain kit over the summer.

“It is the most amazing experience. All those people who came out to support us again. It made the Olympics for us,” team eventing silver medallist Zara Phillips said.

Phillips cannot have imagined her summer coming to an end on a stage outside Buckingham Palace next to her mother, British Olympic Association president the Princess Royal, and the Pet Shop Boys, who were drafted in to sing a celebratory song. She said the size of the crowd shocked her.

Knicks' Anthony Optimistic After Olympics - New York Times (blog)

Jed Jacobsohn for The New York TimesCarmelo Anthony in a game against Nigeria at the London Olympics.

This off-season has been a success for Carmelo Anthony. He won his second Olympic gold medal for the United States in London, where he averaged 16.3 points and set a single-game American Olympic scoring record with 37 points against Nigeria.

Anthony believes his success at the Olympics can translate to the Knicks.

“I’m excited just to get this thing going, especially coming off of the run I had on the U.S.A. team” said Anthony, who was at St. John’s on Friday to promote a new video game, “N.B.A. Baller Beats.” “We were able to accomplish something with everybody on that team, and I’m excited to bring that mentality back here to the Knicks.”

Anthony has also noticed the way his teammates have approached the new season.

“Everybody’s working,” he said. “I see Amar’e Stoudemire is in the gym working. Iman Shumpert is getting his knee right. Tyson Chandler was out there at the Olympics with me.”

Unlike some veterans, Anthony is looking forward to training camp. It will be his first full camp since joining the Knicks. He and Stoudemire said this week that last year’s condensed training camp hurt the Knicks.

“Anybody who says it doesn’t is lying,” Anthony said. “When I first got here, it was the middle of the year and last year it was dealing with the lockout. Now we can just focus on basketball.”

Anthony is looking forward to playing with Raymond Felton, the new starting point guard, whom he has been playing against since they were both 9 in A.A.U. tournaments.

“This is a special year for him mentally, for him being traded here and having the chance to come back and prove to people what his game is about,” Anthony said. “When he was in New York, he was having an All-Star year, so to bring him back was an extra incentive for him to want to do well.”

Olympics 2012: Beach volleyball blowout - Pryor Daily Times

Once every four years, I’m in the mood to watch a little discus, a little javelin throw, some long jump, some pole vault, and some hammer throw and shot put. These are not events you see every day, and don’t really want to. Every three years would be too much; every five years, too little. Four years seems just about the right interval at which to spend an afternoon watching a bunch of shot putters do their thing and wondering where they get the motivation to spend so much time practicing.

It’s not as if these athletes can turn pro, even if they win the gold medal. The kids on “Jersey Shore” will make more money in a week by being spoiled brats than most Olympic champions will make in a lifetime. A “real” housewife makes more getting her nails done.

Spoiler alert: I don’t know who actually won the gold medal in any of the above-mentioned sports, because if they were on TV, I missed them. Every single time I turned on NBC, the network was showing women’s beach volleyball. Endless hours of it. Nine gazillion hours of it. It was some weird obsession with NBC, as if suddenly beach volleyball was the only sport that counted. There was never any discus, javelin or pole vault when I tuned in.

So instead of the long jump and hammer throw and other field events, I watched hours of women’s beach volleyball and team synchronized swimming, hours of diving and hours of Michael Phelps. If anyone should get a gold medal for synchronized swimming, it is whoever designed the team’s swimsuits.

It was not the fastest, the highest or the strongest athletes who got the most airtime, but those who wore the skimpiest outfits. The more covered the athletes were, the less coverage they got.

Historians tell us that in the ancient Greek Olympics (back before the euro), the athletes did their thing naked — maybe because that is the only thing that could have made Greco-Roman wrestling remotely interesting, and even then, not interesting enough. NBC is, no doubt, angling to bring back the all-nude Olympics, but barring that, it has beach volleyball. Besides, if the athletes were nude and barefoot, how would Nike make any money?

Or maybe it’s not about skin at all. Maybe I didn’t see much of certain sports because no Americans were in the running to win them. I think I’m mature enough to cope with losing a sporting event to another country once every four years without thinking less of my homeland. I think it’s OK for Americans to clap for athletes who aren’t on Team USA.  It’s called sportsmanship; it’s common courtesy. If we clap because a Cuban athlete does well in an event, it doesn’t mean we’re clapping for Castro to come here and take over our government.

When NBC was busy not showing the hammer throw and the shot put and the long jump, it would tell us about the lives and hard times of the seminude athletes competing in the least-clothed events — how hard they worked, the obstacles they had overcome, their not-so-perfect home lives. It sounds horrible — having to swim every day, having a coach and a trainer and an agent, and meeting people from all over the world, including beautiful young athletes of the opposite sex. How can they stand it?  

    Golf will be back as an Olympic sport in 2016 for the first time since 1904. I’m thinking that if they want their event to be on television, golfers had better toss the shirts and slacks and go for a sexier look. Maybe they should play 18 holes wearing Speedos.

(Jim Mullen’s newest book, “How to Lose Money in Your Spare Time — At Home,” is available at amazon.com. You can follow him on Pinterest at pinterest.com/jimmullen.