Luli Fernandez – Argentina
Susan Werner – Brazil
Abbey Clancy – England
Charlene Suric – France
Julia Goedicke – Germany
Alice Bregoli – Italy
Zaira Nara – Uruguay

Scan #1 from GQ June 2010. Italy, Brazil, Germany. Click to enlarge.

Scan #2 from GQ June 2010. Argentina, Uruguay, England, France. Click to enlarge.

Also, don’t miss the behind the scenes video of the shoot:

And this was the 3rd round... {si.com}

A major reason why relatively few people follow the women’s NCAA basketball tournament is that only one team has a chance of winning. No team in the tournament should be scoring twice as many points as its opponents. Such margins of victory are understandable in high school, but should not be seen at the top of the collegiate level. The solution: develop better teams. If UConn can do it, so can at least ten other programs.

And Purdue wouldn't have won anyway {artuji.com}

Two perfect rounds will have to do for teenager Alex Hermann. His March Madness bracket busted after Butler upset Syracuse earlier this evening. The kid’s fame was all hype anyway – autism has no bearing on choosing a perfect bracket. Let’s not forget how the boy’s older brother, who is not autistic, helped choose some of the teams. Regardless of who picked the teams, a savant would have a better chance than a mere autistic person, but even then, a fortune teller or psychic would trump both.

Still pertinent years later {eBay}

There are some great vintage Olympic shirts out there, generally dating from 1976 Montreal to present. Deadstock 1976 shirts go for upwards of $100. Instead, try searching for 1980 Lake Placid, 1988 Calgary, 1992 Albertville, or 1994 Lillehammer. Designs after Lillehammer just aren’t as good. In addition, there are dozens of pieces of general Team USA gear. Rembember, the Special Olympics are not an IOC sanctioned event.

Sit down. {cardcow.com}

Empirically speaking, the trajectory of a fly ball is perhaps the most difficult metric in sports for fans to judge. The excitement of the ballgame somehow trumps our innate ability to monitor velocity, acceleration, and most importantly, the initial angle of the ball relative to the playing field. Physics dictates the right combination of angle and speed required to take a ball to the outfield, or better yet, out of the park. Also, fans seem to forget that the fielding team has mobile players positioned to catch the ball. A ball hit to the outfield is in no way guaranteed to touch the ground or the stands.

Regardless, fans go wild for the entire flight when a ball is hit hard at a reasonable angle – even when it is apparent after a fraction of a second that the ball is either 1) not moving quickly enough, 2) headed straight toward an outfielder, or 3) traveling at too steep of an arc. The end result is heightened disappointment, since the positive emotion just prior to the out was much stronger than if the brain had properly calculated the trajectory and prevented the false assumption of a spectacular extra base hit or home run. On the other hand, the net emotional result would be much more positive if an inprobable situation had birthed a phenomenal hit. It’s all about rational expectations.

Sportinglife.com:

Bolt ran a stunning time of 9.58secs to claim gold as defending champion Tyson Gay was left trailing in his wake.

Gay’s run of 9.71 was a new US record but it was only good enough for silver.

Bolt had set his initial record of 9.69 at last year’s Olympics in Beijing.

Ramirez in better times, circa 1991.

Update: ED can be embarrassing.

Look at the Manny Ramirez of 18 years ago. Young, optimistic and looking upward toward the future. Too bad the Red Sox corrupted the man and the Dodgers had to face the consequences. The LA Times reports that Mr. Ramirez tested positive for a performance-enhancing substance and will miss 50 games. What a shame, especially as the Dodgers just set a major league record with their 13th consecutive home victory at the start of the season and are the best team in baseball. Bottom line: some things (ie. the Dodgers having little competition to snag free agent Manny) are too good to be true.

{filmstills.org}

President Obama has great self-awareness, so when he compares his game to the Special Olympics he probably is not lying. Some logic produces the true meaning of such a statement. Obama’s score of 129 is, in fact, better than most people bowl. I’ve seen plenty of completely healthy people score in the 60-100 range (myself included). Odds are that a Special Olympian has bowled over Obama’s score, and most probably score in the sub-100 range along with everyone else. Essentially, we can conclude that Obama took a roundabout way of saying that he bowls like an average person. (Yes, the President should have rephrased his critique).

From ABC News:

Toward the end of his approximately 40-minute taping on the “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,” Obama talked about how he’d gotten better at bowling and had been practicing in the White House bowling alley.

“I bowled a 129,” he told Leno.

“That’s very good, Mr. President,” Leno said sarcastically.

But then came the foot-in-mouth moment: “It’s like the Special Olympics or something,” the president said.

Special Olympic Board Chairman Tim Shriver gave a lengthy response, including these wise words:

“This kind of language needs to be a teachable moment for our country, I think. I would hope every parent that’s at home this morning watching this show could turn to their children and say, ‘This is a chance for us to recognize that when we talk about Special Olympics, when we talk about people with special needs, let’s make sure we talk about it in an affirming way,” he said.

Finally, let us not forget that Special Olympians can be excellent bowlers. Loretta Claiborne, named the Special Olympics Female Athlete of the Year by the United States Olympic Committee in 1988 and the Special Olympics Athlete of the Quarter Century by Runner’s World magazine in 1991, is also a skilled bowler.