Olympics: Black Watch
Twenty athletes, nine medals
The crowds have gone. Athletes have packed up equipment and themselves and headed back home to their regular lives. News crews have reported their last stories. The 2010 Vancouver Olympics are over, and people are left talking about the winners, the losers, and the stories in between.
For athletes of African descent participating in the winters games, there were some triumphs and some disappointments.
Perhaps one of the biggest stories was that of Chicago native and speed skater Shani Davis. Going into the international competition, he was expected to take home medals in a variety of contests. But in Vancouver, Davis claimed a single gold in the 1000 meter race and a silver in the 1500 meters. This is exactly the way he finished during the 2006 Olympics in Turin, Italy, when he made history as the first person of African descent to win an individual medal in a Winter Olympics.
Jarome Iginla, of Canada’s gold-medal winning hockey team, is the other athlete of African descent to win a top prize in the Vancouver Olympics.
A native of Canada, the veteran National Hockey League forward helped his team defeat America, 3-2, in a game that went into overtime.
German bobsledder, Richard Adjei, competing with partner Thomas Florschuetz, , added a silver medal in the two-man event to his three-year career in the sport. He tried for a second medal in the four-man race but fell shy of the goal.
Prior to taking up the bob sleigh, Adjei played linebacker for American-style football as part of the NFL Europe and the German Football League (GFL). He played for the Rhein Fire and Berlin Thunder in the NFL and Düsseldorf Panther in the GFL.
Canadian bobsledder and former sprinter Shelley-Ann Brown also collected a silver medal in Vancouver. She won in the two-woman race along with her teammate, Helen Upperton. Brown, a sprinter who attended the University of Nebraska on a track scholarship, got involved in the sport in 2006, and holds five world-start records.
Competing with her brothers as a child made short track speed skater Kalyna Roberge a tough competitor and that early practice paid off in Vancouver with a silver medal in the ladies 3000 meter Relay.
Named the 2007 and 2008 Female Short Track Skater of the year by Speed Skating Canada, Roberge began her career on ice as a figure skater then switched to speed skating at age 8.
Canadian Lascaelles Brown took home a bronze medal in the four-man bobsled in a competition that he expects to be his final appearance as a competitor. Coming from the tradition of Jamaican bobsledding (he was on the 1999 team), Brown moved to Canada for the 2004-05. This second-place finish is his second medal win at an Olympics game—the first was in the two-man event in Turin, Italy, in 2006.
Elana Meyers’ goal as an athlete—first as a softball shortstop and pitcher, then as a bobsledder—was to win an Olympic medal. She did that in the Vancouver Olympics, taking bronze in the two-woman bobsled with partner Erin Pac.
Daughter of former Atlanta Falcon’s running back Eddie Meyers, Elana added bobsledding to her sports resume in 2007, and then made the U.S. team during her rookie season.
Rounding out the medal count at nine, German pairs figure skater Robin Szolkowy claimed a bronze competing with his partner Aliona Savchenko.
Offspring of a German nurse and Tanzanian doctor, Szolkowy began skating at age four on an ice rink he saw at an airport. At 16, he switched from singles to pairs because he saw more future in skating with a partner than alone.
Other people of African descent who participated in the Vancouver games included: Kwame Nkrumah Acheampong (Ghana-Alpine skiing); Timothy Beck (Netherlands-bobsled); Chuck Berkeley (USA-bobsled); Yannick Bonheur and Vanessa James (France-pairs figure skating); Nkeirouka Khilarievna Ezekh (Russia-curling); Errol Kerr (Jamaica-ski cross); Nicola Minichiell, (Britain-bobsled); Henry Nwume (Britain-bobsled); Johnny Oduya (Sweden-Hockey); Bill Schuffenhauer (USA-bobsled); Seck Leyti (Senegal-skiing); Neville Wright (Canada-bobsled); and Robel Teklemariam Zemichael (Ethiopia-cross country skier).
LOS ANGELES - The USC men's tennis team and men's and women's water polo teams and UCLA women's gymnastics and softball teams will be among more than 30 NCAA championship teams from the 2009-2010 academic year honored by President Barack Obama at a White House ceremony today.
The Trojan men's water polo and tennis teams also won NCAA championships during the 2008-2009 academic year, but neither received invitations to the White House.
Jurors heard evidence Tuesday in the penalty phase of the trial of a 23-year-old gang member convicted of gunning down a standout Los Angeles High School football player whom he mistook for a rival gang member.
Prosecutors will be seeking the death penalty for Pedro Espinoza, who killed 17-year-old Jamiel Shaw Jr. on March 2, 2008, while the defense will ask jurors to recommend life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Jamaa Fanaka, born Walter Gordon, on Sept. 6, 1942, was an American filmmaker best known for his 1979 film, “Penitentiary,” and one of the leading directors of the L.A. Rebellion film movement. Fanaka died April 1, from complication of diabetes. He was 69.
SAN FRANCISCO—California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris announced a settlement with Arbitron Inc., the nation’s dominant provider of radio audience ratings, over allegations that the method it used to collect ratings information discriminated against radio stations with predominantly African American and Latino audiences. The settlement is the result of a consumer protection lawsuit filed jointly by the state of California and the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Jury deliberations will continue in the trial of Donald Bottoms, Christopher Shrauger, Steven Burns and Christopher Crews, four inmates charged with murder and conspiracy in a race riot that left a Black inmate dead at a county jail facility in Castaic recently. Four other inmates, David Reynoso, Osbaldo Valenzuela, Enrique Reyes and Andres Madrigal, are also charged.
