Wednesday, September 29, 2010

emblazoned track prints





I just really needed to copy paste this..Thank you CNN and Sports Illustrated! (and to all the websites who supplied photos...)

These moments make the Olympics irreplaceable, timeless and oh so worth-watching. Even with commercialism and the growing concerns of manipulating the drug test system, if we look back at these pieces of history, it is really inspiring and the romantic in us still aspire to follow the Olympics despite the loss of tradition and athletic integrity from the many modern factors which have tarnished it it.

I was still very young when I came across a controversial article about this event. This was way way way back before when I would commute from high school and pass by a magazine stand that sold old NEWSWEEK, TIME Magazine copies. I would spend hours poring through them for free and sometimes when I saved enough I would buy one or two which was pertinent to the Olympics, the Russian sports machine, gymnastic and badminton. The magazine stand is not there anymore. I miss it! I could stand for hours reading and reading and reading. This young little person, try
ing to digest everything so fast because the caretaker could kick him out anytime enforcing the disallowance of free reading! hahahaha...Now with the resources on the internet I was able to see it all again, and nostalgia came flooding back again.


Assembling this blog entry came from that spur-of-the-moment where something just popped up from the back of my brain and made me remember to
note everything that my small mind has ever recorded, encountere
d and found significant before oblivion and the substances that erode our age take over...


Thanks to my beautiful memory and to my wonderful love for almost everything interesting and fascinating.


--------







After another half lap, Mary Decker would begin a long, ever quickening drive to the finish. She had led the women's Olympic 3,000-meter final from the gun, first at world-record pace, then slowing a seccond or so every lap. The last had taken her 71 seconds, bringing the field past 1,600 meters in 4:36.

She had shaken no one. Zola Budd of Great Britain and Maricica Puica of Romania, her most heralded opponent and her most dangerous one, respectively, ran second and third.

Decker felt fine. Her sore right Achilles tendon which had required a cortisone injection in July, was operating smoothly. Her semifinal win in 8:44.38 had been, as she put it, "Effortless. Except for Lynn Williams [of Canada] stepping on my heel four times." "She was looking for about an 8:29 pace in the final," said her coach, Dick Brown. (The world record is 8:26.78, by Syvetlana Ulmasova of the U.S.S.R., who, of course, wasn't in L.A.) "With a kilometer to go, she would begin picking it up." This was similar to the tactic Decker had used to win the world championship 3,000 last year in Helsinski, but there she had started her drive 600 meters out. In Los Angeles she planned to go the last 1,000 because she was stronger now, because Puica, the current world cross-country champion and mile-record holder (4:17.44), would produce a respectable kick if it weren't run out of her, and because these were the Olympics.

Decker had never run in an Olympic race. In 1972 she was too young, only 14. In 1976 she was injured. In 1980 the Carter boycott stymied her. But these Games were her own, in the city where she'd grown up. "Finally it all seems so perfect," she'd said.

That last brutal kilometer would begin in about 300 meters, on the backstretch. Now, as Decker relaxed, gathering herself, the slight, pale, barefoot, 92-pound form of Budd again came even with her. Budd had been outside Decker's right shoulder almost from the start, and Decker knew it. They had bumped elbows at 500 meters, a result of Budd's wide-swinging arm action, and Decker had shot her a sharp look.

Budd had sensed the slowing pace and didn't like it. Her training and temperament combine to make her natural race one of constantly increasing pressure. She and her coach, Pieter Labuschagne, knew that she couldn't kick with a fresh Decker or Puica. If she was to run her best in this Olympic final, the pace would have to go faster. So she passed Decker on the turn, just after, 1,600 meters. Decker felt her uncomfortably close. "She was cutting in on the turn, without being near passing," Decker would say.

By the end of the turn, Budd appeared to have enough margin to cut in without interfering with Decker's stride, but instead she hung wide, on the outside of Lane 1, as they came into the stretch.

Decker was near the rail, a yard behind Budd. Budd's teammate, Wendy Sly, had come up to third, off Budd's shoulder, and Puica was fourth, tucked in tight behind Decker, waiting.

Decker sensed Budd drifting to the inside. "She tried to cut in without being, basically, ahead," Decker would say. But Decker didn't do what a seasoned middle-distance runner would have done. She didn't reach out to Budd's shoulder to let her know she was there, too close behind for Budd to move to the pole.

Instead, Decker shortened her stride for a couple of steps. There was contact. Decker's right thigh grazed Budd's left foot. Budd took five more strides, slightly off balance. Trying to regain control, she swayed in slightly to the left. Decker's right foot struck Budd's left calf, low, just above the Achilles tendon. Budd's left leg shot out, and she was near falling.

But Decker was falling, tripped by that leg all askew. "To keep from pushing her, I fell," she would say. She reached out after Budd, inadvertently tearing the number from her back and went headlong across the rail onto the infield.

Decker's competitiveness is without limit. "My first thought was, 'I have to get up,'" she said. But when she tried, "It felt like I was tied to the ground." She had a pulled gluteus, the hip stabilizer muscle. Only then, understanding that she couldn't go on, with the field past and the medical attendants and her fiance, Richard Slaney, running across the track to her, did the anguish come. Hers was the horrible realization that once again, in the race she'd been denied by injury and boycott for eight years, she was being denied any chance of a conclusion of her own making.

She who had been hurt so often, for whom the sensation of raw exhaustion is a joy compared with the misery of not being able to run, was hurt again, three laps from the end of overcoming all of that hurt. And as that crashed in on her, she lay writhing and screaming on the infield, her face hideously expressive of the wild rage of her reaction.

Budd, who had kept her feet, maintained the lead and increased the pace. Boos rained on her. She had tears coursing down her face, this woman-child perfectionist who already had gone through so much trauma simply to be here. She had left friends and farm and studies in South Africa to claim the citizenship that was hers because her father is of British descent. And in so doing, she had become the center of a storm of debate over whether these two things could be reconciled: prohibiting South Africa any place in international sport until apartheid is no more, and letting a slender, shy girl test the extent of her talent.

Decker and Budd were seared into Olympic history in the minutes that followed, the woman in agony on the ground and the frightened little deer running on, desperately trying to squeeze away the thought that it was all ruined, this race that she had overturned her pleasantly sheltered life for, trying just to run, to go her hardest, because that was what always worked, that was what she knew, that was what she was made to do.

But she had so little left. With a lap to go, Sly and Puica were running away from her. Puica then bolted out alone over the last 250 meters, winning in 8:35.96. Sly was second in 8:39.47, and Williams third in 8:42.14. Budd faded badly, crossing the line seventh in 8:48.80.

Slaney walked the limping, sobbing Decker across the track and then lifted her into his arms as they entered the tunnel. Budd found her way there a few moments later, desperately wanting to somehow make clear that she had intended none of this horror. She admired Decker enormously. Above her bed, back in the Afrikaans town of Bloemfontein, she had kept a picture of her. In San Diego, before the Olympics, she had spoken of Decker, saying, "It would be wonderful to be so pretty."

Decker saw Budd coming. "Don't bother," she snarled, waving her off. Budd, mortified, was assisted by Britain's Mary Peters, the 1972 Olympic pentathlon champion, to the medical area, to have her bleeding ankle bandaged. On the way back to the UCLA Olympic Village, British team manager Nick Whitehead sought to cheer her. "I just said that it was her first Olympics and she ought to be proud," he said. "All she said was, 'How's Mary?'"

By then, of course, a great cacophony had arisen over whose fault this wreck of a race was. An umpire seated along the track had signaled a foul, and referee Andy Bakjian disqualified Budd for obstructing Decker. The British team manager protested the disqualification, so the matter went to the jury of appeals.

Fifth-placer Cornelia Burki of Switzerland, who was also born in South Africa, said, "When you're behind, you're the one to have to watch out. It was Mary's fault."

This doesn't mean that a leader can swerve in with impunity. but that in the give and take of pack running, athletes learn to make allowances. "You're supposed to be one stride ahead before you can cut in," said Eamonn Coghlan of Ireland, the world indoor mile-record holder. "But this happens all the time. You have to protect yourself out there."

Neither Decker nor Budd has ever had much experience racing in the pack. Decker, though 26, can count on one hand the number of races in which she has had to maneuver in tight quarters. Her main concern with other runners on the track has been in lapping them. So she has never needed finely honed protective reflexes.

Perhaps it was inexperience on Zola's part," said Coghlan. "Perhaps it was being too ladylike on Mary's part. You can't blame either one." The jury of appeals, after watching videotape from six angles, saw it that way, too. Budd was reinstated.

The last person Budd would ever want to hurt is Decker. The reverse may not be quite true, but the essential thing seemed not motive -- "Mary doesn't feel that Zola did it intentionally," said Brown a day later -- but the waste of all the preparation both had invested in this race.

At another level, both seemed to be getting punished for elements deep in their characters. Six years ago Decker said, "If it comes down to a choice between causing pain or taking it, I'll take it." That certainly seemed to be operating in the split second when she had to decide whether to push or fall.

And Budd, so shy, so much a symbol of the runner as one trying to flee, is now the one caught in yet another maelstrom.

But both picked themselves up. Rather than being dejected, Budd was said to be a little testy the next day. "She's not too happy with Mary's reaction," said British coach Frank Dick. "It wasn't her fault. She knows that."

Decker went back to her hotel after a tearful press conference and lifted a glass with some friends. "Here's to Zurich," she said, naming the locale where she plans to race next, on Aug. 22. "And here's to Cologne and Paris [Aug. 26 and Sept. 4] . . . and here's to Seoul in '88."



Sunday, September 19, 2010

To err is divine...






"[G
azing at a ruined Hatsumomo in the streets] I could be her. Were we so different? She loved once. She hoped once. I could be her. I might be looking into my own future... Until the real future came falling from the air." - Sayuri (Memoirs of a Geisha (movie) 2005)


This startling line comes to me as a form of reality check. Because it is not illusory, it is what I face everyday. An inescapable reality that seems to haunt me every time I have to be with someone - someone who could be special or fatal to my own feelings.


This is in general not an attack on how devious men can get although they can be! It is just a glance at how sometimes you can feel something strange for someone who caresses you and treats you like a princess and makes you feel more special than anyone has ever treated you. There should be a chip ingrained in each one of us to remind us that the time you spent with a man is time spent in the dark, the abyss, a floating world with shadows, away from discerning eyes and the reality of HIS existence. Reality for a man in my world could be a wife and children, a girlfriend, or an institution he wants to respect by concealing his forbidden dalliances from the light of day.


But the ironic thing is you can never be an effective companion, an escort, unless you give something of yourself. There is always something from your heart that you have to share to make somebody feel special, loved so that as a consequence he returns back to you as a lover, a companion, even for a very short period. The liaison is kept strong, the connections tighter and the awkwardness dissipates like water evaporating on the pavement on a hot day. You have to love someone to an extent so that the symbiosis continues. This is vital to partnerships that last long.


Where does the fatality lie here? In my experience the danger resides in giving too much to someone to the point where you barely have an artery left in that pulsating heart of yours. Creating borderlines is an acumen you need to acquire if you were in my position. You have to be able to give some but retain some with the right portions on both sides. You are like a chemist, mixing compounds and making sure there isn't too much base and too much acid. Otherwise saturation of either substance will lead to dire consequences. This you do not want to happen.


The last thing you want to develop though is a cold heart. You cannot be stone to people because it is not human, it is not warm. Men do not desire an inanimate object, someone without affect. But neither do they want someone who is looking to get married right off the bat. Many men halt at the alarm signals of commitment, connecting right away without expending enough thought and know-how. These facts allude yet again to how someone like me needs to be good at creating boundaries and setting limits.


This...is the reality of life lived as an escort. You are manifestations of everything but you are master of nothing. You have to retain feelings and yet expend some. You have to please but work at being pleased too. You have to laugh and be sad, commiserate and sympathize. You are everything the women close to these men were not! You have no choice but to love but to expect love in return...catastrophic!



"The heart dies a slow death. Shedding each hope like leaves, until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains." - Sayuri (Memoirs of a Geisha)


Friday, September 10, 2010

Join my GRUPO!!!



Of course my yahoo group is still here!!!

It's my neglected child after I've been so busy the past couple of weeks but hopefully I will whip it back to shape. We don't want it to be as emaciated as Mr.Douchebag tsk tsk and we don't want no douchebags do we? hahahahaha


Email me on how to join my ultra-exclusive, VIP-filled yahoo group...

blogwinklergirl@hotmail.com

Lots of photos nobody has ever seen before plus HOT HOT HOT HOT ones of the big bad Winklergirl in all her gloriousnesssisssimooooo :)

And here's a teaser photo for everyone!!!




The link to the group issssss.....

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/liisawinklergirl


And here I am all around the world wide web!!!

Twitter:

http://twitter.com/liisawinkler

Facebook:

http://facebook.com/winklergirlBLOG

I love you all...(who love me of course LOL)


Monday, September 6, 2010

GRAZIE MOLTO!!!!





How wonderful the people in Singapore were to welcome me right back after a year-long hiatus from visiting the place. I felt such warm reception, fantastic nights of revelry and Bacchanalian indulgences as well as intimate and very personal irritatingly romantic moments!


And i was showered with too many giftssss...books, makeup, soaps, perfumes, everything a girl lives for and the stuff dreams are made of!!!


I am going to be insanely materialistic, superficial and well maybe even manic in this blog entry. I am just so overwhelmed to have so many things in just one day so I can't contain my happiness!hahahah


Please support me in my manic-depressive episode today haha I am just on a certain kind of euphoria which transcends substance abuse, alcohol intake and tantric inoculations tonight!!!


GROS BISOUS!!!
GRAZIE MOLTO!!
DANKE!!


from the bottom of my heart...and my boobiesss hehehehe











Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Happy Holidays...






Please please I beg you. Listen to this masterpiece of an interpretation!

This is the most beautiful piano piece I have ever heard. I am not a big fan of piano music but this ranks up there with any category of music I have ever heard...

The beginning is just so serene and subdued that you get taken away by its flow...

The haunting tunes in the middle and near the end of the performance is gripping. A climactic blending of instrumental music that tells us we are riding a wave of inner conflict, torment and a need to escape....


I forgot to add that the high notes in the beginning are hair-raising and make you feel that there is a crescendo where you will be taken to in the next couple of minutes. It moves me a tiny wee bit to tears because of the depressive episodes I have been experiencing the last couple of days. But crying is therapeutic and that is why I will never let go of music in my life.

This man is GOD!!! He must be BIG in Japan! Not to mention the world noh?

Downstairs is the solo version of the song. The actual title is Forbidden Colours. This is the same artist's solo interpretation. It is still very beautiful and I am feverishly looking around for more of his works. Look for his music with David Sylvian!!! This man is GOD!!!