Titres dans Olympique

"If you're not strong enough to swim fast, you're probably not strong enough to swim 'pretty," said a young Esther Williams to theater impresario Billy Rose. Since the nineteenth century, tensions between beauty and strength, aesthetics and athleticism have both impeded and propelled the careers of female swimmers—none more so than synchronized swimmers, for whom Williams is often considered godmother. In this riveting history—the first of its kind—Vicki Valosik traces a century of aquatic performance, from vaudeville and dime museums to the Olympic arena.

Leisel Jones is regarded as one of the greatest breaststrokers ever. At just 15 she won two silver medals at the Sydney Olympics and went on to win gold at Athens and Beijing. For the first time, Leisel candidly describes being thrust into the limelight so young and reveals the constant pressure she was under. Despite the highs of stardom, she suffered severe depression. Body Lengths is the inspiring story of an Australian sportsperson told with humour, optimism and style.

This unique audiobook history of the Olympics, first issued in 2008, has been updated to include the Beijing Olympics and released to coincide with the London event. Written by the prize-winning sports journalist John Goodbody, and with a fascinating personal documentary featuring one of Britain's leading Olympians, Sebastian Coe, who is now heading the 2012 Games, this is an ideal opener!

Dreams Do Come True tells the inspirational story of one of Britain's golden girls from London 2012. Great Britain's finest woman rower had one final career target to achieve and, on 3 August 2012, on the water at Eton Dorney, she - and Anna Watkins - beat three other pairs to win the gold in the Women's Double Sculls at the London Olympics. After winning silver in 2000, 2004 and 2008, Katherine Grainger could finally call herself an Olympic champion.

In 1936, against a backdrop of swastikas flying and storm troopers looming, an African-American son of sharecroppers set three world records and won an unprecedented four gold medals, single-handedly crushing Hitler's myth of Aryan supremacy. The story of Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics Games is that of a high-profile athlete giving a performance that transcends sports. But it is also the intimate and complex tale of the courage of one remarkable man.

Set against the backdrop of the turbulent late 1960s and early 1970s, this compelling audiobook provides the first comprehensive history of the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, notorious for the abduction of Israeli Olympians by Palestinian terrorists and the hostages' tragic deaths after a botched rescue mission by the German police. Drawing on a wealth of newly available sources from the time, eminent historian David Clay Large explores the 1972 festival in all its ramifications.

It is late summer 2013. Ben Ryan, a red-haired, 40-something, spectacle-wearing Englishman, is given 20 minutes to decide whether he wants to coach Fiji's rugby sevens team, with the aim of taking them to the nation's first-ever Olympic medal. He has never been to Fiji. There has been no discussion of contracts or salary. But he knows that no one plays rugby like the men from these isolated Pacific islands, just as no one plays football like the kids from the Brazilian favelas, or no one runs as fast as the boys and girls from Jamaica's boondocks.

In the early 1980s, a golden generation of volleyball players joined the U.S. men's national team. With the Olympics coming to Los Angeles in 1984, the pressure was on to build a winning program around these exceptional athletes. In If Gold Is Our Destiny, Sean P. Murray shares the incredible story of how a group of free-spirited players and their demanding coach captured the heart of a nation and became one of the greatest indoor volleyball teams of all time.

"Athletes first" is a slogan the International Olympic Committee often touts, but the reality is very different, as preeminent Olympics expert Jules Boykoff shows in this book. While the world’s attention is riveted by the triumphs and tribulations on their screens, there is much that goes on behind the scenes that is deeply troubling: athletes are increasingly voicing concerns over physical, mental and sexual abuse, and they are collectively expressing grievances around equity and human rights.

In Relentless Spirit, Missy and her parents, D.A. and Dick Franklin, share the story of how Missy became the athlete she is today, a six-time Olympic medalist, five of them gold. Since her Olympic debut in London's 2012 games - when Missy was just 17 - people who have met the Franklins or seen them on TV have wondered what it was like to raise such a champion. What was the training like? How did Missy handle school? How did the family find the right facilities, coaches, and support network?

In 1975, a group of amazing women rowed their way to international success and glory, battling sexual prejudice, bureaucracy, and male domination. Among the members of the first international women's crew team - and one of the first women's teams anywhere - were Gail Pearson, the soft-spoken MIT professor who fought to win the political battles necessary for her team to succeed; lead rower Carie Graves, a statuesque bohemian from rural Wisconsin who dropped out of college and later became the most intense rower of the crew; and Lynn Stillman, a tiny 16-year-old, Californian coxswain.

On the eve of the opening of the 30th Olympiad in London this summer, sports activist and writer Mark Perryman presents a sharply critical take on the way the Games have been organized and an imaginative blueprint for how they could be improved. The London Olympics have been promoted as of great benefit for the host city and nation. The organizers insist that the lasting value of the facilities built, the tourism the Games will attract, and the popular participation in sport they will promote, all make the spending of billions of pounds of public money an excellent investment.

De ses débuts en patinage de vitesse à son dernier tour de piste, en passant par l’intimidation dont il a été victime à l’école, son ascension parmi l’élite et les hauts et les bas de sa vie personnelle, Charles Hamelin s’ouvre à Luc Bellemare avec une grande générosité. Charles Hamelin a remporté 6 médailles olympiques, 142 médailles en Coupe du monde et 38 médailles aux championnats du monde. Sa longue et florissante carrière sportive a été marquée par de très grands moments, mais aussi par de cuisantes déceptions.

On the night in 1964 that Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) stepped into the ring with Sonny Liston, he was widely regarded as an irritating freak who danced and talked way too much. Six rounds later Ali was not only the new world heavyweight boxing champion: He was "a new kind of black man" who would shortly transform America's racial politics, its popular culture, and its notions of heroism. No one has captured Ali—and the era that he exhilarated and sometimes infuriated—with greater vibrancy, drama, and astuteness than David Remnick.

The Olympics are the world’s most prestigious stage for athletic competition. Fans both casual and hardcore tune in religiously every few years to watch as men and women push themselves to the limits of human performance. But what makes a champion? Is it genetics? Hours of training? A psychological advantage? Of all the athletes who dedicate their lives - and bodies - to achieving that perfect moment of triumph, why will one person or team win out over another? Science has some compelling answers, and in this audiobook, Scientific American explores this topic from various angles.

An inspirational memoir by a man who became an elite wheelchair athlete after suffering a catastrophic spinal injury and who finally walked again 25 years after his accident. After two years of intense physical therapy following his crippling accident, John Maclean set a new course for himself when his father encouraged him to embrace his new reality and asked: "How far can you go"? Inspired, Maclean became the first paraplegic to complete the Ironman World Championship and swim the English Channel before going on to win a silver medal for rowing at the 2008 Paralympic Games.

One. Two. Three. That’s as long as it took to sear the souls of a dozen young American men, thanks to the craziest, most controversial finish in the history of the Olympics - the 1972 gold-medal basketball contest between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the world’s two superpowers at the time. The U.S. team believed it had won the gold medal that September in Munich - not once, but twice. The American players became the only Olympic athletes in the history of the games to refuse their medals.

Abhinav Bindra once shot 100 out of 100 in practice six times in a row and walked out of the range unhappy. He is a perfectionist who once soled his shoes with rubber from Ferrari tyres because he thought it would help. He would wake up at 3:00 a.m. to practise at his range at home if an idea suddenly struck him. It is from such obsession that greatness arrives.

Professional distance runners Elvin Kibet and Shadrack Kipchirchir grew up in rural Kenyan villages. Though their lives began in poverty, both were driven to reach their full potential, to gain an education, and make a difference. And they would find their way to do just that through the high-pressure world of distance running.

Katarina Johnson-Thompson has never had it easy. Born a child of two worlds - her mother's working-class Liverpool, and her father's idyllic Bahamas - she was never supposed to be world champion. In Unbroken, she tells her story as she never has before. Her narrative, rich with challenges overcome and dreams pursued with relentless determination, serves as a powerful reminder that the human spirit is capable of extraordinary feats.