OLYMPIC facts
Beijing Olympic fact
This should make your heart beat faster. Rowers have hearts that are among the biggest ever seen in healthy people say US researchers. They are enormous, elongated, torpedo-shaped heart, twice the mass of a normal heart that draw blood in like a suction pump and push it out like a piston. The reason is that rowers use all the big muscles of their body, repetitively contracting and relaxing them, which puts a huge demand on the hurt to supply those muscles with blood. In fact rowing puts such strains on the heart that astronauts use rowing machines during space flights to try to maintain their cardiovascular fitness. Interestingly, a study found that the heart growth increased as they intensity of the training increased.
Marching into Beijing stadium under the American flag this august will be a kayaker form Poland, table tennis player from china, a traithelete from New Zealand, a word champion-distance runner from Kenya and a gold member winning equestrian from Australia.
All newly minted united state citizen. Foreign-born and trained stars have been contributing to the United States’ Olympic medal count since 2000 in a modest but growing trend that blurs the national boundaries of the competition.
Since 1992, about 50 athletes who had competed in international event for their home countries including 10 for china became United States citizens and Olympians, winning eight medals, records show. This practice has implications for American athletes who are shut out of precious Olympic berth and has also been cause for conflict among competing nations.
Nine new citizens are on track to secure spots on the 600-athelet United States team for Beijing, including the distance runner Bernard Lagat, who won a medal for Kenya in 2000 and another in 2004.