Category — New Zealand

Embarrassed that female Olympians [Britta Heideman, Natalie Coughlin, Amanda Beard, etc] are outscoring the males in the very important Olympic art of posing naked, this group of New Zealand football players led by Sam Messam decided to equalize things by removing their shirts and performing the traditional Maori “haka” before a crowd of cheering thousands.

Now everything is all right with the world since the nakedness score between male and female Olympians is now even.

New Zealand related stories:
Olympics Fashion: New Zealand Unveils Uniform
Quote of the Day: New Zealand’s Tash Hind
Selection Controversy: Liza Hunter-Galvan to Sue Athletics NZ

Photo source: Chinadaily

If you think we will never blog about fashion here at The Olympics Blog, you should think again. Actually, we never intended to blog about fashion but the Kiwis down under forced us to blog about it when they unveiled their Olympic uniform.

How can we not upload the above picture right? We’re sure the legions of you who’ve got a foot fetish will go crazy with New Zealand’s crocs.

What about the second picture? Are we the only ones who think that New Zealand swimmer Dean Kent looks kinda sorrowful in this pic? With the all-black uniform and his not too happy face it is as if he just attended a wake. What’s up, mate?

Now we’re talking. To use a cliche, swimmer Helen Norfolk strikes a pose. She’s also the model for the crocs above which foot fetishists are going crazy about.

PHOTO SOURCE: stuff.co.nz.
Outside Reading: NZ Olympic uniform unveiled (+pics)

This is interesting. Some countries are finding it hard to find someone to represent them in the Olympics but New Zealand must have an abundance of talents as it has rejected two marathoners despite these two clocking “A-standard times”.

But what exactly is “A-standard time”? Well, we don’t know but we might do a future post on it if we find out what it means. Hehe.

Anyways, the Sunday Star Times reports that one of those rejected by Athletics NZ, Liza Hunter-Galvan, has “engaged an American lawyer to fight her case to be in the New Zealand team for Beijing”.

Is this the first time, someone had to file a case to be included in an Olympic team?

Hunter-Galvan isn’t the only one frustrated with Athletics NZ. According to the Star-Times, marathoner Michael Aish, who’s also not picked has “had enough after a decade of frustration with Athletics NZ”.

[Read more →]

We like it when athletes continue to have a life outside of their sport so we’re picking our quote of the day from someone who does that. Tash Hind of New Zealand was just named to her country’s swimming relay team. She also continues to attend university. Asked how her training affect her studies, she goes:

“It can affect your marks – you might go from an A+ to a B+ – you’ve just got to make sure you can get through both study and swimming”.

Here’s hoping that you’ll get A pluses, Tash. But then a B+ isn’t bad either. In fact, President Bush made mostly Cs and still got to be elected President. Twice. [But maybe that says something about those who voted for him, eh?]