Sunday, February 10, 2008

The Olympics Fun Begins ...








The Olympics hype is starting, a long time before the first sprinter drops dead of pollution in Beijing. Some updates:

Photos from top:

1. Britain's Olympic fox-hunting team is in for a challenge as the foxes work on their strategy.

2. Britain's team giving the Nazi salute at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. See this actual story from today about how the current UK Olympics team will be required to sign statements promising they won't criticize China at the summer games.

3. What a horse can do.

4-5. The U.S. Olympics shooting team, in intensive practice.

6-7. Me, at the Great Wall of China, failing to qualify for the Olympics equestrian team despite that elegant levade.

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1 comment:

Tenney Naumer said...

Joe, when I was a silly 12-year-old, I taught my quarterhorse to rear up on command. Soon, he began to do it whenever he felt like it. There are at least two good ways to stop it (and this works when a horse is running off with you, too). One, you slide your hand down one rein and get it as close to the horse's mouth as possible. From that position, you can begin to pull the horse's head up to one side. That usually makes them stop doing a lot of things they would like to do. Another thing you can do (and I know I will get complaints on this, but if all else fails, it works) is to bend over to the horse's ear and roar loud enough to let all the banshees of hell out. That confuses them enough that they usually stop whatever it was they were doing before.

I had to learn these things as a kid cuz my horses were a lot bigger and stronger than I was, and I had one that liked to grab the bit between his teeth and then do whatever he wanted.

That guy in front of the horse you were on should not have put his hand up in the air like that -- that was about the worst thing he could have done.