bannister

BANNISTER: Sir Roger Gilbert Bannister struck me as a very outstanding person.

the 4-minute mile, during his time, was almost scientifically deduced to be impossible. but bannister did it in 3min 59.4sec

we could say that bannister was probably a born runner. he only began training at the age of 17, and previously he had never worn running spikes, nor ran on a track. but one year later, after thrice-weekly training sessions, he could run a mile in 4 min 24.6 sec. and the next year, in 1948, he was selected to be an Olympic "possible", but he turned it down, cuz he felt he wasn't good enough. but the 1948 olympics made him more inspired to be a great miler, so he trained hard for the next olympic games, which would be in 1952. he ran the 1500 in helsinki in 1952, and set the british record with 3:46.30. which placed him fourth. but to him it was a failure.



so after the 1952 olympic games, he set the big goal, to complete a mile under 4 minutes. he failed quite a number of times, but the historic moment came on 6 may 1954. the stadium announcer was quite cute. he knew of bannister's goals, and he knew that alot of people went down to support him, so when he announced the results he purposely said alot before telling the people the timing. reportedly, it was like that:

"Ladies and gentlemen, here is the result of event 9, the one-mile: 1st, No. 41, R.G. Bannister, Amateur Athletic Association and formerly of Exeter and Merton Colleges, Oxford, with a time which is a new meeting and track record, and which - subject to ratification - will be a new English Native, British National, All-Comers, European, British Empire, and World Record. The time was 3.."

then the crowd cheered like mad and nobody cared about the digits at the back.

but apparently the 4-minute impossible mile thing was a myth. for nine years, which was sort of war time, all the records set were a little more than 4 minutes. so human beings, who love whole numbers, took the number 4 as the magic figure. but it may have been broken during the nine years, because the war-time interrupted athletic progress.

nevertheless we shouold acknowledge bannister for achieving his goal, especially when he's a low-mileage trainer.

but yeah, the sad part was that his record was broken by another guy just 46 days after he set it.



and, he's sir bannister because in 1975 he was knighted for his services as the chairman of the sports council of england. he was also the sports illustrated sportsman of the year in 1955.

idk, would dr. bannister or sir bannister sound nicer? cuz this dude was a medical student.

owens

after house comm meeting today, i just felt that i don't know enough about our house names. so i wiki-ed, and here they are.


OWENS, after James Cleveland Owens. aka, Jesse Owens, but Jesse was never his name. one of his teachers misheard "JC", for james cleveland, as jesse, and so the name started.
i guess he's a great sportsman because of his olympic achievement, first american guy to get four golds in track and field. it was the 1936 olympics in berlin. hitler wanted to use the games to promote Nazi supremacy, showing that ethnic africans, e.g. owens, were inferior.


it's a sort of tradition for the goh person to shake hands with all the athletes right? so on the first day, hitler went round shaking hands. but. only with the german winners. so the olympic council people told him he had two choices, either to shake the hands of all medalists, or none. he chose the latter, and never turned up for subsequent prize presentation ceremonies.

so as with all big events the media people always like to tell stories. so they suggested that hitler never turned up because he didn't want to acknowledge owens' wins. but when interviewed, owens said that when he passed hitler, he (hitler) stood up, and they waved to each other. and he said that it wasn't hitler who snubbed him, it was his own american leaders. he did not receive any recognition from the presidents. only after around 20 years, the next president named him the ambassador of sports.


but after that his life sort of became less intersting. he was supposed to follow his team to compete in sweden, but he chose to return to the us to make money from advertisments. but it didn't really work out and in the end he became bankrupt and was prosecuted for tax evasion. he carried on with a few more jobs, then became a goodwill ambassador, stressing on the importance of hardwork, religion and loyalty.

there was this "black power salute" protest by black athletes in an olympic game some years later, but owens did not support it. so the participants criticised him.

before he died at the age of 66 he managed to convince the president then to not boycott the moscow olympics because the games are not supposed to be related to war/politics. yeah anyway he died of lung cancer because he smoked for 35 years.

coming in the next post is bannister. there were alot of great bannisters, but i guess the one the blue house is named after Roger Bannister, the first man to run a less-than-four-minute mile. though the record was broken 46 days later. so, please stay tuned(:

to sebas.

the trying period didn't take too long. and i'm thankful for that. sebas, i love the way you fit into my life.

fll journey

my fll process with heartware wasn't very long in my opinion, though it was significantly longer than for the est of the volunteers. but i'm thankful for the team of thirteen referees, though we were only left with a team of twelve on the event day. exclusive of mr et, of course, whom i met just one day before the event, but that was all it took for me to respect him for who he is. the head referee.

the fll referee journey began on 15 nov. the first referee-timekeeper meeting at heartware office. i didn't exactly feel like going, cuz i was preparing for my germany trip. but i went anyway, and met alot of interesting people. sean, the 24 year old nus guy, bahari, a poly guy who joined just cuz he thought it'll be fun, sheryl, who was in jj for her first three months but went to sa eventually, joy, rj timekeeper who had her name on her wushu jacket, chiew lin, meiting and jiawen, hc triplets, and heartware staff. we played ice-breakers, and in one game we had to choose a food item to represent ourselves and we took turns to call each other by that. we had ice cream and ice kachang, which was quite confusing, and sheryl and i were prawn crackers and prawn noodles. kenneth was carrot cake. brown was ikea meatballs. joy was pizza.

since sebas and i got together, it was the first heartware meeting that we weren't present at the same time. but it was fun nevertheless.

my next fll meeting was with all the other volunteers already, at phpss. there were two other referee events before that, but i was more than ten thousand kilometres away at germany. this fll meeting, i went with sebas, and it was that day that my group of people, led by field manager wei hui, knew that i'm attached. because cheryl was saying that i'll have high expectations of my future boyfriend, and i asked why "future". and that was the day we met volunteers who were not referees/timekeepers. nicolette, from cj swimming, ayuni, srjc grad, cheryl and rachel, who kept switching their names (and cheryl has three ccas in rj), and weihui who had a deck of poker cards with weird photos on them. there was this very quiet nus guy, but i forgot his name. he reminds me of bowen.

and that day, we went for lunch at the bishan kopitiam which i went to with 2/1 people that time we visited mr chin for cny.

that was the last fll session with games. we took a group volunteer photo in the canteen, but as with most heartware group photos, i don't think i'll get a copy of it.

one week later was another all-volunteers meeting at heartware office. this time they made an exception, no need to remove shoes. i was present with sebas but since we played different roles in this project we weren't working together.

and this was the day we were given our table groupings. me at c4, with terence and cs, and xue er as our timekeeper. it was terence's first fll meeting that day, apparently. we very briefly went through the table layout and possible scenarios. i was supposed to be giving the briefing for my table, but then because sean's sounded much more interesting so in the end we sort of merged. luckily we did, because i was running out of stuff to say. sean went for skirmish while i was in germany, so that old guy had more stuff in his head.

the next few days were spent corresponding with kwan yong, who was in charge of our schedule for the next two referee meetings. i first replied his mail because his name was upside down. in his next mail, he sent me the link. i wanted to post the upside thing, but it couldn't show up. but do click on it yeah, it's quite interesting.

so my next referee-timekeeper meeting was on the follwing wed. it was a very heated up discussion with sean, me and terence. the rest pretty much kept quiet. i don't remember if it was then that we met ernest. either wed or thurs.

because the next day i went for the meeting too, since fri i had to be in school. ernest was a referee nominated by the head referee, who was his sec sch teacher. he received a special welcome from ida, but not exactly in a good way but in heartware there's nothing really bad. because he was overseas the whole time we had our other meetings. so ida had to print all the referee handouts for him, and that amounted to quite alot. referees have alot of responsibility.

the thursday meeting was much quieter, prolly because we had less questions to cover. then we went on to dual-lock all the mats and the models. and double sided taping the bottom of the mats so they could be attached to the tables. and that was the day i left my scissors at heartware. i don't think i'm going back to get it, since i live at jurong and heartware's at bishan and i've got no more third lang.

and the next time we met was on saturday at the national library. it was one day before the event. mr et was marking attendance and he came over to where me and sebas were sitting to ask if i was stephanie. sebas (and i) were astonished by his air of authority. he had this kind of voice that would make you want to listen to him and work with him and respect him. powerful.

that meeting was to set the area for competition purpose the next day. we helped pack the goodie bags, (and took some home ourselves), and we divided into our job groups to go through stuff that would happen the next day. referees and timekeepers and our runner basically stuck the models on the mat, qc-ed them, took them off, pack them back into their boxes, labelled them, and slack. and we were very happy about it.

and that was the day i started to know cs. i saw him on the phpss day, but only talked to him on this saturday.

and that night, he sms-ed me to morning call him the next morning.

so on 11 jan i woke up at 4.30 am. morning called sebas at 5am, then called cs at 5.30. by seven am at the national library the orange referees were very prominant around the other blue volunteers, whom mr et called the smurfs.

11 jan shan't be described further by words. pictures say much more.



we're not clapping, we're doing the chicken dance.















my favourite photo!

heh.

die. monday got chem test. whole of organic chem. now i know what to bring for fll. chem notes.

and...math test on 20 jan, entire book three. well erm, i'll study for it, hopefully i'll get a decent grade.

went to shop for cny shoes at jp, three hours of futile walking about. gahh. luckily we're going to bugis tomorrow, sebas and i. only maybe in the afternoon...maybe we don't have much time. thanks to fll at weird timing. where got people do recee at 3-6 one.

last week of school hols

so. school starts next week.

but i guess fll takes priority now.