That takes care of the mea culpas. Let’s get to the good stuff.
Here are some more Newport-Mesa all-world overachievers for you. This is the second Olympics for kayaker Rami Zur, who paddles like a windmill in a hurricane and lives in Costa Mesa, obviously a hotbed of kayaking.
Rami, who was born in Israel, planned to retire after the 2004 Athens games. But his career received took a strange turn just days after the 2004 games were over, when he dove into a shallow pool and fractured his spine.
After months of physical therapy that included some paddling, he realized that he wasn’t quite ready to hang up his paddle, and four years later, Rami is slicing up the waters for Team USA once again.
Then there is the extreme high jumper Sharon Day, a Costa Mesa High School alumna who graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo just this year with a boatload of school, national and world high jump records.
Ever seen the high jump in person? Incredible event. Take a look at the nearest doorway. That’s what “8 feet tall” means.
World-class high jumpers get a running start of a few steps, then hurl themselves over a bar at about that height, backward.
If anyone understands how that is possible, please contact me at your earliest convenience. You’ll see Day in action in Beijing and you will be amazed.
Simply superb swimmer Aaron Piersol is, like Misty May, a Newport Harbor High School graduate who is an old hand at the Olympics and is slated to make a huge splash in Beijing. These are the third Olympic Games for Peirsol, who said see ya to Athens in 2004 with three Big Gold Things.
Piersol swims backward really fast and was the youngest American to break two minutes in the 200-meter backstroke at the ripe old age of 15 — an incredible coincidence when you consider I was the youngest American to break 300 pounds at age 15.
