Tag Archives: World Cup

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Winter Sports — At What Cost?

By Hannah Quinque

Not exact­ly an idyl­lic view: The future of win­ter sports lies in pro­duc­ing arti­fi­cial snow.
Pho­to cred­it: “Ski jump­ing in Ober­st­dorf, Ger­many” by Arne Müse­ler 

“Hav­ing the World Cup back on U.S. soil is very impor­tant in devel­op­ing the sport of Ski Jump­ing in this coun­try and across the world,” enthus­es one ski jump­ing train­er about the return of the Men’s Ski Jump­ing World Cup to his­tor­i­cal site Lake Placid, NY, after over three decades. As heart-warm­ing as this news may be for North Amer­i­can win­ter sports afi­ciona­dos, it’s hard to feel as opti­mistic about ‘devel­op­ing’ the future of snow sports when cli­mate change is already heav­i­ly impact­ing events even today.

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Yay! People love her!

By Bobbie Kirkhart

pho­to cred­it: Jamie Smed @ flickr

Soc­cer star Megan Rapi­noe has a twin sis­ter, but every­one rec­og­nizes that they are fra­ter­nal twins because Megan cer­tain­ly is one of a kind. She’s unique from her bright pink hair to her red hot feet. It’s her feet that made her famous, start­ing in 2005 with her role in the NCAA cham­pi­onship win for the Uni­ver­si­ty of Port­land; she made the U.S. nation­al team the next year.

In the 2011 World Cup, she played in all U.S. games. After one goal, she grabbed a micro­phone and sang Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” At the 2012 Lon­don Games, she scored direct­ly from a cor­ner kick, mak­ing her the only play­er to have done that in Olympic com­pe­ti­tions. In this year’s World Cup, she scored six goals, one of only four play­ers in the tour­na­ment to achieve that. She was the only play­er in this year’s tour­na­ment to score two goals each in con­sec­u­tive games.

Off the field, her mouth and her heart are as active as her feet.
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