5/31 Review: Checking Facts, Basketball, and ICTY, WHY?

News

BIGGEST NEWS OF THE WEEK:

"#ICTY judgements are consistent, logical and contribute to reconciliation in the Balkans," said no one, ever. bit.ly/11dXlny
— Nastasja Vojvodić (@nastasja__v) May 30, 2013

All I'm going to say about that ^^ is holy balls of hellfire, I am slowly starting to hate ICTY.  Make up your mind about what is ancillary and what is not.

Hungarian Swimmer Honors Memory of Norwegian Rival

An article from WSJ's Emerging Europe blog:

The Olympics bring out the EU in Europe, I think.

Minimal Olympics Coverage

I haven't been able to watch the Olympics--no TV and no time--but I try to keep abreast in the major events of the Olympics.  I would do more in-depth coverage of ECE nations if I didn't have a day job and public transit didn't eat up additional hours of my day.  I would love to simply watch athletics for hours on end, but being an adult has completely eroded whatever time and enthusiasm I have left at the end of the day.

I wasn't aware that Slovakia had a company that made competition canoes.  Were you?  Luckily, my RSS feeds (see my page for the ones I follow!) brought this to my attention.  I see that Eastern Europe is doing pretty well in the medal count, all things considered.  The full list of medal counts are here on ESPN, but here is the individual list linked for your quick reference (these only include counties that have medals):
Belarus
Croatia 
Czech Republic
Germany
Hungary
Lithuania
Moldova 
Poland
Romania
Russia
Serbia
Slovakia (notice the number of canoeing medals!)
Slovenia
Ukraine

The medal count per capita in these countries must be higher than the USA, which has a ridiculous number of medals.  It seriously resembles the 1% getting the larger part of the spoil.  It is worthy to note that Hungary has more medals than Brazil (where my mother-in-law is from) or India, which is embarrassing for those BRIC countries.  You'd think that a "backwater" Eastern European nation with a despotically inclined PM would not get more medals than two of the fastest growing economies with large populations.  Funny, ain't it?

EuroCup

I haven't posted anything on the EuroCup because I'm an ignorant American who doesn't ever watch football (I know enough to call it football!).  I should get more into it since football plays a vital role in politics (re: Central and South America).  History plays a huge role as well, as the whole world realized today.  Just in case they forgot that some wounds go pretty deep.

Iryna Krasnianska

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Today is a more contemporary gymnast, hailing from the great Ukrainian nation.  I picked Iryna/Irina (however you choose to transliterate the Cyrillic) because of her completely bad ass balance beam mount.  She is well known for it and I have to say, it's something.  After watching her mount, you can understand why this photo via Couch Gymnast (which proclaimed her to have a 12 pack) is not a surprise.  With that being said, she has beautiful lines.  Speaking of balance beam, she won a gold medal at the 2006 World Championships.  She deserved it because it's real, real purdy.

Henrietta Ónodi

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Today's gymnast is Henrietta Ónodi of Hungary.  She is probably the most famous female gymnast of that small Ugric nation because she was the first gymnast to win a gold medal at a major competition since 1956.  She even has two moves named after her on the balance beam.  Fun fact about Henni (as she is sometimes called): she made her first appearance at the American Cup when she was 12 years old, but a mere 4 feet tall.  This made her the smallest competitor in AmCup's history.  This video of her beam routine at Kraft Invitational was from the same year and you can see that she's as tall as the beam itself.  So cute.  You can see more videos of her routines as a twelve year old if you browse related videos from that link.

Věra Čáslavská

I promised to do Female Gymnasts to complete the highlight of gymnastics.  It's here.  The reason I chose Věra is because as I watched a video about the development of the uneven bars, I was enamored with her hair and leotard.  Lucky for me, she turned out to be Czech.  But honestly, look at that coiffure!  It's phenomenal!  Granted, gymnastics wasn't as acrobatic in 1968, but it's lovely.  I did notice that USSR gymnast Larisa Petrik had the same 'do, but I saw Věra first.  The leotard looks like a navy uniform with the cute little lapel detail (see videos linked below).  I want to eat her up.

Jevgēņijs Saproņenko & Igors Vihrovs

I have done Latvia a great disservice and it's time to make that country's name a little bit bigger in the word cloud.  Sadly, I cannot find much on Latvian gymnasts!  Why must it be so?  Even the scant information is worth something, so I am going to redirect you to two contemporary gymnasts of Latvia.

Albert Azarian

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Albert Azarian is a Armenian gymnast from the days of Soviet yore.  I sought an Armenian gymnast, but all I came up with was Azarian.  His heyday was in the 1950s and 60s, which was quite a different scene from the gymnastics today.  This video is about the uneven bars, but you get the gist that gymnastics has evolved a lot in 50 years.  This video below starts off with the Azarian cross, which I have personally never seen performed in a rings routine.  He was known as the "king of the rings" and he gave it some real style and panache.  Plus, I think the mustache didn't hurt one bit. 

Marius Urzică

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Romania has a legendary male gymnast named Marius Urzică.  He is an undisputed master of the pommel horse (part of the reason I like him so much).  If you don't believe me, then believe this: he has a move on the pommel horse named after him.  He even has an eponymous move on parallel bars, which this routine showcases.  Does that get confusing for gymnasts?  Marius was also in the 1996, 2000, and 2004 Olympics.  All the golds and silvers he won were on pommel horse, which should come as no surprise. 

Alexei Nemov

I've been pretty good about leaving Russia out of this blog.  I feel that information on Russia is far easier to find than countries like Macedonia, so I've tried to focus more on the smaller and less well known countries.  But today I feel like honoring Russia by having one of their own be the start of my Male Gymnasts week.