thats something i did not know - thanks for the pointer. but as far as sportsmanship goes, my hopes are dim. at the cost of being accused of doug's "anti-americanism", i must say that the winter olympics and its coverage have done nothing but enforce the lack of it (sportsmanship): after a couple of days of speculating on whether "north america" would take the pair skating gold away from russia, yesterday's result was summed up as "controversial" by american media and blown out of proportion. in today's report "narrow escape" (for the russians), CNN uses such gems of logic as stating that "even the NBC commentators could not believe the result" and yesterday bob costas and the commentators feigned amazement and practiced pretentious generosity ("nobody should hold it against the russians") while reasoning that "how is it that you win the audience and the event but lose the gold". this from a media that did everything to present a "balanced view" when a different set of judges (the supreme court) handed a different contest to the loser (bush) of the popular voice (and whats worse, the bush-gore contest was to be decided by the popular voice, unlike olympic events)!
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/olympics/2002/figure_skating/news/2002/02/11/pairs_ap/
(not that i wish to pretend the rest of the world is more sporting, but i do remember a time when sportsmanship was the key element of a good cricket match, despite such incidents as bodyline bowling).
--ravi