My photo
Wellington, New Zealand
welcome to my corner of the blog world! i love step, boxing, zumba, scrapbooking, photography, watching movies, walking the hills of my suburb, my family, and life in wellington. take some time to have a look around and be sure to say hi!

Saturday, August 16, 2008

so proud

our gold medal winning shot putter valerie vili (wearing the flag) will have to wait until tomorrow for her share of the bling, but that didn't stop her celebrating. it's been 56 years since a new zealander has a won a 'field' gold medal, so another 24 hours won't hurt.

winning last night's gold medal on her FIRST throw, valerie is an ex-world junior champion, who won gold medal the 2007 world championships. at 23 years young she has overcome a rough upbringing and the death of both her parents, which makes her achievement all the more incredible.

i'm proud to call her a fellow kiwi.

not even a rampant case of 'beijing belly', and a 4kg weight loss in 7 days could stop our mighty mahe from claiming new zealand's first medal at the 2008 olympics. dramatic scenes followed his race finish, and you can read about them here.

ten minutes later we won another rowing bronze with our pairs sculls,

then our golden girls, twin sisters caroline and georgina evers-swindell won gold in a photo finish; defending their olympic title from athens in 2004.

not long after our golden moment, cyclist hayden roulston won our first silver medal of these games in the individual mens' pursuit. a great night at the office for the men and women in black.
GO KIWIS!!!

8 comments:

Amanda said...

Way to go!! It seems like I'm only seeing swimming, tennis, basketball and gymnastics over here. Maybe I'm just up at the wrong time.

And I'm not minding too much watching that Federer guy play some tennis. I could be swedish for a while.

Amanda said...

Not that I would be rooting for him if I was swedish, either, since he's swiss and all. Oops. Who knew swedish and swiss weren't the same thing. Probably everybody.

Anonymous said...

What I can say but w00t! Thanks for the heads up re: canada's medals. So cool to have a gold in women's wrestling. We usually do well in rowing, so I'm happy to see we have a medal there too. I was getting worried that we hadn't won any yet. We are always better at winter olympics. Congrats to the Kiwis on their medals too. Their olympics-wear is tres chique. I like the black.

Anonymous said...

Amanda - you're so funny.

Hubby follows tennis - hasn't Federer not done very well this year? I remember something about him losing a couple of matches to newcomers? Maybe that was someone else?


Everyone at my gym keeps talking about what that American swimmer eats for breakfast (the famous one, male swimmer? Breaking tons of records? I'm so bad with names! Phelps! (thanks google))- apparently his morning meal is amazingly huge.

Our Home Schooler and Jen said...

YAYE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
GO NEW ZEALAND!!!!!!!!!
Jen

Kristi Smith said...

I have tried to catch as much of the Olympics as I can. It sure is fun to watch. Congrats New Zealand!

And yes, I did get your e-mail!!!:)

Paula Lynn Johnson said...

Very cool, NZ! Thanks for this post -- our networks concentrate almost exclusively on the Americans.

gigi said...

Yeah! for NZ!! I love all the olimpics! They have been so much fun to watch!