olympics day 3: final report (sick of silver)

well, at least you got nice cheeks!

koreans like to think of themselves as the italians of asia. you know, peninsula, love of food, and, err "passionate" people. but thank goodness koreans are better sportmen and women than their euro brothers of another mother. geesh. what jerks!

anyhow, after quite a run, the 155 cm/45 kg- (5'1"/99 lbs) nam hyun-hee beat one italian but fell to another. the exciting match started with nam overcoming an 0-3 deficit. at the end of period 2, she was down by one. after a very tense 2.5 minute tete-a-tete, she nailed her opponent to tie it up again. she even went ahead for a hot second before falling behind in the last seconds to take home silver. silver is so much less fun than gold.

afterwards the italian coach was awkwardly carrying the victor around like she was... disabled. is that anyway an olympic champion should behave? i'm not bitter. anyway, here's an enjoyable piece of nam trivia:

turns out she was suspended from the soko national team in 2006 for 6 months for unauthorized cosmetic surgery. home girl got her eyelids doubled (permission was granted) and had fat injected into her cheeks (not granted). i can understand the temptation to get everything taken care of at once. but when she came back to training all puffy and had to sit out for a few days, her coaches wised up to procedure #2 and she was punished. only in korea!

and, finally: the medal standings after day 3:

jesus, talk about an unsavory foreign policy trio at the bottom!

soko maintains its #3 slot (korean tv pegs them at #2 since they have more golds than the usa. i love korea!) re: arch-nemesis japan, hmmm... what a difference a day makes...