Y'know, the character who had nearly won his high school state football championship back in '82...and 20+ years later, hadn't moved on from saying he was an "elite" quarterback - or from identifying himself solely from his near shot at glory.

I wonder if Jen has a big tattoo marked "ELITE" somewhere on her body??

Is her car's license plate read "EL1TE" ??

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Someone in Jennifer's life needs to organize an intervention.

People she cares about need to look her in the eye as say lovingly but firmly:

"Yes, you trained hard and were competitive.

But you never made the Olympics.

You never won a medal at the Olympics.

But deluding yourself that you are/were an "Elite Gymnast" is not good for your soul.

Neither is loathing everyone else; the rest of the world is not responsible for your broken femur.

SO please - for YOUR sake - please accept this reality check made out to Jennifer Sey."

Which probably is what got John attracted to her.

Basic human nature - we are tempted by that which is different from our regular experience. Of course, many of us resist such temptations, multiple times...

But sometimes - especially when you've been married for a long time - a person succumbs to that forbidden breath of fresh air.

In other words, she choked. She had a breakdown.

True "elite" athletes don't crumble in the face of injury or pressure/stress. Ahmad Rashad broke his finger in a crucial NFL game - and returned to the game to make important catches. How important were his fingers? He was a wide receiver, fer chrissakes.

Michael Jordan played one of his best games ever when he was so sick with the flu that an average (read: "non-elite") person or athlete would have been hospitalized.

These, my friend, are examples of elite athletes.

And ya know what else? I voraciously follow sports - read and listen to interviews, etc. -and I have never once heard Jordan, Rashad, Lance Armstrong, Brett Favre, Mia Hamm or any other winning athlete refer to themselves as "elite"

Not once - and certainly not so many times as to inspire a drinking game the way Sey does! =)

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True elite athletes let their achievements speak for themselves.

They don't bellow it every chance they get, because they don't need to.

And having a chip on the shoulder against regular Joes & Janes who dare to enjoy sports at a plebian level - just because you felt you were entitled to be an Olympian yourself - is misguided, delusiional and idiotic.

Sey certainly has the right/freedom to take out her bitterness on us mere human folk in her writings...

But - and this is what all you defenders of her don't get - is that we also have the right to not simply absorb her attacks, but the freedom to respond in a written way. Nobody here is calling for her head. We just feel it important to call her onher bullshit superiority complex and delusional arrogance.

Neither her - nor us - should be forcibly silenced.

I placed second in my National Math Olympiad and participated in the International Math Olympiad in 1994. No, I shit y'all not!

Hope that makes me 'elite' enough "in a competitive venture" to retain the right to be critical of Sey.

Btw acarsaid, I lost my Certificate of Participation in the I.M.O. a long time ago during an apt. move, so your rent money is safe. =)

Btw II - @ Salon: maybe you should start an Education column, which I could contribute to regularly....beginning all my articles with the lines, "As a former elite mathematician..."

For anyone wondering if Usain was doping: c'mon, people. Anyone who was using steroids to get the barest competitive edge would be on a super-controlled macrobiotic 200% healthy diet...and probably as uptight / nervous as hell come race time.

This kid ate Mickey D's (you know their Marketing Dept. is gonna offer him a gazillion-dollar endorsement deal: eat our chicken nuggets, folks, and maybe YOU can sprint at 30 mph!Run it your way... =) - and was so damn loose come race time (did you see that 'speed' pose and dancehall groovin' he was doing while everyone else was stretching?).

There's no way he is on roids...just a 100% natural freak of wonder. Same too for the Jamaican girl who won the women's 100 m: 21 years-old, first timer, loose, playful with no pressure / nothing to lose.

All of you are needed to keep the chocolate factories humming along - so as to provide the world with sugary cocoa goodness!

(...in a handbasket, I know ;-)

((Barely 6-ft tall myself))

I think at least part of this return to boring brilliance/dominance is thanks to the change at head coach: Coach K seems to command better respect and have a better rapport with players than Larry Brown does (...at least historically).