NYT Article on Women's Judo Champ Celita Schutz

This one slipped by me - an article on Celita Schutz, judo Olympian. Apparently she got divorced a few years back and was so broken up about it she temporarily quit judo. But once a judoka, always a judoka...

"Sure, I shed a tear," she said recently in her narrow one-bedroom apartment on Manhattan's West Side. "It hurt so much - I went into the marriage for the long term. But I knew I had to get on with my life."

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Pankration called "a model of dirty fighting"

Another article from the New York Times, this one about an exhibition of sculpture and vase paintings which depict the ancient Olympics. It opens with this:

If boxing and wrestling today seem a tad on the brutal side, consider pankration, an ancient Olympic sport that was a model of dirty fighting. A no-holds-barred combination of the two, it allowed choking, scratching, slapping, kicking, punching the genitals, leg tripping, finger bending and flipping an opponent overhead. A judge watched over the two opponents, ready with a stick to strike the perpetrator of fouls like biting and eye-gouging. The sport, if such it can be called, was added to the Olympic program about 75 years after the Games began, according to historians, in 776 B.C.

Click here to read the full article - free registration at NYTimes.com required.