Susanna Giovanardi goes by the moniker "Tennis Girl" on Instagram.
To support that, she has pictures like the following, as well as videos demonstrating that she's got a pretty good game (including a solid two-handed backhand):
She also has pictures like this, indicating that she's outstanding from both sides.
Just a warning, I may have more posts like this.
Vaccination During Pregnancy Protects Newborns From Whooping Cough"A research team under the auspices of Prof. Beate Kampmann, Director of the Institute of International Health at Charité and Scientific Director of the Charité Center for Global Health, has now been able to prove for the first time that the antibodies transmitted by the mother are not only present in the blood but also in the nasal mucosa of newborns – which is precisely where the pathogens enter the body. "We knew that maternal antibodies are passed on by way of the placenta. We were surprised, however, to find that we could also detect them in the nasal mucosa of newborns – in a manner that is gentle on the children. This underlines the effectiveness of indirect vaccination"
"Even today, whooping cough remains a deadly disease in many parts of the world. Every year, between 200,000 and 300,000 people die from it, mainly young children in low- and middle-income countries where good vaccines are not always available. Consequently, the research team is planning further studies to help improve existing pertussis vaccines and test the efficacy of new vaccines."
REFERENCE:
This post is about swimmer extraordinaire Kate Douglass.
Just a few weeks ago, she set a world record in the 50 meter (long course, of course) freestyle. Several days after that, her former teammate at Virginia and current teammate on the USA team, Gretchen Walsh, broke that record.
So, at the Pan Pacific Championships that just concluded in Irvine, California, Douglass rebroke/reset the 50 meter freestyle world record by a few hundredths of a second. That happened in the preliminary heats in the morning.
So, in the evening, in the lane right next to Walsh, and with a few other darned good sprinters in pursuit, she did it again. But she didn't just lower it a bit -- she eradicated it by nearly three-tenths of a second. In a swimming sprint, that's enormous.
Furthermore, in about 20 minutes, she was second in the 200 meter breaststroke, which is a crazy mix. Maybe she was a little tired.
But not so tired that she couldn't anchor the winning 4x100 meter medley relay -- over the Aussies. (OK, they were missing a couple of stars. But still, it was the Aussies.)
But wait -- the night before, leading off the 4x100 meter freestyle relays, which also beat the Aussies, she missed breaking the world record for the 100 meter freestyle by one-hundredth of a second.
Seriously, that is a massive set of accomplishments over a couple of days.
Finally, I think she's also taking her image a bit more seriously, too. I tried to find some advertisements I'd seen recently, but couldn't immediately locate them.
Instead, if one wonders how she's doing this, one clue is her arms. She's slender, but ...
Combine those with unnatural flexibility, and she can slice through the water with power.
By the way, was she even mentioned on ESPN Sports Center?
If she was, I missed it.
I fear that I can never catch up with the pace of events happening in the world. Politically, environmentally, athletically -- everything seems to be going on at an accelerated pace. And my own life is similar; such that I have not been able to blog at the pace that I have been accustomed to.
As I've noted before, I want to change that and get back on a regular pace. Once a day would be fine -- if I can get that going. Three times a month is not worth it. So I am going to try and change my trajectory.
I'm also going to have a lot of Lighthouses of the Week. I have an extended backlog there, too. But I intend to catch up, even if I have to have five Lighthouses of the Week in one week a couple of times.
So, meanwhile, let's finish with a picture. This is Pointe de Dinan in France, which can at times have surfable waves. This was not one of those times.
Why is this place interesting? Well, for one thing, it also has this incredible sea arch.
You can see more pictures of it (and the Pointe) on this page.
I know what you're thinking, and I did that deliberately. The best what? Best ice cream? Best Certified Public Accountant? Best place to get a beer and watch the game?
No, none of those things. It's another one of the lists, this time the "Best Small Town in Your State", on the discoverer.com blog.
Out of curiosity, of course, I read the list to see which ones I've been to. Six of them; I need to get out more. Maryland has Oakland, actually a long haul from most of the state. Illinois has Galena, which I haven't been to, but I've been to Galesburg. A couple of them are touristy, like Branson in Missouri and Helen in Georgia and Leavenworth in Washington and Bar Harbor in Maine (one of the six I've been to).
I'll finish this with a picture of one I'd like to visit: Meredith, New Hampshire. Looks good in every season.
OK, so England didn't win the World Cup (again). There was considerable wailing and gnashing of teeth. But soccer is mostly about disappointment. So they'll figure out how to live with it.
But a couple of days later, an Englishman did what Englishmen have been doing for decades -- he broke the world record in the mile.
Remember that the mile is an English unit of measure, too. Because of that, the track mile race is not contested very often. The 1,500 meter race is. So when someone lines up to break world record in the mile, they probably plan to do it.
Josh Kerr did just that. He broke the record in the mile. If you haven't seen it, it's worth watching.
Here:
But getting back to England; if you look at the mile record progression, ever since Roger Bannister (English) broke 4:00, it has been held by runners from England, the British Commonwealth (I can rope in Australia and New Zealand that way), and former English colonies (USA) for the latter half of the 20th century, until an Algerian and a Moroccan held it in the 1990s. The record that Kerr broke was set in 1999.
So it's a very British/English thing to hold the world record in the mile. And even though they didn't win the World Cup, Kerr brought the record home.
While we're on the subject of sports that recently happened, I have to mention two things that happened TODAY (hard to do that when I'm trying to catch up on a couple of lost months).
A. The FIFA World Cup. Spain defeated Argentina 1-0. It was a soccer fan's dream, and a nightmare for those trying to sell the sport in the USA. Because it wasn't exciting. It was clearly a mismatch, the classic where one team is dominant and the other team is hoping for some luck. Now, the other team was Argentina, and they had Lionel Messi, and he's good at making luck. Amazingly enough, in the last desperate minutes, down a man, he still almost made the luck he's famous for.
But was it exciting? If you hope for something more than a boring game, maybe. It was like hoping for a miracle but not expecting one. So the better team won, as expected for the whole game.
Yes, there was great defense and some amazing saves from the Argentinian goalkeeper, Martinez. But when one goalkeeper is making a lot of great saves and the other team is not getting any shots on goal, that's not a great contest.
So let's move on to B. the British Open (aka The Open Championship).
That was actually exciting. In this case, because of numerous surprises. An unexpected first-found leader, golfers shooting 62s when hardly anyone else could, including a 39-year old New Zealander. The really surprising thing was that one of the 62 shooters, Sam Burns, stayed in it until nearly the end, an early starter (Cameron Young) posted a score that almost got him into a playoff, and one of the other 62 shooters, the New Zealander named Ryan Fox, sank an 11-foot birdie putt to win it.
(By the way, Fox is a very accomplished international golfer. But the USA sports networks don't cover the PGA Tour of Australasia or the European Tour very much. Golf aficionados have likely heard of him, and he has won a PGA Tour event and the RBC Canadian Open. So even though he's not particularly well-known, he had the game, obviously.)
So the players that were expected to win didn't, an unlikely winner took the cup, and the outcome was uncertain until the last hole.
That's exciting. And Ryan Fox knew it.
