The cheetah challenger
QUESTION Michael Phelps swam a race against a great white shark. Have other athletes raced animals? U.S. Swimmer michael Phelps is the world’s most decorated Olympian, with a total of 28 medals (23 gold). Nicknamed the Flying Fish, he was the subject of a much-hyped 100m race against a great white shark for the Discovery Channel.
Viewers were left disappointed when it emerged that Phelps’s rival was a computer simulation. in the event, Phelps lost, hardly surprising in that he can swim at up to 6mph while great whites are known to swim at up to 25 mph.
There have been a number of genuine man-vs-animal races.
One of the most famous athletes was the American Jesse Owens (1913-1980). At the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, the black athlete humiliated Hitler by demonstrating his superiority over Aryan rivals by winning gold in the 100m, 200m, long jump, and 4 x 100m relay.
Owens later struggled financially back home in a country where racism was rife and his sport was not professional, so to make money, he raced and defeated racehorses. He not only used his prodigious speed, but also guile to do this.
The trick was to select a highly strung thoroughbred that would be frightened by the starter’s shotgun and thus give Owens a head start. ‘People say it was degrading for an Olympic champion to run against a horse, but what was i supposed to do? i had four gold medals, but you can’t eat four gold medals,’ he said.
South African winger Bryan Habana was one of the fastest players in international rugby, able to run the 100m in an impressive 10.4 seconds. in 2007, keen to raise awareness about the decline of the cheetah, he raced the world’s fastest mammal in a 100m race. Though Habana was given a significant head start he lost, because cheetahs can run at 70mph.
Mac Hampson, Cheltenham, Glos. QUESTION Where does the notion of a onetrick pony come from? THe Oxford english Dictionary says a one-trick pony was, in the 19th century, literally that: a pony that had been taught one trick, especially one in a circus. The earliest known reference comes from the U.S. 1898 Transactions of the Oregon Pioneer Association: ‘Among the earliest of mundane things remembered are the resplendent red shirts of the volunteer firemen, conspicuous in every 4th of July parade; the marvels that were seen at the first one-tent, one-clown, one-trickpony, pioneer Oregon circus; the procession that always responded to the whistle and went down to greet the arrival of every steamboat.’
The circus context underpins the idea of the metaphorical use i.e. a person or group noteworthy for only a single achievement, skill or characteristic.
Mary Shand, Oxford. QUESTION An earlier answer mentioned the mass canonisation of Vietnamese saints. What happened to them? CATHOliCiSm in Vietnam began in 1533 when a Portuguese mission arrived. Shortly afterwards, an imperial edict forbade Christianity, but in 1615 the Jesuits were able to establish a mission.
in 1627, the influential French Jesuit, Fr Alexandre de rhodes (1591-1660), set up a mission at Tonkin in northern Vietnam.
He was expelled in 1630, but had left a lasting legacy: he had baptised 6,700 people and devised an alphabet for the Vietnamese language from the latin script. Today, it is the official writing system referred to as Quoc Ngu (or national language).
when rhodes returned in the 1640s he was sentenced to death, but this was commuted to exile. He then went to France, where he established the Paris Seminary for Foreign missions in 1659. By 1802, Nguyen Anh had conquered all of Vietnam and declared himself emperor under the name Gia long.
He tolerated the Catholic faith of his French allies, but his successor in 1820, minh mang, a supporter of Confucianism, was antagonistic to the Catholic faith.
in February 1825, he banned missionaries from entering Vietnam. French merchantmen were searched ‘lest some masters of the european religion enter furtively, mix with the people and spread darkness in the kingdom’.
in 1833, all Catholics were ordered to renounce the faith. Those who refused suffered beatings, amputations and burnings, before being disembowelled. Others were branded on the face with the words ta dao — ‘left (sinister) religion’. Families and villages were obliterated.
Under the reactionary Tu Duc, between 1857 and 1862, an estimated 115 native priests, 100 Vietnamese nuns and more than 5,000 members were martyred.
As many as 40,000 Catholics were dispossessed of their lands. The martyrdoms ended with the Treaty of Saigon 1862, which brought Vietnam under the French empire.
in 1988, all Vietnamese Catholics who had died for their faith from 1533 to the present were canonised by Pope John Paul ii as the Vietnamese martyrs.
Marcus Warine Penzance, Cornwall.
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