1 . I believe even the smartest people have to work hard to achieve success, because there is no such person as a born winner. People turn themselves into winners by their own       _______

I learned this lesson from a(n) _______ many years ago. I took the head _______ job at a school in Baxley, Georgia. It was a small school with a weak football program.

It was a _______ for the school’s old team to play against the new team at the end of spring practice. The old team had no coach, and they didn’t even practice to _______ the game. Being the coach of the new team, I was excited because I knew we were going to win, but to my disappointment we were defeated. I couldn’t _______ I had got into such a situation. Thinking hard about it, I came to _______ that my team might not be the number one team in Georgia, but they were _______ me. I had to change my _______ towards their ability and potential.

I started doing anything I could to help them build a little ________. Most importantly, I began to treat them like ________. That summer, When the other teams enjoyed their       ________, we met every day and ________ passing and kicking the football.

Six months after suffering our ________ on the spring practice field, we won our first game and our second, and continued to win. ________, we faced the number one team in the state. I felt that it would be a ________ for us even if we lost the game. But that wasn’t what happened. My boys beat the best team in Georgia, giving me the greatest ________     of my life!

From the experience I learnt a lot about how the attitude of the leader can ________       the members of a team. Instead of seeing my boys as losers, I pushed and ________ them. I helped them to see themselves ________, and they built themselves into winners. Winners are made, not born.

2 . Cheerleading has a long-standing history in the United States. Many cheerleaders begin the _________ in primary school and can continue until university. Even professional sports teams have cheerleaders. _________, those who fall in love with cheering can continue the sport into _________.

Organized cheering started at Princeton University in 1884, when the crowd created a cheer to _________ its team. In 1898, it was Tom Peebles that became the first cheerleader when he successfully led the crowd at the University of Minnesota. Cheerleading members can make some efforts to _________ injuries. In 1923, cheerleading _________ to women.

Cheerleading has grown _________ since its origins in the United States. Most college football and basketball teams currently have their own cheerleading group. Moreover, every team in the NFL has a cheerleading squad (队), as well as the _________ of NBA teams.

Cheerleading has become an exceedingly _________ program to cheer for sports teams. From 1982 to 2006, 45 major injuries __________ during high school cheerleading events, with two of those injuries accidentally __________ in deaths. Of the 45 injuries, 14 of them also led to __________ disabilities unfortunately. __________ the same years, one female college student breathed her last, while an __________ five ended up with a disability and eleven suffered from serious injuries.

To help __________ safety in the sport, the American Association of Cheerleading Coaches and Administrators has made some __________ that members must follow. With all of the high flying __________ in cheerleading, injuries have the possibility to happen. During a forward roll, the top person must begin in a non-inverted (非倒立) __________ and keep hand-to-hand contact with two bases __________. These moves must also include a spotter who can protect the top person’s head and neck in case of a __________.

3 . Elsa Desmond knows she is not going to win a medal at the Beijing Winter Olympics, but she is ________ as the first women’s luge(无舵雪橇)Olympian from Ireland. She was the 26th to ________ the line in the first run of the women’s race on Monday night, ________ than none of the other athletes. However, that did not ________ to her and she celebrated with a large smile on her face.

Although she will not win in Beijing, she has already won some ________ . She had been given many reasons why she could not compete: she is too short, she did not start ________ at a young age, and she could not balance a(n) ________ job with competing in a sport. The biggest ________ simply might have been that Ireland did not have a luge organization. So, she ________ one herself; she had to self-fund.

Now, ________ , she is a luge Olympian. “I’m a doctor in general surgery, I have all these really ________ challenges, but I think everyone has worked as hard as they can to be here. ”She is expected to return to work on this Friday because she was given some time ________ to compete in the Olympics, and now she has ________ parts of her job.

Desmond has to balance these two ________ jobs—sliding a few months out of the year and living a life in medicine. There was a(n) ________ last season when she had to take important medical examinations in hotels in Germany where other sliders from different countries were staying. “I had to stick signs on my door saying ‘Do not disturb, exam in ________ , in about six different ________ .”

Desmond got the honor of ________ her country in Beijing, and being one of two people ________ Ireland’s flag during the opening ceremony on Friday. “I don’t think I can ________ words how excited I was to lead out the team. I really hope that I make my country proud.”

4 . British Cycling had recently hired Dave Brailsford as its new director. At the time, professional cyclists in Great Britain had ________ nearly one hundred years of mediocrity(平庸). In fact, their________   had been so poor that one of the top bike companies in Europe ________ to sell bikes to the team because they were afraid that it would hurt sales if other professionals saw the British people using their bikes.

What made Brailsford different from previous coaches was his________ of searching for a tiny improvement in everything they do. The whole principle came from the idea that if you________   everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, improve it by 1 percent and you will get a________ increase when you put them all together.

Brailsford and his coaches began by making small________. They redesigned the bike seats to make them more________. They asked riders to wear electrically heated over-shorts to ________ ideal muscle temperature while riding and used biofeedback sensors to ________how each athlete responded to a particular workout.

But they didn’t stop there.They________ to find 1 percent improvements in overlooked areas. They hired a(n)________ to teach each rider the best way to wash their hands to reduce the ________ of catching a cold. They even painted the ________ of the team truck white, which helped them ________little bits of dust that would normally slip by ________ but could affect the performance of the________tuned bikes.

As these and hundreds of other small improvements were ________, the results came faster than anyone could have ________. Just five years after Brailsford took over, they________ the road and track cycling events in all the important Games.

5 . How much do you know about athletes? Many people regard watching sports games as a form of _________. But for athletes, they are challenging the _________ of human beings and breaking boundaries. Intensive training is a task which they do every day as a matter of _________. On May 6, 1954, Roger Bannister, who ran a mile in 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds, _________ the whole world’s attention. People believed that it was _________ imagination for a person to run a mile within 4 minutes. Bannister made a（n）

_________ in what people believed was impossible. In the years since, more and more athletes have overcome the four—minute—mile _________. Today, the record—held by Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco since July 7, 1999—_________ at 3 minutes and 43. 13 seconds!

Records are _________ at a lower and lower rate in both running and other fields. When new records are set, they're changed by a small proportion of a（n） __________ . The decimal point（小数点）,set at one- tenth of a second for Bannister's record, now __________ one-hundredth of a second. __________, we'll have to go to a third decimal place, and then a fourth.

The closer athletes get to being __________, the harder it is to make improvements. Even though they are __________ the best performances of human beings, excellent athletes can still __________ proportions of seconds off existing records. They have a real __________ to break records. The gaps between new and old records decrease __________. Athletes are getting closer and closer to physiological __________ performances all the time. It will be tougher and tougher __________. However, excellent athletes never __________ trying.