3 . Jesse Owens thought deeply of what he went through after the Berlin 1936 Olympic Games and said, “People say it was shameful for an Olympic champion to run against a horse, but what was I supposed to do? The fall from glory was hard to take and it surely troubled me. But at least it was an honest living. I had to eat.”

The four­time gold medal winner refused to accept an invitation to compete in Sweden immediately after the Games with fellow 1936 stars, and he received good commercial (商业的) offers back in the USA. Shortly after his athletic career ended, the commercial offers dried up and with no chance to remind the public of his good skills in sports, his life became difficult.

After getting married and having his first daughter, he had to earn money. He first took part in the local races and won easily because of his special talent. He then raced against motorbikes, cars, trucks and finally horses. In the following years, he worked as a lift operator, petrol station assistant, playground doorkeeper and manager of a dry cleaning firm.

It was in the 1950s that things started to change for Owens and his family. He began to give speeches to corporations and bodies including the Ford Motor Company and the US Olympic Committee. He opened his own public relations business, travelling across the USA to stress the importance of behaving in a fair and respectful way towards the opposing team or player. In 1976, President Gerald Ford awarded Owens the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter presented the Olympic champion with the Living Legend Award. In 1990, George H. W. Bush posthumously awarded Owens the Congressional Medal of Honor.

4 . George Headley would have been a dentist in the USA rather than one of the greatest cricketers (板球运动员) if he had got his papers from Panama on time. The Indian legend was born in Colón, Panama and a period of unemployment in Jamaica caused him to begin the process of seeking a career elsewhere.

The delay, however, gave Headley time to make his first-class debut (首次亮相) for Jamaica against the visiting Lord Tennyson’s XI from England. These were his scores in the three first-class games in the series: 16, 40, and 71. The rest, as they say, is history. Yet, consider what might have occurred if his documents had arrived on time and he had migrated to America. There would have been a missing chapter in cricket.

Headley’s ta le brings to the fore the role that happenstance (偶然情况) plays in life. In the song A Different Comer, George Michael lamented (哀叹) that a romantic union went wrong and suggested that it might have been better if circumstances had worked to prevent their first meeting: “Take me back in time; maybe I can forget. Turn a different corner and we never would have met.”

Our lives are the result of much planning and deliberate action. But they are the result of chance as well. “The harder I practice, the luckier I get” is a quote normally used by sportsmen to discount the occurrence or consequence of luck. Athletes like to think that whatever success they’ve had is only down to them. To admit otherwise is to devalue the skills and efforts.

The changes in luck are a large part of why we watch sports. It fosters uncertainty, which, in turn. enhances interest in the process and the result. On any given day, the underdog can be at the champion. Whenever that occurs, luck is likely to have played some significant part, and sport is better for it.

6 . Pele

Pele was born in Brazil in 1940. Like many other Brazilian kids, Pele loved football and often played the game in the streets. He also went to school and did odd jobs to help bring in money for the family. However, what he loved best was to play football in the streets or practise kicking the ball with his father(also a great football player).

Pele gained the attention of some coaches, first in the neighbourhood contests and later as he led his team to win the junior league tournament two years in a row. At the age of fourteen, Pele started to play for one of the first professional football teams in Brazil. As Pele became more experienced as a player, the game of football grew. By 1950, football had become the most popular game everywhere in the world, except for North America. What had begun as a British sport became the favourite sport of people all around the world. Football became a truly international sport.

Pele was in the Brazilian team in the World Cup matches of 1958. Before 1958, the Brazilian team had failed in the finals three times in a row. Some blamed the failure on the referee’s unfair decisions, which, however, was not the case. Actually, the Brazilians, though gifted, had no discipline. In the 1958 finals against Sweden, Pele kicked the winning goal, and he returned home a hero.

However, he never forgot his poor fellow men. Pele owned dozens of apartment houses, in which he often allowed poor families to live without paying rent. He bought his mother the home he had promised her when he signed his first professional contract. But the most exciting moment of all was in 1969, when Pele scored his thousandth goal. As football fans stormed onto the field and reporters begged for a speech, all he said was, “Remember the poor children.”

Today, Pele is one of the most famous athletes in the world. He retired in 1975. However, soon after that, he decided to play for three years with the New York team. He could not resist the challenge of trying to make football popular in the United States, one of the few countries in the world where football had not become the national sport. In 1977, Pele retired for good at the age of thirty-seven.

7 . Eileen Gu was born in the United States, to a Chinese mother, Gu Yan, and an American father.     1     So she speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese and English.

Gu started skiing when she was only three years old.     2     Her mother, as Gu put it, “accidentally created a pro skier”. Gu became champion of the junior group of the USA Snowboard and Freeski Association at age 9.     3     She earned her first World Cup victory at the FIS Freeski World Cup Slopestyle(坡面障碍技巧)in Italy, when she was 15 in January 2019.

In 2019, Gu announced that she would be representing China competitively via her Instagram account. The opportunity to help inspire millions of young people was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help to promote the sport she loved.     4     If she could help to inspire one young girl to break a boundary, her wishes would have come true.

Gu made her Olympic debut at the 2022 Winter Olympics. When Gu heard the announcer call her a “two-time Olympic gold medalist”, she couldn’t hold back the tears.     5     It was just like letting out this super deep breath that she had been holding for so long. Everything, all those little moments, added together and paid off.

Venus Williams and Serena Williams are both tennis     1    (champion). Venus is now 11th while Serena has moved up to 3rd in the world. They were     2    (bear) in a poor and dangerous area     3     was full of drugs and     4    (violent). Finally in 1991, their family moved (搬家) to a     5    (safe) area and since then they have never looked back.

The sisters’ father was strict with his daughters,    6    (train) them hard to compete     7     each other. Their mother     8    (teach) them at home so that they could complete high school. Today both sisters have expressed a keen interest in working in design after their careers come to     9    end.

The sisters’ road to     10    (succeed) has been amazing. Venus has won Wimbledon and the US Open twice, while Serena has continued to improve and made fantastic progress. In 2002 and 2003, she was the women’s singles champion at Wimbledon.

9 . Famous tennis coach Nick Bollettieri considered tennis star Roger Federer the greatest player of all time, saying he is “in a class of his own”. The Swiss maestro (大师) won his record eighth Wimbledon title this month, defeating Croatian Marin Cilic in the final, and going to the entire tournament without dropping a single set.

The 36-year-old now has 19 Grand Slam titles, the most in history for a male tennis player. Bollettieri, who has coached some of the most successful tennis players ever including Andre Agassi and Jim Corurier, believes Federer stands out from the rest due to all the efforts he makes on and off the court. “When you get to know the greatest player of all time, I believe you will join with many commentators in saying Roger is standing in a class of his own,” Bollettien told Saturday Sport. “He is magnificent in expecting what to do. He has improved his backhand and also he is hitting the ball much earlier, and he is one of, if not the best placement server (发球员) in the game.”

His management team headed by Tony Godsick takes care of his mind and body, time with his family, time with his foundation and time with rest. He also respects the game and his opponents (对手). Despite his impressive record, Federer has struggled against the other top players of this generation, including Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. Along with Andy Murray, they are known as tennis “big four”, and Federer has a combined 50-57 record against the other three during his career.

However, Bollettieri doesn’t think that will have any impact on Federer’s greatness if he keeps on playing the way he is at his age. Bollettieri said, “Age is only a number. It is how you feel inside you. I believe a lot of people today can do a lot better if their mindset is to say I will get better every day and never use the word “retirement”. When you worry about losing, it is more difficult to win.”

10 . Johan Clarey tends not to be in much of a rush when it comes to anything other than speeding down a hill on skis. Add Olympic success to the list of things he’s waited for.

The Frenchman, who turned 41 in January, became the oldest man to win an Olympic medal in Alpine skiing in history when he claimed a silver behind Beat Feuz of Switzerland in the downhill at the Beijing Olympic Winter Games, breaking Bode Miller’s record by five years.

“Everything came late in my life. Since I was a young boy, that’s what my mother said,” Clarey said. “I take extra time to do everything — walking, speaking and everything. Apparently, my career started quite the same.”

This was Clarey’s fourth Olympics and realistically his last chance of being on the podium (领奖台) at the Olympics. “I took a lot of risks. I knew I had only one chance left in my career to get a medal in the Olympics,” he said. “And when I was going down, I knew I made a good run, but you never know in downhill skiing. Sometimes you’re fast, but sometimes you’re not. You never know why. But today was fast.” This was only Clarey’s second medal at a major championship; he also took home a silver in the super-G at the 2019 world championships.

And this big moment almost didn’t happen: Clarey had considered retirement. He said he’s been having doubts about whether to continue competing for six years. The Frenchman said, “At 35, I said to myself, You have to do one year by one year.” That, he says now, was “a good choice”, because he has the medal to prove it. Clarey is still not quite ready to quit. He will turn his attention back to the World Cup circuit.