From Tragedy to Triumph Olympian Steiner Overcame Adversity to Win Gold
In June 2007, just one year before the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, an SUV traveling on the wrong side of the road hit 22-year-old Susann Steiner — wife of German Olympic weightlifter Matthias Steiner — while she was driving. She was rushed to the hospital, and it was there that Matthias promised her he would win a gold medal in her honor. Tragically, Susann died as a result of her injuries, but Matthias’ promise to his late love lived on. Wanting to make his wife proud, Matthias trained harder than ever before. He had been lifting weights since he was just a teenager, and though he had won medals and championships before, he had never claimed the ultimate prize: an Olympic medal. Matthias also had to compete in the super heavyweight category against the strongest weightlifters in the world. Among his competitors were the formidable Russian Evgeny Chigishev, an Olympic veteran and champion, and the Latvian Viktors Scerbaiths, who won the silver medal at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. “Weightlifting is a sport without mercy [and] it is very tough to make progress,” Matthias said in an interview with the Olympic Channel. “Every time you touch the bar, you realize that you
are always alone in weightlifting, the weights are getting heavier and heavier, everything hurts.” But Matthias was not alone. His memory and dedication to Susann inspired him to attain strength he never imagined possible. As it turned out, he needed
Photo: Dacoucou
every ounce of his strength to claim victory. The competition was incredibly close. Matthias’ victory was not secure until the last lift; he needed to clean and jerk an astounding 569 pounds — more than he had ever lifted before — to fulfill his promise. Incredibly, he succeeded. He edged out Chigishev by 1 kilogram, winning the gold medal with a score of 461 against Chigishev’s 460. After he had completed his lift, he fell to his knees in tears. At the podium, he held his gold medal and a bouquet of roses in his right hand and clutched a picture of Susann in his left. Matthias honored Susann’s memory with his gold medal victory, exactly as he promised.
MY WORD! EXPLORING THE RICH HISTORY OF SCRABBLE
Brunot’s Bargain As soon as Brunot secured the rights to the game, he began making significant changes to it. These included redesigning the board, its color, players’ starting position, and the location of various score multiplier tiles. But his most important contribution was changing its name to Scrabble! The owner of Macy’s then discovered the game and offered to carry it in his stores. Brunot went from creating 12 copies of the game an hour when he first acquired the rights to 2,000 sets per week by 1952. By 1954, millions of copies were sold. Today, the game has been translated into over 20 languages and has sold over 100 million copies. People play the game worldwide, in tournaments and living rooms alike, and it has allowed millions to share in the joy initially envisioned by a down-on-his-luck architect in a time when hope was a distant prospect.
the iconic lettered tiles, each with separate quantities and point values. Butts determined the point values by surfing through his collection of local newspapers and counting how often each letter appeared. To prevent players from creating too many cheap plurals, he included only four “S” tiles in each box and assigned the letter a measly 1 point. Butts was eager to share his idea with the world, but the world was not as eager to receive it. He pitched the game to several publishers and retailers, but all rejected it. Butts had to retail it on a small scale, and the game did not become the surefire hit he expected it to be. It wasn’t until fellow New Yorker James Brunot discovered the game that things changed for the better. Brunot offered to mass-produce the game and, in exchange, would provide Butts with a portion of the profits, which Butts happily agreed to.
In 1931, the Great Depression — the worst economic crisis in American history — had thoroughly dampened the country’s spirit. Amidst the crisis, Alfred M. Butts, an out-of-work New York architect, decided to create a game to take his mind off the economy. Aspiring to develop a classic to join the ranks of other timeless card and board games, Butts came up with the idea for a board-and-tile game he non-committedly named “Criss Cross,” which we now know as Scrabble. The Architect’s Plan At its core, Scrabble was inspired by crossword puzzles and always featured
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