MEXICO CITY — Complaints from athletes about fading medals have taken the shine off Mexico’s widely-praised organization of the Pan American games last month.

“The day they gave me my medal, it was shiny and perfect, but several days later it started losing its shine and now it looks oxidized, like old metal,” Mexican pole vaulter Giovanni Lanaro, who won a bronze, told AFP on Thursday

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01/14/12 Lumberjack Invitational Flagstaff, Ariz. All Day

01/27/12 Razorback Invitational Fayetteville, Ark. All Day

                 Washington Invitational Seattle, Wash. All Day

01/28/12 Razorback Invitational Fayetteville, Ark. All Day

               Washington Invitational Seattle, Wash. All Day

02/03/12 New Mexico Classic Albuquerque, N.M. All Day

02/04/12 New Mexico Classic Albuquerque, N.M. All Day

02/10/12 Boise State Team Challenge Boise, Idaho All Day

                 Husky Classic Seattle, Wash. All Day

02/11/12 Boise State Team Challenge Boise, Idaho All Day

                 Husky Classic Seattle, Wash. All Day

02/24/12 MPSF Championships Seattle, Wash. All Day

02/25/12 MPSF Championships Seattle, Wash. All Day

03/03/12 Iowa State NCAA Qualifier Ames, Iowa All Day

03/09/12 NCAA Championships Boise, Idaho All Day

03/10/12 NCAA Championships Boise, Idaho All Day

Pole vaulter Keisa Monterola charges and plants the pole in the box, launching herself in the air. She throws her body over the bar before descending down to the pad as the crowd roars throughout the arena.

Monterola, a transfer student from Clackamas Community College (CCC), placed fifth at the 2011 Pan American Games with a mark of 14 feet, 1 ¼ inches in Guadalajara, Mexico, Oct. 24. She will be looking to break Eastern’s pole vaulting record and qualify for the 2012 Olympics.

Monterola represented EWU and her home country of Venezuela in the games.

While her 14-1 ¼ mark is less than a foot better than the Eastern pole vaulting record of 13-2 ¼, it does not count because she was not competing in an NCAA sanctioned event, according to Eastern’s athletic website.

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The ability to step outside yourself and candidly observe your habits, your life, can be done.

Olympic gold medal pole vaulter Tim Mack said he did that through his sports psychologist. “He got me to believe in myself.”

When Mack comes to the area to speak at Tuscarawas Valley High School gymnasium at

7 p.m. Friday, he envisions himself in the audience listening to the man on the stage.

“I only jumped 13-6 in high school,” Mack said. “I didn’t go to state. I was 6-foot, 140 pounds.

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Wladyslaw Kozakiewicz at the 1980 Olympics

The early 1980s saw the Olympic Games become one of the hottest potatoes in global politics, with the United States and Great Britain both boycotting the Moscow Games, and the Soviets subsequently boycotting the Los Angeles Games four years later. (British athletes were subsequently allowed to compete under a general Olympic flag.)

But the most eye-catching protest at the 1980 Games came from within the Eastern bloc as Polish pole vaulter Wladyslaw Kozakiewicz celebrated securing gold at the expense of home favourite Konstantin Volkov by making an “up yours” gesture at the crowd who were booing him.

The significance of the gesture – at a time when Lech Walesa’s Solidarity movement was furiously trying to move Poland away from the USSR – was clear for all to see, and the photo made front pages around the world.

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The Hoover Institution has announced its National Security Fellows for the 201-2012 academic year.

The NSAF program allows individuals from the U.S. military and governmental agencies to conduct independent research relevant to their agencies. Fellows are admitted to the program based on a nomination process from their agency.

Mark Cassayre, representing the US Department of State

Cassayre has a master’s degree in international relations from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland, and bachelors’ degrees in French and political science from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He is a career US diplomat who has served overseas in Kenya, Ukraine, Namibia, and Geneva; Cassayre most recently served as the political counselor at the US Mission to the United Nations in Geneva, with responsibilities covering the UN Human Rights Council, the World Health Organization, and the International Labor Organization. In his other diplomatic posts, he has focused on human rights, democracy, political affairs, nonproliferation, and political-military cooperation. Cassayre’s advocacy in Kenya, immediately after the bombing of the US Embassy there, earned him the State Department’s Annual Award for Exceptional Achievement in Human Rights and Democracy. He speaks French and Ukrainian; his hobbies include camping, fishing, and pole vaulting.

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