ST reporter Terrence Voon -- filing from Palembang, Indonesia -- has done the same in his story today (17 Nov) spotlighting national swimmer Tao Li ("Tao fights back... She fends off flu, fatigue and most recent loss to smash 100m back mark," page B12):
Palembang: On an evening when even her own trainer had written her off, [diminutive] Tao Li reminded everyone who was the big fish in the [South-East Asia] Games pond.
The first lady of Singapore swimming claimed her sixth gold medal of this [26th SEA Games] Wednesday night, with a superlative swim in the women's 100m backstroke that broke her own Games record and left her new coach Ian Turner happily embarrassed.
"I don't think so," he [had] replied, when asked earlier if his charge -- a butterfly [ie not a backstroke] specialist -- could win the event. "If I had another six weeks with her? Maybe."
As it turned out, Tao Li did not need the extra work.
The 20-year-old was already leading when her head emerged from the water at the 15m mark. And as her rivals fell away with every stroke, it was clear the Singaporean was racing only herself.
She touched home in 1min 2.11sec -- nearly a full second faster than the time she set two years ago in a now-banned supersuit... [her] time was also a new personal best and national record.
All this, from an athlete who was suffering from the flu and the effects of swimming her seventh race in five days.
"It's great," she exulted later. "Before I swam, I was so tired. After my morning race, I felt like I wanted to give up, but Ian talked me through everything."
Tao Li's thoughts were also focused on erasing the memory of her only defeat so far -- the 200m back, when she could claim [only] a bronze...
[Head coach Ang Peng Siong] expects two more golds Thursday, the last night of this year's aquatics competition. One of them will almost certainly come from Tao Li in the women's 50m butterfly, where she is the reigning Asian Games champion.
"Nobody can race me in that one," she boasted [Blog note: Yes, she has since bagged the gold for that event!].
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Still on the current SEA Games, both ST and TODAY -- in trying to play on words in crafting their headlines today -- shot themselves in the foot in their reports on the poor showing by our shooters at the Games.
Here are ST's and TODAY's headlines, respectively:
Both newspapers used the expression "fire blanks". Unfortunately, that makes for poor headline writing. The meaning can't be used literally, since the shooters did use actual rounds. As for the idiomatic meaning of "[to] fire blanks", it's a humorous way of describing a man's inability to impregnate a woman! See:
http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/fire+blanks
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So, to wrap up, here's a "fire blanks" joke:
A 90-year-old man told his doctor, “My 18-year-old wife is expecting a baby.”
The doctor said, “Let me tell you a story. A man went hunting, but instead of a gun, he picked up an umbrella by mistake. A bear suddenly appeared and charged at the man, who took the umbrella, shot the bear, and killed it.”
The man said, “Impossible. Someone else must have shot the bear.”
The doctor smiled before he replied, “My point exactly.”
The doctor said, “Let me tell you a story. A man went hunting, but instead of a gun, he picked up an umbrella by mistake. A bear suddenly appeared and charged at the man, who took the umbrella, shot the bear, and killed it.”
The man said, “Impossible. Someone else must have shot the bear.”
The doctor smiled before he replied, “My point exactly.”
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