Britain’s Olympic bobsledder Gillian Cooke became an Internet hit when her skintight racing suit split open, revealing her bottom to a stunned, worldwide TV audience.
However, despite more than 1 million YouTube viewers now being familiar with her anatomy, the 27-year-old would prefer people were able see footage of her and Nicola Minichiello lifting gold for the two-women bobsleigh at the Winter Olympics.
Cooke’s “wardrobe malfunction” unexpectedly gave her sport a brief moment in the spotlight, but she has since laughed it off, choosing to concentrate on adding Olympic gold to the world title they secured at Lake Placid last year.
“It definitely brought the sport into the public eye,” said Cooke, recalling the embarrassing moment when her spandex suit ripped at a World Cup event in St Moritz. “It was actually a prototype garment. That’s why we test, so these sorts of things don’t happen at the Games. At least we now know we can cope with anything. You can’t do anything else but laugh about it and move on.”
Meanwhile, Minichiello, the driver to Cooke’s brakeman, was to undergo laser surgery on her left eye after competing in the 145kph sport with only “60 to 70 percent” vision in recent World Cup events.
“It was really strange,” she told the Daily Telegraph. “It affected not just my vision but my color perception, my depth perception, even my hearing because you don’t realize how much of the information you take in comes from watching people’s mouths.”
Shohei Ohtani and his wife arrived in South Korea with his Los Angeles Dodgers teammates yesterday ahead of their season-opening games with the San Diego Padres next week. Ohtani, wearing a black training suit and a cap backwards, was the first Dodgers player who showed up at the arrival gate of Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul. His wife, Mamiko Tanaka, walked several steps behind him. As a crowd of fans, many wearing Dodgers jerseys, shouted his name and cheered slogans, Ohtani briefly waved his hand, but did not say anything before he entered a limousine bus with his wife. Fans held placards
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