Ode to Olympic Dreams

A childhood habit of toe-walking can strike fear inside the hearts of parents. For Janice Kehler, hoisting herself onto the balls of her feet to discover her world was pure joy that morphed into an adolescence spent chasing an Olympic dream. A dream fashioned by the Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin in the early twentieth century and shaped by the sports-media complex over the next one hundred years. A dream that was on a collision course with the deep historical roots of the best-you-can-be an...