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Belgian Olympic marathoner breaks down in tears of disbelief upon hearing she finished 28th

38-year-old Mieke Gorissen had only been training for three years and the Olympics was just her third marathon.

Imagine deciding to take up a hobby that usually requires many years to perfect at age 35, and three years later ending up in the top 30 in the world at the highest international competition for it.

That's what happened to a 38-year-old math and physics teacher from Diepenbeek, Belgium. According to Netherlands News Live, Mieke Gorissen has jogged 10km (a little over six miles) a few times a week for exercise for many years. But in 2018, she decided to hire a running trainer to improve her technique. As it turned out, she was a bit of a natural at distance running.

Three years later, Gorissen found herself running her third marathon. But not just any old marathon (as if there were such a thing)—the marathon at the Tokyo Olympics. And not only did she compete with the world's most elite group of runners, she came in 28th out of the 88 competing in the race.

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A beautiful and scary jump by Eric Finat Trepat.

Spanish skydiving expert Eric Finat Trepat recorded a video of his 43rd attempt at skydiving, which was incredibly beautiful, frightening, and dangerous all at the same time. What’s incredible about the dive is not only its height of 15,000 feet but that he had to navigate through a rain cloud before making it safely to the ground.

Finat Trepat accomplished his miraculous jump above the Catalonian city of Girona in Spain.

A lot can go wrong when you’re free-falling through a raincloud. There is very little visibility, so it can be hard to tell which way you’re falling. It’s also dangerous flying through raindrops at high speed. Finally, it’s difficult to know how much distance there is between yourself and the ground when shooting out of the cloud, which makes it tough to judge when to deploy the parachute.

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Family

Harvard psychologists have been studying what it takes to raise 'good' kids. Here are 6 tips.

Help unlock your child's best self with a few tried-and-true strategies.

Kids playing baseball with a slide into second.


A lot of parents are tired of being told how technology is screwing up their kids.

Moms and dads of the digital age are well aware of the growing competition for their children's attention, and they're bombarded at each turn of the page or click of the mouse with both cutting-edge ideas and newfound worries for raising great kids.

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Health

Viral post thoughtfully reexamines Kerri Strug's iconic broken ankle vault at 1996 Olympics

"Yesterday I was excited to show my daughters Kerri Strug's famous one-leg vault...But for some reason I wasn't as inspired watching it this time. In fact, I felt a little sick."

Simone Biles withdrawing from the team final in the Tokyo Olympics and subsequently withdrawing from the individual all-around finals after getting a case of the "twisties" has the world talking. She's received overwhelming support as well as overwhelming criticism for the move, with some praising her for recognizing her limits and others blasting her for not persevering through whatever she's dealing with.

Some people pointed to Kerri Strug, who landed on one foot after vaulting with a broken ankle in the 1996 Olympics to help the U.S. win gold, as an example of the kind of sacrifice an athlete should be willing to make for their country.

Byron Heath shared some thoughts about that fateful day in a viral Facebook post that has been shared more than 370,000 times in less than a day.

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