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Ma Baker, she's having her fun! |
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By: ASHWIN FERRO |
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Date:
2008-08-14 |
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Place: BEIJING |
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Marlee Baker with her collection of Olympic pins outside the Main Press Centre in Beijing yesterday. Pics/Ashwin Ferro | Marlee Baker is a 10-time Olympian. No, she has not participated in the quadrennial event 10 times in a row, but she forms a very significant part of it nevertheless. Baker, a resident of Mussourie, in the USA is a collector of Olympic pins that are exchanged by spectators, athletes and officials among each other as mementoes of the particular edition of the event.
But what makes Marlee different is that she has been coming for many years now with her collection of pins in a bid to exchange them with newer and different ones. In Beijing, she has set up her collection, numbering over a 1000 pins, on the footpath outside the Main Press Centre where she trades them with passers by.
"There's no money involved whatsoever. It's purely for the passion of the Olympics that I do this. My parents have done this and passed it on to me and I will pass it on to my children," she told MiD DAY proudly. And you thought the Olympics was only about athletes.
Security beefed up?
The Chinese authorities seem to have suddenly stepped up security here at the ongoing Olympic Games.
Though there's no official word yet from the Beijing Olympic Games Organising Committee (BOGOC), the sudden appearance of at least two armed policemen outside every sporting venue and a military tank doing the rounds of the Main Press Centre sure has got tongues wagging.
ashwin.ferro@mid-day.com
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