The Chronicles of Fuji: Saturday Night Five: SI For Kids

In less than twenty-four hours, the 2012 Summer Olympic Games will officially come to a close. So I figure I'd kill two birds with one stone and show off five of my favorite Olympic athlete cards from my recent Sports Illustrated for Kids card collection purchase.

But before we get to the cards, here's a little background history on me and SI for Kids cards. When I started teaching back in 1998, I purchased a subscription for my classroom library and immediately started collecting the nine card sheets inserted into the magazine.

Since then, I've been a subscriber off and on... depending on whether or not I can find an affordable subscription rate. Then a few weeks ago, my buddy showed me a bunch of SI for Kids sheets he was looking to sell. The collection contained cards from the early 90's all the way through the late 2000's. I immediately showed an interest... and $10 later, I added fifty-eight new sheets to my collection.

Unfortunately, the famous 1996 Tiger Woods sheet wasn't included. I'm not complaining though... since I doubt I'll ever find full 9-card sheets in bulk like this for less than 18¢ a piece.

Okay... now let's get to the five SI for Kids Summer Olympic athlete cards that I selected for this post:

1993 Dan O'Brien

Anyone else remember Reebok's Dan & Dave advertising campaign? Mr. O'Brien failed to qualify for the Olympics in 1992... but won the gold medal four years later in Atlanta.

1994 Janet Evans

Janet was a Bay Area household name during the late 80's & early 90's, because of her time at Stanford University and of course her four gold medals at the 1988 & 1992 Summer Olympic Games.

2002 Naoko Takahashi

She's Japanese... she's cute... and until recently... she was the Olympic record holder for the women's marathon.

2004 Michael Phelps

There's no way I could leave the most decorated Olympian of all-time out of this post. The guy has 18 gold medals. Insane.

2004 Maria Sharapova

She might be a little young on this particular piece of cardboard, but there's no denying that she was one of the most attractive Olympic athletes in the 2012 games.

Speaking of hot Olympic athletes...

Who are some of your Olympian crushes?

If you've read some of my posts in the past, then you should know my response. I've written about her here & here. But I'm not embarrassed to show her off again: