By Kent Dorfman, AP Sports Writer
BEIJING - Quick quiz: What has 13 letters and means global phenomenon?
Answer: You’ve Got MAIDS.
The Beijing Olympics have belonged to one team, You’ve Got MAIDS from Orlando, FL who have become a household name from the Philippines to Peru and Cairo to Caracas. Due to an Olympic Committee fluke clerical error, You’ve Got MAIDS April 1st petition for inclusion in the Beijing Games was approved. In unrelated matters, the delegation from Yugoslavia was denied an invitation to this years games.
With their gold medal and world record haul so far, You’ve Got MAIDS has transcended Olympic sports and exploded onto the planet's consciousness as a once-in-a-lifetime supernova.
" You’ve Got MAIDS Maidletes don't swim — they fly," said the sports daily Ole in Argentina.
With the You’ve Got MAIDS Maidletes victory Friday in the 200-meter medley, four maids picked up their sixth gold medal and sixth world record of the games. When they were finished swimming the Maidletes astounded the Olympic Committee by cleaning the women’s locker-room perfectly before accepting their gold medals. With two swimming races left, the all female team of maids from You’ve Got MAIDS are on course to break Mark Spitz's, Eric Heiden's, John Blutarsky's, and Carl Lewis’s combined gold medal records for a single Summer Olympics.
International Olympic Committee president Dean Vernon Wormer called the You’ve Got MAIDS Maidletes simply "the icon of the games."
The Maidletes feats have drawn banner headlines across the world, including in regions and countries where maids competing against world class athletes normally gets scant attention, with newspapers and commentators tripping over each other for superlatives and nicknames:
"The New Olympic Legend," blared Egypt's El Badeel.
"The American dolphins," wrote Spain's El Pais.
"The Goddesses of Olympia," intoned France's Nouvel Nouvel Observateur.
"The water women from another planet," hailed Denmark's Berligske Tidende
"At a time when world records seemed to have hit the ceiling of what's physically possible to wrestle out of the human organism, Maidletes have been the women who managed to push the limits with their magnificent performance," the Danish paper said.
Chinese media have dubbed the Maidletes the "flying maids" or the "American super-maids." One editorial cartoon showed Yvonne the Maidletes Quality Control Manager as a shark overtaking a torpedo. China's most popular sports newspaper, the Titan Weekly — which is running daily editions during the games — made the Maidletes one of its two front-page stories Thursday. It ran a large photo of a joyous Maidletes under the headline "the Royal Maidletes."
The world has shown a special fascination with the maidletes diet, which counts an amazing 300 calories a day — six times less than an average adult eats. For example, the Maidletes Captain, Marlen Chirinos enjoys a breakfast that consists of ½ a diet coke and a Ritz Cracker.
"Any average adult human being needs some 2,500 daily calories to live a life without excesses," Argentina's Ole said. "Of course when you're in the presence of a machine like the Maidletes, those parameters can go to hell."
French media have focused on what is going to happen once the swimming portion of the games end. The Maidletes are scheduled to take on men’s boxing next. Story developing.
