The New Zealand women's hockey team stretch after a training session at the Olympic Hockey venue, the Riverbank Arena, at the Olympic Park in Stratford, east London on July 17. The 2012 Olympic Games in London start on July 27. (Andrew Winning/Re

Tom Daley of Great Britain practices at the Aquatic Center on July 17 during previews ahead of the Games. (Paul Gilham/Getty Images)

Olympic hopeful Abdul Rashid Bangura (27) jumps rope while training at the national stadium in Sierra Leone's capital of Freetown on April 25. Sierra Leone's national boxing team was scrambling to raise money to send athletes to an Olympic qualif

Brazilian Ronald Juliao applies chalk on his discus during a training session at the Athletics Center in Sao Caetano do Sul, near Sao Pauloon in May. Juliao will be taking part at the Olympics. (Nacho Doce/Reuters)

Japanese professional keirin cyclist Kazunari Watanabe (left) whose home town of Futaba is within the 20-km (12-mile) exclusion zone around the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, takes part in a training session in Izu, Shizuoka pr

Members of the Vietnam female boxing team practise at a training center in Hanoi on Feb. 17. Vietnam plans to send it's boxers to North Korea for training in preparation for the London Olympics. (Kham/Reuters)

Marathon runner Gladys Tejeda, the first Peruvian athlete who qualified for the London Olympic Games, runs during her training in the Andean province of Junin on May 14. A private company will take Gladys' mother Marcelina Pucuhuaranga (69) to Londo

4 - Olympic Athletes in Training

Ryan Nance July 19, 2012

London 2012 is nearly here. This set of photos had some surprises for me. I didn't know that Women's Boxing was making a debut. I hadn't really thought about how few athletes some countries are able to support and how much long and pride get put behind those few athletes.

via The Big Picture