Tag: Olympics (Page 2 of 4)

Another summer Olympics has come-and-gone. These were good ones, I think, although if you’re a loyal reader of the blog and this was your only connection to the games, you wouldn’t know it. In both 2004 and 2008, I wrote extensively throughout the games. This time around, for a variety of reasons, I didn’t do any immediate posts after important events. Instead, I kept a running file where I jotted down little notes as they occurred to me. With the games over, I’ll work through the list and see what happens.

Thus begins my epic 2012 London Summer Olympics review.

Week one brought swimming, and some kick-ass American women along with the over-hyped but still excellent Ryan Lochte and the end of the Michael Phelps experience. A pretty good week in the pool for the Americans all around.

Perhaps my favorite moment of the swimming coverage were the obligatory looks back at the men’s 4×100 relay over the years. Along with Lezak’s epic effort in Beijing, there was the footage of the Australians beating the US in Sydney after Gary Hall, Jr. had said the US would smash the Aussies like guitars. What followed was the classic image of the Aussies playing air guitars to show they were unbroken. What I love about that moment, and what I don’t think anyone ever talks about when the tape gets replayed, is the sly look of appreciation from Hall. He was a master shit-talker and while he was frustrated losing, you could see in the twinkle in his eye and quick grin that he approved of Australia’s behavior.

Speaking of Hall, why don’t more swimmers wear boxing robes and championship belts to meets anymore? Don’t get me wrong, I love the mutual respect sphere that flows around Michael Phelps. It was cool seeing him offer congratulations to Ian Thorpe in 2000 and Chad le Clos this year. But having a few real assholes, not just kind of slimy guys like Lochte, around makes for great TV.

The Phelps era has been terrific. Missy Franklin seems poised to carry on his era on the women’s side. But it is a little frustrating to watch NBC heap enormous amounts of hype on the swimmers they think will have the best games. Phelps could operate under that hype, and amazingly lived up to it. But in the opening days of these games, there were rumbles that he was having a disappointing meet. Then, when Lochte faded a bit, suddenly he was a disappointment. Which is dumb. They both had tremendous Olympics. Perhaps they didn’t snatch every Gold NBC wanted them to, but they outperformed nearly every other male swimmer.

What ever happened to German swimmers? Didn’t both East and West Germany used to be pretty good in the water? Did unification somehow make them allergic to chlorine?

I get that she had a huge jump in time over the past 18 months, but why is it assumed the 16-year-old Chinese swimmer who kicked ass is doping but neither Missy Franklin or Katie Ledecky are? It’s not like no Americans have ever tested positive, although they’ve tended to be older ones. Hey, the Chinese are probably dirty, but if a 16-year-old raises questions when she swims nearly as fast as a man, shouldn’t a 15-year-old who destroys a field that included the world record holder be held to the same level of scrutiny?

Why did Bob Costas need such a large studio? That thing looked like a World War II era airplane hanger, yet there was just him and his desk, with his little interview nook off to the side. I guess real estate is cheap in London-town.

I’m not a huge gymnastics fan, but I must admit, the women’s competition was fun. And not just because the US took the team gold with Gabby Douglas netting the all-around gold. That McKayla Maroney is something else on the vault. It’s not as much fun to hate the Russians as it was 30 years ago, but it’s still kind of fun to watch them crack under the pressure. I also enjoy the absurdity of gymnastics. Catalina Ponor looked like a giant out there, and she is only 5’3”. What a weird sport where you are uber-athletic and not even pint-sized.

Ms. Ponor is not unattractive, it should be noted. And since she’s 24, it’s ok to say that.

I didn’t get too bent out of shape about the tape delay of major events. NBC spent a shit-load of money to get the rights, they have to leverage the material in the best way to make their money back. From their perspective, it worked great, as they got fantastic ratings each night and apparently made money on the games. NBC hasn’t done much right, aside from Sunday Night Football, in the last 15 years, so I can’t really blame them.

What did bug me was how they treated taped events, that many viewers already knew the outcome of, as if they were live. The long, dramatic pauses while gymnasts or divers waited for the judges scores. Or at least long pauses if the competitors were either Americans or in the medal hunt. If it was just someone who was interesting but out of the running, like Ponor or one of the British gymnasts, the scores magically appeared immediately. I’m not sure it was necessary to show the entire wait for each American score. There was plenty of drama already.

When I thought more about it, I realized our generation was warped in our youth. I don’t remember the 1976 Montreal games, but people a couple years older were able to watch important events live. The 1980 Winter olympics were in the US, although the biggest event of the games was, famously, shown on tape delay. The 1984 LA games probably shaped Olympic lovers my age more than any others. And those games were wall-to-wall live events. The 1988 Winter Games were in Calgary. So in a 12 year span four of the eight games were in North America. Throw in the ’96 Atlanta games and NBC’s genius move to get the Beijing swimming finals schedule so they could be shown live in US prime time and it makes sense that so many people in their 40s are bitching about the tape delay.

I was disappointed the Ryan Seacrest somehow worked his way into the NBC broadcast team. Mostly because I’m pretty sure that guy has pictures on everyone in Hollywood and this means he’ll find a way to replace Costas in another four or eight years. I thought it was funny, though, when he offered up social media reports. That’s about right for him.

As much as I dislike Seacrest, the worst interview I saw over the two weeks was John McEnroe interviewing Usain Bolt. That really made no sense at all. More on that piece in a bit.

Beach volleyball gets all the attention, for some pretty obvious reasons, but I love the indoor game, too. I watched quite a few matches and was pleasantly surprised that Logan Tom is still playing.

As fun as she is to watch, the Brazilian women’s team is like six Logan Toms running around. If you know what I mean. Sadly I never caught a Netherlands field hockey game. I’ve heard rumors those ladies were attractive. If only there was a way to see pictures of them on my computer.

Another thing I missed, team handball. I’ve seen it in the past but didn’t get a chance to jump on the bandwagon this year.

Spending the middle weekend of the games in Kansas City made for an interesting experience. There were primary elections in both Kansas and Missouri last week, so each commercial break was absolutely flooded with political commercials. Here in Indy, we got the occasional Obama or anti-Obama ad, and one very curious ad by one of the candidates for governor here¹. What we did get flooded with was health care provider ads. My wife’s employer and the other two mega-systems in the area saturated the airwaves with ads. The strange thing was many of them would repeat with a break. So there would be a St. V’s commercial, a car ad, and then the same St. V’s ad again. Odd.

Even C. noticed. When she saw an ad for a smaller organization, she exclaimed, “Really?!? They’re copying off of St. V’s.”

A series of commercials I did like: the AT&T ones that showed kids watching events from the previous night, then writing down the winning time and going back to train. Well done on multiple levels.

If you weren’t reading Joe Posnanski’s Olympic blog you were missing out on one of the great commentators of these games.

Over to the track. I was amazed that the East German women still held the world record in the 4×100 with a time set in 1985. The East Germans were the dirtiest of the dirty, but you would figure that with 20 years of better drugs, better training, better nutrition, and the quick evolution that seems to be present in elite athletes, that either the Americans or Jamaicans would have taken care of that record long ago. Kudos to the Germans! They were really on to something in their labs.

And then the Americans finally broke the record, with Carmelita Jeter’s fantastic anchor leg. Relays are always fun, especially when your team is pulling away. My all-time favorite remains the men’s 4×100 in 1992, when Dennis Mitchell handed off to Carl Lewis, threw his hands up and pointed at Lewis as he exploded down the final stretch. Jeter pointing at the clock as she clinched the world record was right up there.

I’ve been a big Allyson Felix fan since her emergence in the Athens games, so it was great to see her finally grab some golds.

Which leads me to the official B. Hottie rankings for American women in the games:
Alex Morgan
Allyson Felix
Natalie Coughlin
Logan Tom
Hope Solo

I love the shots of track athletes gathering for their events, when they have their backpacks on. Here are the elite of the elite, and they suddenly look like school kids waiting for the bus.

An area where the tape delay was handled poorly was how some field events, in the 2 1/2 minutes of coverage they got, were clearly shown out of real time. For example, a race on the track would be shown that obviously took place at night. A commercial break. Then an update on the javelin, which took place while the sun was still up. So much for continuity.

I’m still not understanding how the women’s soccer final wasn’t on NBC, especially after the epic semi-final between the US and Canada. That was one of the best games I’ve ever seen, full of momentum swings, controversial officiating, some terrible sportsmanship, and epic goal after epic goal, all topped by Morgan’s winner in the final minute of extra time. Seems like the perfect reason to switch the game over to NBC where it can get the highest ratings. As it was, the game got the highest ratings the NBC Sports Network has ever had in its short history.

Diving is kind of boring, especially since the US has kind of sucked at it since Greg Louganis retired. Which made local boy David Boudia’s cinderella story to the gold in the platform Saturday all the more enjoyable. I’ve been reading about him since he was like 14 or 15, since he grew up here. There was always the hope that he would turn into a medal contender, but it was fun to see him actually do it.

We live in the age of the backlash. Anything that happens or is said is pumped up, then the backlash comes, then the backlash to the backlash, and on until something else comes along to get people worked up. Thus it was funny to see some people get so bent out of shape about the assertion that Michael Phelps is the greatest Olympian ever. Some were acting like it was an absurd argument. Others as if it was absurd to question it.

What I don’t get is why isn’t Usain Bolt in the argument? He’s the first to ever repeat the 100/200 double and anchored two Jamaican relay golds. He’s smashed the world record in all three events along the way. Dude has redefined his sport in much the same manner that Phelps did his. His medal total may not equal Phelps’, but there’s no doubting he’s in the conversation for best ever.

The one redeeming part of the Bolt-McEnroe interview was seeing/hearing the footage of the Jamaican track trials earlier this summer when Yohan Blake beat Bolt in the 100. If you saw it, I think you will agree with me that NBC needs to ditch Tom Hammonds and Ato Boldon and bring in Jamaican announcers for the 2016 games. Those guys were awesome!

The Big Lead linked to an article in Muscle Week magazine that looked at whether sprinting is clean or not. I did not realize that, under the current guidelines, it is still possible to quadruple your testosterone levels while passing the ‘rigid’ Olympic doping tests. That’s interesting to know, and puts a bit of a damper on those who crow about the sport being clean. I mean, doesn’t Justin Gatlin look like he’s about to rage at any minute? And isn’t it weird that he’s running faster now than he did when he tested positive six years ago? I’m just saying.

Oh, and Ryan Bailey, the US anchor in the 4×100, showed how ridiculous Bolt is. Bailey was not only flying, but doing so in a free-and-easy style that recalled Lewis. And he still got flat dusted.

Dream(ish) Team. The only game I watched extensively was the gold medal game, which was ruined when the referees turned it into an NBA playoff game circa 1994 in the second quarter. There seemed to be a whistle every ten seconds. The bad part for the NBA is most of the calls were completely legit, which shows how physical/grabby the game has become and how much NBA refs have to let go to keep the best players from fouling out early. That said, the Euros need to drop the horrific flopping if they ever want to be taken seriously. There are several teams who can hang with the US now, making the ‘acting like you got shot when you barely got touched’ thing even more ridiculous.

Before the games, I was down with the idea of this being the final Olympics the NBA fully supported. It made sense to do what soccer has done and go to an Under-23 concept. Use the World Championships as the true world championship and slide the Olympics down to serve as a preparation point for each country’s next generation. As long as all the teams operate under the same roster restrictions, that will still make for a great tournament, even if teams aren’t loaded with each country’s best players.

But during the games many players from other countries complained, saying the Olympics were still very important to them. I would imagine Russia and Lithuania play fairly regularly. Players from both teams said, though, that when they play in the Olympics it means a lot more.

I’ve been swayed. Just because the United States isn’t as interested in the NBA player concept, just because we don’t completely dominate every game, doesn’t mean we should force the games to impose age restrictions. That said, I think David Stern will still get his way and the next US olympic team will feature players at the beginning of their careers rather than in their primes.

If nothing else, the tournament should shut up people who claim this year’s US team could have beaten the 1992 team. That was a dumb argument before the games, and even dumber now. Listen, this year’s team had great talent. But no one will beat a team anchored around Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan in his absolute prime.

Also, I’m sure Coach K will find a way to write another book out of this experience.

Some predicted this would be the year China caught the US in total medals. Did not happen! Suck it, China! You’re going to have to use better drugs if you want to catch is in Rio!

ↁ

Sigh. The Olympics are over. What the hell do I do now? Actually, the Olympics didn’t dominate my time this year the way they did four years ago. But I had a two-week-old baby then and we just kind of sat on the couch for about 20 hours a day anyway. That year, the Olympics were a God-send. This year, once the girls watched their fill of morning TV, rather than switch to the games, I was trying to get them outside to do something fun and active.

But there is always a moment of sadness when the flame is extinguished and I realize it’s going to be another four years before we get to do this again. So let’s get into some rambling, quasi-insightful thoughts, shall we?

Invade Jamaica now! Come on, McCain. Quit rattling your sword at Russia and focus on the real enemy.

Watching the replays of Usain Bolt’s runs over the weekend, I had two more thoughts about the phenom. First, he’s so ridiculously big, it looks like a man running against kids, or a robot running against humans. Or, more likely, it looked like a video game where you can control who is in the race, taking people who would never run against each other and putting them in the same race for comic effect. Second, I wonder how many of the guys he blew away had ever trailed by that much in a race before. Chances are a lot of them rarely lost a race growing up, and once they became pros, they probably only lost races by a matter of inches. I’m pretty sure none of his competitors in the finals of the 100 & 200 had ever been ten meters behind an opponent. What does that do to your confidence?

So now the question is how does he impact the sport. I had always heard that really tall people can’t run sprints because the biomechanics of the run are too difficult once you get past 6’2” or so. Is he literally a freak, and you can’t just start plugging 6’5” guys into the sprints and wait for records to fall? Or, after watching him, is it realistic for coaches to take a second look at guys who are taller than the historical ideal for sprinters?

So NBC kind of sucked last week, especially over the final few days of the games. Friday night might have been the worst night of coverage in the history of the games. With fewer events going on, they really had to pad things in primetime. Which made it triply maddening that they were showing many events on a 12-hour delay. Do we really have to wait until 10:30 Eastern to watch the men’s 400m final when no other big events are going on and we’ve known the result for 15 hours?

I know NBC can’t win. If they do show everything live, that cuts into their ad rates in primetime. Even if they can boost their daytime ad rates, and then get more than an average night for a primetime review of the day’s events, I’m guessing that comes up short of what they were charging for primetime ad spots last week. But in a world of constantly updated sports and news websites, YouTube clips from other countries, and satellite coverage from the CBC, these long delays seem silly. There has to be a better way.

There are rumors floating around that ESPN may bid for the next set of broadcasting rights, which would cover the 2014 winter and 2016 summer games. As much as I loathe the ESPN marketing machine and its merry band of self-important, self-promoting blowhards, you know they would turn their family of networks over to the games. We’d probably see just about every event live and then again on tape delay if the games’ location warranted. They’d still find a way to screw things up, mostly by slapping their label all over the games (like how the NBA Finals this year were always listed under “ESPN” rather than “NBA” on their ticker), but I think the raw coverage would be better than NBC has done.

Why was Ato Boldin doing track coverage for NBC and Michael Johnson for the BBC? Did Johnson’s managerial relationship with Jeremy Wariner keep NBC from bringing him in? Not that Boldin was bad, but just odd that one of the greatest American sprinters ever was working for a British network, and the American network was using a Caribbean native.

So the bar is high for new shows NBC promotes during the games, at least for me. They pushed <a href=”http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0247091/”>Ed</a> really hard during the 2000 games, and once they shifted it from Sundays to Wednesdays and I started watching, it became my favorite show. But of this year’s batch of shows, the <a href=”http://www.nbc.com/Kath_and_Kim/”>Molly Shannon</a> show is the only one that holds much intrigue for me. The new <a href=”http://www.nbc.com/Knight_Rider/”>Knight Rider</a> is a Mustang? Something ain’t right. New Camaros are right around the corner, just plug one of those into the old T.A. slot. I might give the show a shot, because I’m a child of the 80s and there’s a small part of me that still wishes it was 1983.

There was a lot of talk about the U.S.’ failure in track and field. I’m not going to point fingers at other teams, but it is interesting that this “subpar” performance came after U.S. track &amp; field dealt with some serious drug issues following the last Olympics. Might the U.S. have been the cleanest team of the elites this year? Still, hold on to a few dropped batons, have a few other people perform to their expectations, and things would have been about normal. No team that lacked Bolt was going to dominate this year.

Proof that whoever runs track and field at the international / Olympic level is a bunch of idiots: scheduling events so women could not run both the 200 and 400 this year. Anything that kept Allyson Felix from getting more track time is a bad, bad thing. Along those lines, the U.S. women’s 4×400 team was pretty foxy.

Beyond Phelps and Bolt, I think the U.S. men’s indoor volleyball team was the story of the games. They could have easily packed it up and gone home after the stabbing that took the life of the coach’s father-in-law and left his mother-in-law injured. Instead, <a href=”http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/volleyball/news;_ylt=ArIXOnEhrEQltPtRy0.J0KiVTZd4?slug=ap-vol-us-brazil&amp;prov=ap&amp;type=lgns”>they went out and got the Gold</a>.

How much do you think Beckham got to fly to Beijing, wear a track suit, and kick a ball half-heartedly?

And now, some links I’ve collected this week.

Yahoo’s Dan Wetzel <a href=”http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/beijing/track_field/news?slug=dw-rogge082108&amp;prov=yhoo&amp;type=lgns”>rightly rips IOC chairman Jacques Rogge</a> for his criticism of Usain Bolt while remaining silent about some real issues surrounding the games. I wonder if Rogge made similar comments about the white, British runner who shook his baton at fellow competitors in a 4×400 heat.

There’s been a lot of discussion about what the proper medal count is: all medals or golds only. I always assumed you counted all medals, since that seemed to follow the Olympic ideal and, you know, they do give out silver and bronzes. I guess that’s just a U.S. thing. <a href=”http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7576446.stm”>Here are five ways</a> to look at who won what (this came before the final medal count).
Interesting look at <a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/25/sports/olympics/25nbc.html?em”>how NBC got the schedule tweaked</a> for swimming and gymnastics.

How fast can Usain, or anyone else, go?

And that completes our Olympic coverage. See you in London.

Usain in the brain!
Sweet baby Jesus.

As I said earlier, my favorite run ever was Michael Johnson’s 200M world record in Atlanta. Second, before this week, was the 4×100 relay in 1992, when the U.S. destroyed the field, Carl Lewis ran away and hid, and Dennis Mitchell went nuts after he handed off to Lewis.* Bolt’s two world records this week are suddenly in the mix. I shudder to think what the Jamaicans are going to do in the 4×100 relay.

Just think how overwhelming the hype would be if Bolt had been born in Atlanta instead of Jamaica.

You know, Usain sounds a little like Hussein. So if he was from the U.S., he would obviously hate America, want the terrorists to win, and prefer for U.S. troops to die in order to advance his personal agenda. I’m just saying…

How about NBC going commercial-free for the women’s beach volleyball final? Pretty cool. May-Treanor and Walsh are awesome. But, come on, you were all waiting for an ass-slap at the end of the match.

“Tian Jia likes some drama in her matches.” I enjoyed that line.

Sadly, with the men’s beach tournament ending this morning, that means no more of the best broadcast team in the games: Chris Marlowe and Karch Kiraly. They know the sport inside and out (Marlowe played in college, and Karch is of course one of the all-time greats), each has a dry sense of humor and know how to properly deploy it, and they do a great job of informing the audience. My favorite Marlowe line of the games came in the U.S. match with the weird Swiss team. As the psycho Swiss was preening after a win, Marlowe said, without emotion, “Look at me. I’m #1. I am the man.” Pitch perfect so it was right in the middle of being silly and being critical of the player’s actions.

Who knew Karch babysat Misty May when she was little? Thank you, <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karch_Kiraly”>Wikipedia</a>!

The sad thing about the rise of beach volleyball is that indoor volleyball has been buried. And the U.S. is doing well in both men’s and women’s indoor volleyball this year. If you’re my age, you remember the epic U.S. – U.S.S.R. volleyball battles in the 80s.

At some point, we’ll discuss the rumors that ESPN will be bidding on the 2012 and 2014 Olympics.

/* Sadly <a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=818cKDgbUzo&amp;feature=related”>this YouTube vid</a> doesn’t show Mitchell’s full reaction. After he hands off to Lewis, Mitchell spreads his arms, yells at Lewis to go, and after a quick look at the competition, he lets out a big “WHOOOO!” of disbelief. It’s as if he was telling everyone else that the race was over. I remember being at a party watching this race and all the guys screaming and yelling. Damn, that was a great relay team.

Trying to keep these things shorter.

I’ve never been a gymnastics guy, and this year has reinforced the wisdom of that decision. Not that I understood the scoring before, but it’s even worse this year. I’ll be the one millionth person to ask, how can you fall down on your dismount and still win a gold medal?

My favorite technical aspect of the Olympics might be the curve cam in the long sprints. Especially in the 200, when the runners are flying around the turn from the start, it feels like they’re running right into your living room.

Speaking of the 200, how would you like to be Shawn Crawford? Defending gold medalist, still one of the fastest runners in the world, yet you’re basically an afterthought since we’re now living in Usain Bolt’s world.

There seems to be some nastiness in the 400M rivalry between Jeremy Wariner and LeShawn Merritt. They both looked good in the semis, but Wariner looked like he had about two gears left. Michael Johnson might lose two world records this week.

Something tells me Lolo Jones is still going to get some big endorsements and become one of the most known members of the U.S. track team despite her stumble in the 100M hurdles. Just a hunch, and it’s not just because of her excellent name.

At least NBC gave the hurdles winner, Dawn Harper, a little love. We got about five minutes of Lolo replays before they got around to giving her teammate some credit for getting the gold.

I’ll try to do these more often this week, to avoid 1000+ words of rambling.

I forgot to mention in my first Olympics Notebook that I’m thrilled with NBC’s coverage in one big way: we have five channels of high definition coverage. S. laughed at me on the night of the opening ceremonies when I got terribly excited when I saw there were four new channels. Of course, two are fairly limited in what they show, mostly basketball and soccer. Another is in Mandarin. And the final added feed is in Korean. Those last two are fun to watch for about three minutes. But I’m getting a lot of three minutes glimpses of table tennis and team handball.

Big props to NBC and the organizers of the games for setting up swimming so it could be aired in prime time in the States. In fact, it’s been an interested few days in coverage. Early last week, the glamor events were on between 10 and 11 Eastern. As the week progressed, those events slowly slid back, moving past midnight in many cases. This 12 hour time difference isn’t so bad!

Then, all of a sudden on Sunday when track starts, everything is back to a long delay, with events taking place in the evening in Beijing delayed roughly 12 hours for prime time in the U.S. The 100 meter heats and finals, one of the biggest events in the Olympics, not live in the U.S.? Doesn’t seem right.

The delay kind of makes sense, since they have to squeeze a lot more events into the stadium each day than they had to do at the aquatics center. But it does feel a little bait and switchy to me. Shame on me for thinking week #2 would follow the same format as week #1.

It’s also interesting to see the other ways in which the U.S. dominates the games from a cultural perspective. Just about every nation has its name across uniforms in English. China and Russia are the most obvious examples, since they use completely different alphabets (or in China’s case, no alphabet at all as Brian Williams kept reminding us in the opening ceremonies). Also, the number of athletes who train in the States is amazing. It seems like most swimmers at least went to college in the U.S. Lots of runners and gymnasts also train in the U.S. Interesting, since most Olympic sports aren’t a big deal from a spectator perspective in the U.S.

Just further proof that the Olympics should always be in the Western Hemisphere.

Oh, and I think there should be Olympics, or some other huge event, every August. Something major to take up two weeks in that long run when baseball is fading and football doesn’t matter yet.

Obviously, Michael Phelps getting his eight golds was amazing, especially the 100 butterfly final. I’m the 800,000th person to say this, but I still don’t understand how he won that. Eight medals alone marked these as the Phelps games, but two unreal finishes in his eight finals made sure that these games will be remembered for what he did.

As outstanding as he was, I had to wonder why he wasn’t swimming in the sport’s glamor event, the 100 free. I know it’s not his specialty, but he is good enough at it to swim the relay. I wonder if, in the absence of the IM in 2012, if he’ll give the 100 free a shot.

Speaking of medleys, I propose a Choose Your Own Stroke medley. Four laps and you get to pick what order you do them in. Throw your best leg out first to get a lead. Or save it until the end to come back. Introduce some strategy into the events! Can’t you just hear Dan Hicks and Rowdy Gaines screaming, “Phelps goes to the fly! He never uses it this early!”

I said last week that Phelps would be a dork if he wasn’t a swimmer (of course, I said that with love). Turns out the U.S. men’s gymnastic team is comprised of a bunch of gigantic dorks. “That’s how we do it! That’s how we roll!” Come on, you’re gymnasts!

It always pleases me when I see the Netherlands uniforms. There is something very right about the Dutch using fonts straight out of 1979 that seemed futuristic at the time.

I hope she’s clean, because Dara Torres is a stud.

I miss Gary Hall Jr. and his boxing gloves and robe before the 50 free. That guy was like a villain at Wrestlemania.

Back to track, these may be Phelps’ games, and the 4×100 free and the 100 fly finals may go down as two of the greatest events ever, but Usain Bolt may just have dropped the signature performance on these events when he destroyed the field in the 100M final. The greatest individual track performance I’ve ever seen was when Michael Johnson dropped his 19.32 in Atlanta. Bolt’s performance Sunday, when he cruised to the finish, was even better than that. I have a feeling 19.32 is going to get wiped off the boards Wednesday. That guy is a freak of nature and completely amazing.

Speaking of Jamaica, four years ago I, somewhat facetiously, suggested that the U.S. start invading the island nations that are out-running us on the track. The way Jamaica worked us over in the 100 meter finals on both the men’s and women’s side, we need to get the carriers headed towards Kingston right away.

At least the Jamaican sprinters all seem cool and a lot of fun. I loved hearing Shelly-Ann Fraser after she won the gold. Beautiful accent.

Man, Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh are fun to watch. And I don’t mean anything suggestive by that. Those girls can hammer the ball. Volleyball was the only sport I was ever any good at, and I miss being able to crush the ball in co-ed leagues at my former employer’s gym. I may have to rent Side Out next week.

Lovely. We’re already getting swamped by Manning Brother commercials.

The first of what should be many Olympic Notes entries over the next couple weeks.

I looked back at the archives of my original blog today to skim through my thoughts on the 2004 games. I may have to pick out a few gems to share with you during this year’s games.

I understand I have a problem of having a problem with people who have problems pronouncing foreign words, especially in the two languages I’ve studied. Even setting that aside, I was stunned at how many names of countries Bob Costas mispronounced Friday during the opening ceremonies. Apparently he suffers from that East Coast problem of refusing to pronounce most Spanish words the proper way.

My biggest problem with NBC’s coverage, though, is their apparent poor job of getting the Chinese to put Dan Hicks and Rowdy Gaines in position to see the swimming pool very well. They’ve miscalled about every close race so far. I remember them being pretty good in the past, so I’m assuming the problems are because of their position.

I think <a href=”http://olympics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/11/an-upset-proves-an-announcer-wrong/”>this take</a> is kind of dumb, though. Gaines might have bought a little too much into the French, but it’s not like there was no basis for picking them. Pretty much everyone figured this would be Phelps’ biggest relay challenge of the games because of the French. So sure, he made the wrong pre-race call, but it’s not like it’s that big of a deal. It might have even made the drama that much better.

Am I the only one who, each time I hear an athlete or team described as “out of nowhere” or their “rapid rise” to the top, assumes drugs are involved?

Along those lines, do you think there are whispers in France and Australia about Jason Lezak’s ability to swim like that at the age of 32? I’m pretty sure that would be a bigger story here if it was a 32-year-old Frenchie who chased down and out-touched Michael Phelps.

Which is a perfect segue to Dara Torres. I want to believe, I really do. And I probably buy into her story about 90%. But too much has happened to allow me to fully buy into her story, or any other exceptional story for that matter. I think it’s easier to assume that everyone is on something, even someone like her who has volunteered to be tested constantly through her training. Her story is pretty kick ass, clean or not, though. Is there anything on her body that isn’t pure muscle?

Each time I see Katie Hoff, I want to tell her to loosen up the goggles a bit. She always has those big, red circles on her forehead before races.

I wouldn’t be upset if Stephanie Rice won a lot more races, even if she is an Aussie.

I’m enjoying all the indie rock that the ad agencies are offering up during commercial breaks. So far, I’ve noted Death Cab For Cutie, The Decembrists, Brandi Carlile, Sia, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Sea Wolf, and Silversun Pickups.

I’m not enjoying political ads during the games, even from candidates I support. You know I’m an absolutist when it comes to the First Amendment. Unless you’re saying that someone should be killed or harmed, I think you have the right to say just about anything as long as you’re willing to face the consequences of your speech. But I would move that we suspend that right, at least for politicians, during the Olympics. Send them off to some island, institute a full media black out, and let us all be on the same team for two weeks.

W. seemed to be enjoying himself in China, though. A friend suggested he has senioritis. I think that’s a valid assessment.

Al Trautwig really annoys me.

You know why I like Michael Phelps so much? If you took away his athletic ability, he’d be a big dork. My brother-in-law and I decided the other night that he’d probably have been in the chess club in high school if he hadn’t been a swimmer. Now that most swimmers look like strong safeties, and if you took away their athletic abilities they’d still be Mr. Popular, it’s kind of refreshing that a geek is amongst them.

I could care less about tennis at the Olympics. It’s a made-up competition to get a bunch of superstars in in the games. Even if Rafa and Federer end up playing for Gold, it’s going to be a footnote to their French Open and Wimbledon battles, and hopefully their U.S. Open match.

Did NBC really pull out their old NBA music for Team USA’s game Sunday? I guess David Stern secured some kind of waiver for the traditional Olympic theme. If you’re going to do that, why didn’t they bring back Marv Albert, too?

I usually don’t dig on gymnastics, but tonight’s men’s competition has been great, with the plucky U.S. team hanging in there. Of course, it is now midnight eastern and they still have two rotations to go. I think I’m off to bed and will check results in the morning. I move the Olympics always be in the Western Hemisphere.

Don’t mess with the bull, Frenchies. You’ll get the horns.

My MacBook just about went across the room at the end of the 4×100 relay.

The Olympics are awesome.