I've done nothing but Olympics coverage for the past four days straight (and a significant mention the day prior to my first all-Olympics post). I figure I'll give you a break from my special Olympics edition Land of Bliss and Blisters.
But first, here's an interesting trend I noticed in the US medal totals after Tuesday's competitions. Every single medal won by the US between Saturday and the end of Tuesday, China time, until the male gymnasts took bronze, was in swimming, fencing, or shooting. In other words, the Americans can shoot you, stab you, and then swim away from your lifeless body with the best of them. Actually considering they used air rifles and blunt swords, it's more like sting you, smack you, and then swim away from you as you try to chase us down to kick our ass. The gymnasts just proved that we could also dazzle you with crazy feats of human strength, balance, and flexibility. It's not really that useful in defending yourself after shooting someone with an overgrown BB gun and then thwacking them with a blunt sword like outswimming them unless you happen to be escaping via the ledge of a high-rise or an obstacle course, but still cool.
By the way, I just watched Michael Phelps win his fourth gold medal of this Olympics while breaking his world record in the event and breaking the record for most gold medals ever in any sport and he looked pissed off when he saw the result. It wasn't good enough for him that he broke two world records and won a gold medal in one race. He was apparently pissed off that in the 200m butterfly he couldn't break 1:52:00 because he wanted to see a 1 after the 5 instead. Seems to be taking his success a little for granted, but then he probably wouldn't be the goldest Olympian ever at 23 if he weren't such a perfectionist.
It also seems weird to be talking about an event that took place on Wednesday while writing a blog post on Tuesday, but that's the joy of writing about live events taking place on the other side of the big blue ball.
And I was going to segue into a couple of paragraphs about how bad I want to go back to Alaska again (the yearnings started in earnest the past weekend for some reason), but screw it. I wrote another Olympics post instead.
5 comments:
This better not have been a spoiler. I haven't been watching the games faithfully enough to know if it was a spoiler, but still I hate spoilers on principle.
Saw a little feature on Phelps Monday night. Bob Costas read off his typical breakfast menu from his biography... something like three fried egg sandwiches, two pieces of French toast with powdered sugar, three chocolate chip pancakes, a couple sausage links and some other stuff that I'm forgetting.
Can the human stomach physically hold all of that at one time?
It wasn't a spoiler, unless you had it recorded and were going to watch it today, which I'm going to assume from your laissez-faire viewing means you didn't. I was watching the NBC primetime broadcast as I wrote that.
And as for the rest, I only need to type "Diamond Jim Brady". He didn't even do any physical activity to burn it all up.
I saw that thing about Phelps' diet too, Chris. That is an insane amount of food.
But I also saw that Phelps was pissed off because his goggles filled with water when he dove in. I think part of his attitude came from his eyes hurting and the fact that water-logged goggles are generally an unpleasant thing to swim with. Still, he at least could have smiled or something.
His goggles did fill up and add to his frustration, but you notice he spent as long talking about how he knows he could have gone faster as he did about the goggles.
Also notice the reactions of the coach and his mom after that race. Both seemed more subdued than normal. Both were just kind of standing there and the coach gave a little shrug like "at least he broke the record". Compare that to the relay later. Both were jumping up and down.
I wasn't criticizing the guy. You can't expect a guy like that to feel quite the same satisfaction of just winning that other athletes do. He's so good that he has to set goals to beat to actually keep it competitive for him. Of course the water probably annoyed him enough he couldn't cover it.
I don't think anyone is accusing Phelps of being a bad sport. The guy went out of his way to be kind to the French smack talker he beat on the other relay.
You forgot the five egg omelet.
And I am thinking about Alaska because it's Olympic time. In '96, we got out of dodge and spent the entire three weeks in Alaska.
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