Final Thoughts On The Olympics

-First, I got one prediction right- the US won the most medals (110) but China won the most golds (51). What does it mean? I don't know. I just know that it means more in China than it does here in the states.

-Michael Phelps has said that his goal is to change the sport of swimming, and part of that, he's said, it changing the American perception of swimming from a once-every-four-years sport to a year-round sport. And while that seems like a ginormous task, it looks like he's at least going to get a chance to try. NBC, banking on the massive ratings Phelps brought them, has acquired the rights to next year's swimming world championships and the next three years of the swimming national championships. I think its possible that some people at NBC were mislead into thinking that audiences tuning in to see Michael Phelps was the same as audiences tuning in to see swimming. But more power to them. If Phelps wants to change swimming, he's going to have to convince people to watch swimming when a)he's not in the pool and b)not swimming for 8 gold medals. If he can pull that off, he might be able to change swimming.

-Speaking of changing one's sport, I don't think anyone did that more so than Usain Bolt. Bolt, unlike Phelps, actually changed his sport. What did we hear about Phelps from day 1? "He's got the perfect body for swimming. If you were to build a swimmer from scratch, it would look exactly like Michael Phelps." Everyone knew he was physically capable of swimming all those races, it was just a matter of whether he would win them all. And what did we hear about Usain Bolt pre-race? "He doesn't look like how we have typically pictured sprinters in the past. He doesn't have the body of a sprinter. You wouldn't think this guy is that fast." Uh, looks like those old notions of what a sprinter "looked like" were wrong. The other guys Bolt raced against were "typical sprinters" and they had no chance. Time to go back to the drawing board. Old way gets you 9.9 in the 100. New way gets you 9.5 (assuming Bolt hadn't eased up to post a pokey 9.69). I wonder how he'd do in the 400- do you think his speed would translate? Gut reaction would say no, but that was with the old way of thinking. Michael Johnson is the only man to sweep the 200 and 400; how cool would it be to see someone try and sweep the 100, 200, and 400? Those three, plus the 4X100 and 4X400 relays? Why, he'd be the Michael Phelps of running.

-One more thing on Usain Bolt- enough with the "lightning" references (ie- "Lightning strikes twice at the Bird's Nest!"). Yes, that's his nickname, but with a last name like "Bolt," it has to be. If he were a 347-pound shot putter who ran the 100 in 15.83 seconds, he's nickname would still be "Lightning."

-Much love to the US volleyball teams, both indoor and beach. Swept the golds on the beach and took gold (men) and silver (women) in indoor. The indoor results were particularly amazing, given the tragic circumstances surrounding those teams. But boo NBC for not showing the women's gold medal match live. They'll show a bronze medal game live at 12:30 am, but a gold medal game at 8 am is out of the question. So what if you're going to show it later on tape-delay; the game's over at that point and people will now the score, whether they watched it live early or read about it online.


-You get a lot of new commercials during the Olympics, most of which aren't any good (see: McDonald's chicken for breakfast crap- what, have these people never heard of Chick-fil-A or, I don't know, the South? Moreover, how do those ads even play in the South? They can't, can they?). But my favorite was the Nike ad featuring Marvin Gaye. Here's his entire performance from the 1983 NBA All-Star Game:



Lots of singers try and add personal style to The Star-Spangled Banner and the vast majority of them fail miserably. Not Marvin Gaye. This is hands down the greatest performance of The Star-Spangled Banner of all time. You can have Whitney Houston at Super Bowl XXV; I'll take Marvin Gaye at the '83 All-Star Game.

-Winning a gold medal in anything has to be an incredible feeling, but how much cooler is it if you're the men's marathon champion? Not only are you the final medal ceremony of the entire Olympics, but you get your medal during the closing ceremonies, in front of a packed house which includes all of the other athletes. The last anthem everyone hears in your country's. That's got to be pretty special.

-Trampoline is still doesn't belong in the Olympics. I know its not a sport, but now I'm not even certain if its even a competition. It just doesn't make any sense.

-Gymnastics "judging" is an absolute joke. Sure, its always been a joke, but this Olympics went to "Ludicrous Speed." Take the women's (girl's?) vault final (yes, I watched). From my limited understanding of this event, this is what I can determine: you get 2 vaults, and in each, you have run down the mat, jump off the springboard, hit the vault with both hands, flip through the air, then land on your feet, between the lines. It would seem to me that if you failed to do any of these things in either one of your vaults, you wouldn't have a chance to medal. Naturally, that assumption is completely wrong. The gold medalist failed to land in bounds. The bronze medalist failed to even land on her feet (let alone not hitting the vault correctly). Clearly, none of this mattered because those mistakes were offset by better second vaults. We're supposed to believe that one good vault and one shitty vault is better than two good vaults? I know I don't classify gymnastics a sport, but it can be taken seriously, and this just undermines all of that. And yes, this joke of a scoring system meant that an American, Alicia Sacramone, got screwed out of medal (it also means I get to link to her throwing a left cross at the chin of some dude with a glass jaw). Also of note in the vault final is the fact the silver medalist was a 33-year old woman. 33! That's like 3x the age of the gymnasts China put out there! Crazy.

-Jimmy Page and Leona Lewis performing Whole Lotta Love during the Closing Ceremonies? Horribly awkward. Like, painly awkward. Not even funny awkward. Just, bad awkward.

Okay, enough Olympics for now. Football's about the start, and I've already jinxed St. X (my bad, Coach Specht).