We've been in the midst of the Olympics for a little more than a week now, and I'm due to post (actually overdue) so I thought I would spend a little time commenting on what has been a spectacular Olympics thus far. I hope that you have been following as closely as I have, as apparently, if you look away for a hundredth of a second, you can miss some very big things!
As I am sure everyone knows by now, Michael Phelps tied history two nights ago, winning his 7th gold medal of the games by a scant .01 of a second. Then tonight, he and the rest of the American team triumphed in the men's 4X100 Individual Medley relay, beating Australia and giving Phelps a record-breaking 8th gold medal in one Olympic games, for a total of 16 Olympic gold medals over his career. An unbelievably humble show of determination and athleticism lead Michael to this point, and has made his entire country proud to have him representing us in Beijing. Additionally, you would think that by now people would learn that trash-talking Michael Phelps and the American relay teams only makes them swim faster. Also, Phelps middle name is Fred.
Not so captivating in my estimation is the silly sport of synchronized diving. A sport that is by definition redundant leaves me wondering why I should be impressed that two people can do the exact same thing at the same time and win a gold medal for it. The difficulty of the dives is much less than in individual diving, and honestly, who cares? Might this spawn a whole new group of synchronized sports? What about synchronized gymnastics, or synchronized weightlifting, or maybe synchronized shot put? If we could get the athletes to face each other, that might be interesting...I did have a chance to catch a bit of the USA's "Redeem Team" (who came up with that?!?) and their game against the basketball powerhouse of Angola. After Dwyane Wade stole the ball and ran halfway down the court for a slam dunk with no one else in sight, I started to feel bad for Angola, so I quit watching. Blowouts aren't as much fun as they're supposed to be. However, I am always impressed with Dwyane Wade's attitude, and particularly with this comment: "I've played in conference finals and the NBA finals, but I've never been so excited to play a game as I am to play in the Olympics." Dwyane Wade is the man (see below).
As surprising to me as anyone else, I have enjoyed watching beach volleyball this year. I have often criticized the sport for being redundant (see discussion of synchronized diving above) but my attitude toward it is changing a little bit. Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh have played some amazing matches, and I surely hope that they are able to pull of a gold medal. Despite Walsh recovering from shoulder surgery, they have still have been a force to be reckoned with. I heard just the other day that they have played somewhere in the neighborhood of 475 games in the last four years and lost 18 of them. I'm not really sure how that's possible, but I believe they could do it!
Gymnastics has always been a sentimental favorite of mine, and while the team competitions and the men's all-around were mostly a disappointment for the US, the women shined in the all-around competition with Nastia Luiken receiving gold and Shawn Johnson silver. In the face of irregular scores and what seemed to be a Chinese bias in scoring, these women stayed strong.It seems more and more likely at this point that the Chinese earned their Women's Gymnastics Team gold with at least one ineligible gymnast. The AP reported a few days ago that nine months before the Olympic games, Xinhua, the Chinese government's news agency, reported that gymnast He Kexin was 13 years of age. The AP found the information on a website and though they saved a copy of the webpage, the page was removed from the site in a matter of hours. The New York Times reported in July that Provincial Sports Administration listings showed the age of gymnast Jiang Yuyuan to be 14, also too young for Olympic competition. Despite this, both girls were on the gold-winning women's team. The Chinese claim that these are simply mistakes and that their government-issued passports list the correct ages. However, as one of my friends astutely observed recently, "They've all still got their baby teeth!"
Certainly no investigation will be launched and China will do whatever it needs to in order to avoid further controversy. I am saddened by this though not too surprised, as it tends to be China's modus operandi. It's not only unfair to the other competitors, but is clearly dishonest. The issue isn't about what team would have won had the Chinese not had underage gymnasts on their team, the issue is that their gymnasts are in actuality probably ineligible, and if this is proven to be the case, the team should be stripped of their medals. At least the American team can rest in the fact that they won their silver medal playing by the rules.
Just a little sidenote...at the time I wrote this, the USA was leading the medal count at 57. Just FYI.
Track and field is just gearing up, so there will be plenty more for me to blog about in the coming weeks, but I thought I would leave you with an appropriate link to a hilarious site. Cake Wrecks is a blog with constantly updated pictures of "When professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong." Here's an Olympic Cake that probably should have been more thought out by the bakers. Enjoy!
