Beijing Olympics Update #1

What a way to start the Olympics (see It's not the Triumph but the Struggle), to be it turned out to be a sham. First we learned that the Chinese CGI’ed some of the fireworks but by far the worst was the axing a young girl to sing their national anthem for a cuter one who lip synced it. Other thoughts of the first week of the Olympics:

- Andrea Kramer may be the worst sideline reporter ever. Couldn’t NBC just rent out Erin Andrews or at least bring back a former golden girl like Summer Sanders or Janet Evans?

- And you cannot talk swimming without talking Michael Phelps. His Olympics aren’t even over but there is talk of him being not just being the greatest Olympian ever but the best athlete ever. Personally I view swimming these days like the baseball in the nineties. But instead of horse roids, you have these swimsuits that put all these world records with asterisks. Really, there should be a rule that if you cannot put on your suit yourself, it should not be allowed. If Phelps wants to impress me, break all the world records with an old school Speedo and a seventies porn mustache. And NBC is doing everything to turn Phelps into a God even refusing to even mention that whole DUI he got to avoid tarnishing his image. But I will give it to him that he is better athlete than Tiger Woods that has been brought up in the discussion. Golfers and baseball players should never be in any discussion for best athletes. When your peers can be obese and great, your sport by definition is not athletic.

- One of the most mesmerizing sports is badminton. It’s like the Curling of the Summer Olympics for me. One reason is because I have played the sport against natural Asians and got beat down like a red-headed step child. Literally. I came away with welts and bruises from the shuttlecock being imbedded in my chest multiple times. The shuttlecock of course is the fastest instrument in sports.

- What could have been the a symbolic picture of the games, Georgian beach volleyballers embracing their Russian counterpoint is a little less symbolic when you learn the Georgian team are actually Brazilians born duel citizens who spent only a couple more days in Georgia than I have. There are some lax eligibility rules for who you can play for.

- Speaking of eligibility rules, what is with all the weird age requirements? You have to be sixteen or older in gymnastics, a sport that benefits the youth, but there was a fourteen year old diver. But the most odd is soccer where it is something like player must be twenty-five ore younger but you are allowed like three players that are older than that. Oh, and if the female Chinese gymnastics are really sixteen and older, they should really become decoys for Chris Hansen.

- Certainly everyone knows Natalie Coughlin, Jenny Finch and Ana Ivanovic (who sadly had to drop out of the Olympics), or at least the dudes out there, but here is possibly the hottest chick with a gun, and Olympics bronze medalist Corey Cogdell: