Sunday, August 05, 2012

London Olympics Round Up Week 1


This is the first Summer Olympics I have watched in HD and it was well worth the upgrade. It even makes quite boring events like Rowing entertaining because the sight is just so beautiful. The images are so sharp you can even see sweat drip down off a ping ponger’s brow. Who knew table tennis athletes sweat? Apparently they sweat so much they have a towel off break every seven points or so. Here are some other thought on the first week of the Olympics.

- Who would have guessed one of the biggest stories of The Olympics would come from badminton? Sure we see a few athletes ever games booted from competition, but most are for trying too hard with performance enhancers. This is the first time I have ever heard of anyone getting booted for not trying. But four woman’s doubles pairs did just that and got booed then booted by a crowd that paid about $120 American for the match.

- The other big news of the week was Michael Phelps is now the most decorated medalist of all time. It is hard to argue that he is not the greatest Olympian ever even though there is a laughable amount of swimming medal (who knows how many Carl Lewis could have gotten if there was skipping, backwards, and hopping) 100 Meters) kind of like how RnB artists are always the most nominated at the Grammy’s because there is an absurd amount of RnB categories.

- I am sick of Debbie Phelps. There, I said it. They should have had more gratuitous Kate Middleton shots. And how has there not been a Pippa sighting yet?

- Gymnastics was usually when I would take my dogs for a walk every night mostly because I feared if I watched the “Woman’s” I might walk into my kitchen and see Chris Hansen. But I did get back in time for the controversies. I do not have a problem with only two gymnasts from one country in the finals, if you cannot even beat your teammates, then you do not have a gripe.

- But my favorite gymnast story was a Men’s Japanese gymnast who fell of the one thing, putting his country in fourth. His coach then slips a judge a few dollars (which thanks to my HD I am pretty sure were American, which begs the question, why does the Japanese delegation have American dollars in Great Britain), and a couple minutes later (I am not one to complain about tape delays, but if you are going to air it a couple hours later, how about cutting down the standing, and waiting around for scores?), Japan moved up to second. Awesome.

Alex Morgan with her hair up

- Of course a couple days after declaring Alex Morgan having the second ponytail ever in the history of the world, she just had to come out for her very next game with her hair in a bun. Her hair magically came down minutes later, but was back up by half time where it stayed. Hurump. Thankfully her ponytail was back to its awesomeness glory for the next game where she brused her knee on the New Zealand’s goalie.

Alex Morgan bruising her knee

- Forget Destinee Hooker, Dutch swimmer Ranomi Kromowidjojo has the best name of these Olympics.

- Please note that trampoline is an Olympics sport; baseball is not.

- Speaking of American pastimes not currently in the Olympics, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said this week he hopes that football will soon become an Olympics sport and as the six-four countries needed to be included. As the great Michael Wilbon responded (paraphrasing), “There are only two countries that play football: America and Canada. And we are not entirely sure about Canada.” And considering it currently takes five weeks for the NFL’s twelve team playoff, how exactly does Roger plan to get an Olympics tournament done in seventeen days?

- I really do not understand the controversy of the double amputee running in the Olympics. So what if he gets an advantage from his prosthetics, dude has no legs. Until people start voluntarily amputating their legs to get an unfair advantage, let the guy run. Almost as inspiring but less reported on is the one handed Table Tennis contestant which has to be the second greatest one handed feet since Jim Abbott threw a one-hitter.

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