Ups And Downs

I understand there were big moments for the U.S Olympic team in London today, but I have yet to see them in tape-delay form on the prime time show, which is just getting started as I begin typing this.  So I'll comment on stuff that's literally yesterday's news.

The United States's men's gymnastics team last won the gold medal in 1984, which was somewhat by default since there neither the East Germans nor the Soviets were at those Games.  Well, they weren't at these London Games either, of course, ha ha ha, but the Chinese were, and the our men's team found out the hard way that they were no laughing matter. Consigned to fifth place, the Americans ended up watching the British and the Japanese fight it out for for second place.  Not on the mat or the equipment, but over a technicality; the Japanese team appealed a score for one of its members and got the silver as a result, leaving the United Kingdom to settle for the bronze.  The Brits happily took it; no Briton, not even Prince Philip, is old enough to remember the last time a British male gymnast win an Olympic medal of any sort.

Meanwhile, Missy Franklin is making a splash - literally - as America's newest swimming sweetheart.  She's a seventeen-year-old phenom who delights people with both her athleticism and her bubbly personality.  The last American female swimmer to create such a sensation, which was back in 1988, has a swimming meet named for her.  So, to you little tykes who attended a Janet Evans Invitational, or saw one on TV (yeah, right), now you know who Janet Evans is.  Franklin is a sprint swimmer, not a distance swimmer like Evans was, but she's just as astonishing as Evans or her own idol Natalie Coughlin.  After swimming in a 200-meter freestyle qualifying race yesterday, she warmed down for thirteen minutes before her victorious 100-meter backstroke final.  Even Michael Phelps needs thirty minutes between back-to-back races.

Skeptics had wondered how good Franklin could be, coming from Colorado, not a state known for producing champion swimmers.  Well, Michael Phelps lives and trains in noted swimming non-mecca Baltimore, and coming from Crab Cake Corners obviously hasn't had a detrimental effect on his swimming career.  But something has had a detrimental effect on Ryan Lochte, who cost the American men the gold in the 4x100-meter freestyle relay - being beaten by the French (the French! ;-) ), and finished fourth in the 200-meter freestyle race.  Hey, Ryan, as Olivia Newton-John once sang, you'd better shape up!

And, while all this was going on, American swimmer Rebecca Soni only got a silver medal in the 100-meter breaststroke, but I was actually happy with the result.  See, the winner was Ruta Meilutyte, a teenager competing for Lithuania, a country of only three million people and a country that has also had an unfortunate history of late.  Meilutyte's gold medal in this race marked the first time a swimmer won an Olympic medal competing for a free and independent Lithuania.  If NBC aired the medal ceremony, in which the Lithuanian national anthem was played (again - yeah, right), I missed it.  We may get another chance to hear "Tautiška giesmė" soon; the British-educated Meilutyte, who attends Plymouth College in England, is likely to compete in more races later this week.