The Olympics: My Greatest Hits, Part Four

With the Tokyo Olympics now behind us, I thought I'd take a look at some of my more acerbic comments from the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang.  Plus my witty comments on the just-concluded Tokyo Olympiad.  Both of them.

"I'd like to ask this simple question about the United States national men's soccer team . . . Why do we have one? The American men's soccer team failed to qualify for the Olympics for the second time in a row . . .. The only way any of them will see Rio is if they're dating any of the players on our women's soccer team. And if they are, maybe their girlfriends will let them walk on the turf at the stadium and kick a ball or two . . . just to know how it feels." - Rio de Janeiro, 2016 

"[Pita Taufatofua is] the Olympic athlete who was the flag bearer at the 2016 Olympics' opening ceremony for Tonga, a Pacific island country heretofore known for issuing postage stamps in silly shapes. The judo competitor appeared at the ceremony shirtless, his torso covered in oil . . .. And women loved it; they ogled Taufatofua's well-oiled physique so much that their husbands must have been . . . scared shirtless! :-D - Rio de Janeiro, 2016

"Allyson Felix, already the most decorated female American Olympic athlete in track and field, was a moment away from a fifth career gold medal in the women's 400-meter race. She lost it when Shaunae Miller of the Bahamas suddenly leaped out over the finish line and crossed it first by landing on it.  Miller apparently forgot that she was a track runner and not a diver." - Rio de Janeiro, 2016

"[Swimmer Ryan Lochte] doubled down on his insistence that [he and his teammates] were robbed . . . when in fact they were stopping at a service station after having gotten drunk and vandalized a bathroom. The fake police officer was actually a real security officer who gave them a hard time because they were . . . giving him a hard time. Then ol' Ryan bailed on his teammates and went home, leaving [them] to take the rap and tell authorities . . . the truth. Which was caught on a security camera. I think the dye in Lochte's hair seeped into his brain." - Rio de Janiero, 2016 

"I haven't seen Winter Olympic skiing be delayed by bad weather this much since Sarajevo in 1984. At least NBC can shift to figure skating; back in 1984, ABC had to settle for commentary and music from John Denver to fill the time.  And Bosnian turnip carts.  Wow - a country-folk-pop singer who hadn't had a hit in three years . . . and adventures in pushcart vending on the streets of Sarajevo! Oh, the drama! And people wonder why ABC lost coverage of the Olympics . . .. Though it's been a long time since I've seen a Bosnian turnip cart." - PyeongChang, 2018

"If not for the real problems affecting our country . . . , overpaid television commentators would be talking about the United States' current fifth-place showing in the Winter Olympics medal count as a national crisis comparable to expensive gasoline. The athletes from Nordic and Slavic countries keep winning all of the skiing medals - wow, big surprise!" - PyeongChang, 2018 

"Now I know why Trump wants more immigrants from Norway! He wants to get immigrants who can build up our Winter Olympics team! Hey, I have an idea - why not admit Norway as the fifty-first state? No, better yet, an equal merger - they get to take over the national government and we not only get rid of Trump and Congress, we get their (Norway's) health-care system and public education system! And together we clean up at the 2022 Winter Olympics! Everyone's a winner!" - PyeongChang, 2018

"Thanks to Dan Hicks for declaring a winner in the women's super giant slalom before the eventual winner, Ester Ledecká of the Czech Republic, won in an upset. Seriously. Dan, you've proven yourself worthy of being a sportswriter for the Chicago Tribune, the paper that, on the day after the 1948 presidential election, declared Thomas E. Dewey the 34th President of the United States." - PyeongChang, 2018

"The Olympics started having mixed medleys - both men and women competing side by side - with the Tokyo Games. Oh, I get it. That way, the American women can carry our guys when the guys start falling behind their male counterparts from Croatia."  Tokyo, 2020 - no, 2021 

"I sometimes suspect if some of the sportscasters [at the Tokyo Olympics] hosting the coverage are actually in Tokyo. Rebecca Lowe, for all I know, could be in a TV studio in Miami, the one where the moon landing was faked. (That was a joke.) If that's the case, she's more likely to get COVID there than in Japan. (That was not a joke.)" - Tokyo, 2020 - no, 2021 

Right. My work is done here. 

Flying Out of Rio

Well, another summer Olympiad has come and gone, and now it's time to bid adieu, goodbye, and all that other stuff, as we put Rio de Janeiro behind us.  And, as is my custom, I'd like to acknowledge everyone who got me interested enough in the Games to comment about it here.

I'd like to thank Allyson Felix, Clayton Murphy, Emma Coburn, and Jenny Simpson for their achievements in track and field, Simone Manuel for her breakthrough in the pool, Simone Biles for her gymnastic achievements, and Simone de Beauvoir for writing feminist literature that had to have inspired Title IX.

Special thanks also go to Nathan Adrian and Ryan Murphy for their feats in swimming, as well as to Maya Dirado and Lilly King for theirs, and all the U.S. swim relay teams, as well as thanks to all the other victorious athletes that I don't know from Adam or Eve who made these Games enjoyable.

No thanks to Ryan Lochte for his inexplicable and dubious achievement outside the pool.

(Oh, yeah, regarding my ladyfriend who was hot for Ryan Lochte . . . yeah, she got over him . . . before the bathroom incident. )

Gymnastics coach Martha Karloyi is following her husband Bela into retirement after having built the women's gymnastics program in These States from nothing into much more than something.  Thanks for the memories, guys, and thank you especially, Bela, for your unbridled enthusiasm for women's sports.  Shane Tusup can't hold a candle to you.

And thanks to Shane Tusup, Katinka Hosszú's husband, for his own wild enthusiasm.  I haven't seen anything like that in the Olympic bleachers since Michelle Kwan's dad! :-D And thank you, Katinka Hosszú, for being totally responsible for your swimming medals.

Special thanks to the Danish men's handball team for enlivening - and unexpectedly winning - the men's team-handball gold-medal game against France. You guys rock!

Thanks also to the commentators who covered these Olympics, especially Rebecca Lowe for that cool, British accent.  No thanks to Dan Hicks for demonstrating to me why media critics don't like him very much.

As always, I thank Mary Carillo and Tom Brokaw for their reports about Brazilian culture, especially Mary Carillo's report on the woman who inspired "The Girl From Ipanema." I also give credit, however begrudgingly, to figure skaters Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir for their own Brazilian travelogue segments.  Lipinski has never been a favorite athlete of mine, because she's so full of herself, but she did a good job.  So did Johnny Weir - but please, Johnny, please get yourself a fashion consultant!

Thanks also to models Gisele Bündchen, Adriana Lima and Alessandra Ambrosio for being a part of these Games, be it in the opening ceremony or through paling around with Ryan Seacrest, but how come no one invited those two other Brazilian beauties from the modeling world, Gisele Zelauy and my favorite Brazilian model, Dalma Collado, to join in? It's not because they're over forty, is it?

Paulo Pimenta is a Facebook friend of mine from Brazil, and I connected with him through the models I have befriended on social media.  He's been enjoying the Rio Games up close and personal. Thanks to my social-media connections, I have also connected on Facebook with . . . Gisele Zelauy. I dedicate my commentary on the Rio Games to them. :-)

There weren't that many memorable television commercials related to the Olympics, but there was one good one - a Reese's peanut butter cup ad showing winter Olympian Lindsey Vonn (a skier) trying her hand at non-winter sports with great difficulty. I'd like thank her for making such an entertaining commercial.  Lindsey, you are so adorable in that ad - and you totally got this! :-D

And thanks to the late Maya Angelou for reading her poetry in commercials for iPhone and the University of Phoenix.  Yes, that was sarcasm.  Whose stupid idea was it to play the recorded voice of a dead woman reading her own poetry in commercials, anyway, especially for an online diploma mill?  Not cool.

And a special thank you to Usain Bolt - I'm gonna miss you, man! - as well as very special thanks to Michael Phelps . . . 

 . . . for going out on top like no athlete ever has gone out or ever will.

And most of all, thanks to Katie Ledecky for her monumental accomplishments in the pool.  

 

This is Katie Ledecky with the great Janet Evans, who more or less passed her distance swimming crown to Katie.

Isn't she cute?

I don't mean Katie Ledecky. :-D

And speaking of Janet Evans . . . well, I saved my most important gratitude for last.  Although Evans has not competed in the Olympics since 1996, I found it impossible to comment on this summer Olympiad, or the previous one, without mentioning her at least once.  Which leads me to draw the obvious conclusion:  When it comes to writing about the Summer Olympics, she is, for better or for worse, my muse.  How could she not be?  Evans, as Hannah Storm told her in 1996, set the standard for what it means to be an Olympian in and out of competition, and her standard remains.  Why else would Evans appear on a Wheaties box only now, in 2016?  So, in addition to wishing her a happy birthday in advance (she turns 45 next Sunday), I'd like to thank her for the inspiration to blog about the Olympics, now and for all time.

Although she may find some of my comments a little too cynical . . .

And so we look with 2020 vision to the next Summer Olympics.  Gee, Mom, I want to go . . . straight back to Tokyo . . . :-D

Triple Trouble?

Jamaican Usain Bolt accomplished a major feat by winning the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter race, and the 4x100-meter relay in the Rio Games.  See, these were the third consecutive times he won each of those races in the Olympics, which is why the press is calling this feat the triple-triple. But that symmetrical record may be in jeopardy; it suddenly turns out that a fellow Jamaican on the gold-medal-winning 4x100 tram in Beijing in 2008 may have been on steroids at the time.  If it turns out to be true, Bolt, who was not on steroids and never has been, could lose that relay medal from 2008?

And this is only coming out now?  Sure took long enough . . . and the timing couldn't be more suspect.  I certainly hope it isn't true.

Incidentally, something similar happened to Michael Johnson in 2000 at the Sydney Olympics.  The esteemed American sprinter ran on the U.S. men's 4x400-meter relay team and helped the team win the gold medal. Then it came out that there was doping involved.  As far as I can make out, Johnson was the only one on that team who wasn't on steroids.  Needless to say, the team was disqualified, and Johnson had to suffer the indignity of being embarrassed because of the cheating of others.

And speaking of the 4x400, both the American men's and women's teams  - the women's team featuring Allyson Felix - won.  Felix now has six Olympic gold medals, more than any American woman in track and field history.  Congratulations also to Matthew Centrowitz for winning the men's 1500-meter race.

Keeping (and Losing) Track

As exciting as it was to see Ashton Eaton win the decathlon at the Olympics for the second time in a row, Usain Bolt's follow-up victories in the men's 200-meter race and the 4x100-meter relay, winning three gold medals in the Rio Olympics and nine overall, were amazing.  The man from D'yer Mak'er is now one of the most successful Olympic track  stars of all time.  He's retiring after this.  Pity.

Meanwhile, in the women's 4x100-meter relay, the U.S. team won a stunning gold-medal victory in the outer lane after having to do a do-over to qualify when a Brazilian runner interfered with Allyson Felix (the U.S. women had to run by themselves against the clock in the do-over).  The team - Felix, Tianna Bartoletta (who, before she got married, was Tianna Madison, the name you might remember her by), English Gardner (speaking of names, the most memorable name since Krystal Ball), and  Tori Bowie - poured it on in the final and won in stunning fashion.

Their male counterparts, incidentally, lost just as stunningly.  They were never going to win over a Jamaican (a D'yer Mak'in?) team anchored by Usian Bolt, but they were able to do well enough to settle for bronze.  Then the roof caved in; it turned out that leadoff runner Mike Rodgers handed the baton off to Justin Gatlin outside the space allotted on the track, causing them to be disqualified.  This is the second consecutive Olympiad in which the American men's 4x100-meter relay team has been disqualified from the event final and the ninth time overall it's had a disqualification or baton screw-up in World Championships or Olympic competition since 1995. (The team didn't make the final at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing because they dropped the baton in . . . a qualifier.)

Girls rule, boys drool?  In the 4x100-meter track relay race, the boys don't just drool, they slobber like St. Bernards.  Last night on the PBS NewsHour, Christine Brennan, noting that the American women win a sizable majority of gold medals - 61 percent - for Team USA, said that, because of Title IX (you know what that is, I won't repeat it), we should get used to that.  But that 61-39 ratio is not just the result of more American women winning.  It's also the result of more American men . . . losing.  Because American men aren't losing to women in the Olympics, of course.  Indeed, some of these guys are defeating themselves.  

While I'm here, I need to drool a bit about my typos from my previous post about Allyson Felix and other track competitors.  I referred to 40-meter and 300-meter races;  they were, respectively, 400-meter and 3000-meter races, the 90 percent reductions the results of missing zeroes.  The original errors were corrected. 

Lots and Lots of Olympic News!

We're getting very near the end of the Rio Olympics, so let me see how much news I can mention here:

The U.S. women's water polo team defended their 2012 Olympic championship and won the first back-to-back gold medals in history.  They beat Italy, who had better luck in men's volleyball (see below).

Helen Maroulis became the first woman to win a gold medal in wrestling, defeating a favorite, Japan's Saori Yoshida.

The U.S. men's volleyball team was on the verge of being eliminated from playing for the gold medal game by the Italians, then came back to . . . almost win the match.  They came back against the Italians and held them back for as long as they could, though, in the end, the Italians won the match.  but they didn't win easily.  Italy - whose men's volleyball team has a Russian ethnic on it - will p[lay Russia or Brazil for the gold medal.  The Americans still have a chance of wining the bronze.  At least I don't have to root for Bulgaria this time.

Oh, and here's something I just found out about Katie Ledecky: she's the first American woman to win the 200-meter, 400-meter, and 800-meter freestyle swimming races in the Olympics since Debbie Meyer in 1968. Meyer is a native Marylander too.

Back in a flash with more splash and dash.

Lochte Mess

Ryan Lochte apologized for his statements about the non-robbery - actually an altercation over vandalism that he and other swimmers caused at a gas station - that took place Sunday, but he never admitted to lying, which only seemed to leave him in a deeper hole. It's also an embarrassment for us Americans, as we are trying to put the "ugly American tourist" stereotype behind us.

This is worse than the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, where members of the U.S. men's hockey team - a team entirely staffed with professionals - trashed their rooms at the Olympic village after losing a key game in the Olympic tournament and ending up in sixth place, because the hockey team never attempted to blame anyone else for their behavior (though they downplayed the damage they did), and the United States Olympic Committee was more swift and effective in handling the situation than it could have been with Lochte, given the initially murky circumstances in his case. 

(Aside:  The 1998 Winter Olympics were the first winter Olympiad to feature women's ice hockey; the U.S. won the gold medal that event.  Before 1998 it was believed that men play ice hockey and women don't; as it turned out then, in the U.S., at least, the opposite was true.) 

All right, let's move on.  There are still some surprises left in track and field in Rio, and as I write this, the U.S. and Italy  are in an intense men's volleyball semifinal match.  These Games are going to end with a bang.        

Swimmers Behaving Badly

Okay, let me see if I have this fast-changing story straight . . .

Ryan Lochte and three other swimmers - Jimmy Feigen, Jack Conger and Gunnar Bentz - were riding in a taxi and were allegedly robbed at gunpoint by thieves pretending to be police officers, forcing them out of the car and demanding their wallets.  Lochte said he dared one of them to use his gun and then got down on the ground.

Then Lochte changed details in his story while his teammates said that he never pulled a Dirty Harry-type moment, and he doubled down on his insistence that they were robbed . . . when in fact they were stopping at a service station after having gotten drunk and vandalized a bathroom.  The fake police officer was actually a real security officer who gave them a hard time because they were . . . giving him a hard time. 

Then ol' Ryan bailed on his teammates and went home, leaving Feigen, Conger and Bentz to take the rap and tell authorities . . . the truth. Which was caught on a security camera.

I think the dye in Lochte's hair seeped into his brain.

Lochte's behavior - inexcusable for a man of his age and position - is going to go down as one of the most brazen display of immaturity by an American swimmer that I can remember.

Which brings me back to the subject of Janet Evans.  I sort of remember, twenty years ago in Atlanta, that Evans was dismissed for her immaturity.  She was ridiculed for what she did after she was eliminated from the final in the 400-meter freestyle by a fraction of a second.  She . . . cried.

What?  You mean an athlete on the verge of becoming the first American woman to win a fifth individual Olympic gold medal in swimming got unexpectedly eliminated from the final of the only one of two races she was competing in at Atlanta in which she was a favorite - and she actually got upset because she was eliminated by a microscopic margin?  After all the training she went through to make history, she was, upon failing to do so, actually . . .  tearful?  Oh, I'm shocked! 

And when that bomb in Centennial Olympic Park went off before her eyes, she was reportedly criticized for her reaction.  She . . . cursed.  No kidding!  Like, what was she supposed to do, say something like, "It is terribly unfortunate that a bomb went off and could have killed me if it had been any closer?" 

Evans wasn't being immature, she was being human.  Michael Phelps, incidentally, may have been immature when  he drank and did drugs, but he showed his humanity when he came clean and got clean.  Lochte was not only being immature, he was being . . . dumb.     

Yet More 2016 Miscellaneous Olympic Musings

You take your victories where you find them . . ..

Much has been made of the U.S. women's gymnastics team at the 2016 Olympics, and deservedly so, but their male counterparts haven't been doing as well.  But while teh girls ruled, the boys didn't exactly drool; the men's team's Danell Leyva, known for his lucky towel, had luck on the bars.  He won silver medals in both the horizontal and parallel bars.  Glad to see he didn't throw in the towel. :-)

Also, track runner Jenny Simpson won a bronze in the 1500-meter race - the first medal for an American woman in the so-called metric mile.  (Evan Jager won the silver in the men's 3000-meter steeplechase - and the two athletes raced with an elastic hair band they shared between them. Apparently it brought the two of them good luck.

Okay, now that the American women dominate in regular gymnastics, they have to work on rhythmic gymnastics - floor exercises with balls and streamers.  The Russians own that sport!  (But the Russians don't own track and field anymore; as noted here, sixty-seven Russian track and field atheltes - 67 was the final count - were banned from competing in Rio due to doping. How many Russian track and field athletes were able to compete?  Only one - long jumper Darya Klishina.)

And if American women can run the metric mile in the Olympics, certainly American women can swim the metric mile in the Olympics.  They've set records in the 1500-meter freestyle swim elsewhere.  Come on, IOC, show some gumption! Add the women's 1500-meter freestyle swim already!

Get rid of synchronized swimming to fit it in, if you have to.  (Okay, I couldn't resist . . .)

And would you believe that Kerri Walsh-Jennings and April Ross got knocked out of gold medal contention in beach volleyball?  It actually shouldn't have surprised anyone; the Brazilian pair who beat them were more favored due to their standings.  Well, you can't win 'em all . . . but the dynamic American duo did win the bronze against another Brazilian pair! :-D

Sync Or Swim

You  may have noticed that at no point up to now in my commentary on the 2016 Olympics have I tried to make fun of synchronized swimming.  Nothing about the silly balletic moves, no cracks about the competitors' gelled hair or sparkling outfits, no more than a passing mention of their smiling.  I could try to convince you that this is because I have learned to respect anyone who participates in athletic endeavors that I could never excel in or even attempt, but after all the comments I made about the U.S. men's soccer team, I don't think you'll buy that.  I decided not to make any jokes about synchronized swimming this time because I've already ridiculed it enough in commentary during Olympiads past.

However, I do want to say this to any young woman who is contemplating the possibility of participating in this female-only sport:  If you do, you'll be subject to ridicule from cynics more cruel than I am, you'll risk freezing your face with all that smiling, and your lungs will burn up while trying to hold your breath under water.

Also, you'll never appear on a Wheaties box.

Unlike one female swimmer I could mention. ;-)

Taking a Dive

Allyson Felix, already the most decorated female American Olympic athlete in track and field, was a moment away from a fifth career gold medal in the women's 400-meter race.  She lost it when Shaunae Miller of the Bahamas suddenly leaped out over the finish line and crossed it first by landing on it.

Miller apparently forgot that she was a track runner and not a diver.

This was so unfair. Felix was in gold medal position; she should have won.  Miller made a last-minute move that was so underhanded, I stopped working on an freelance article for a moment just to go on Facebook and complain about it.  Even more people, I understand, complained about it on Twitter.

There's just one thing; what Miller did was legal.

Yes!  Apparently, Olympic track runners can hurl themselves over the line, provided they don't impede their competitors. And yes, Americans have done this too; David Neville won the bronze medal in the men's 400-meter race at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.  Well, that wasn't fair, either, so don't accuse me of Yankee imperialism by making the case for Felix.  I heard she was tearful over the result - oh, great, now the press will call her a sore loser - and I, quite frankly, don't blame her for being upset.    

But at least she won the silver medal.

Some more good news: American Clayton Murphy won the bronze in the men's 800-meter race, while American Emma Coburn won the bronze in the women's 3000-meter (three-kilometer) steeplechase, the first American woman to win an Olympic medal in a steeplechase event. 

Okay, Let's Track It!

And now to Olympic track and field. 

We start with . . . the man! 

Okay, I'm not Jamaican, I don't know anyone of Jamaican origin, and I've never been to Jamaica, but I was rooting for Mr. Usain Bolt of D'yer Mak'er in the men's 100-meter dash to pick up his third straight gold medal in that event.  A single hectometer (a hundred meters; I love using that measurement, you understand) transformed Mr. Bolt from a great athlete to the most monumental track star of our time.  And he still has the 200-meter trace and the 4x100-meter relay ahead of him.  Alas, this will likely be his last Olympiad.

Meanwhile, Wayde van Niekerk of South Africa (below) set a new world record Sunday night in the men's 400 meters at the 2016 Olympics.  The previous world record was held by the great Michael Johnson, which Johnson set at the 1999 World Championships in Seville.  Some context: Van Niekerk set a record at 43.03 seconds, beating Johnson's record of 43.18, a huge difference.

Of course, van Niekerk's new world record is also the Olympic record, and Johnson had been the previous Olympic record holder in the 400-meter race as well, setting it at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta with a time of 43.49.  Van Niekerk is 24 years old.

Oh yes, the heptathlon. Nafissatou Thiam of Belgium (above) won it, beating out Jessica Ennis - who has since gotten married and his now Jessica Ennis-Hill - by a score of 6810 to 6775.  Ennis-Hill took silver, of course, with Canada's Brianne Theisen-Eaton won the bronze with 6653 points.

Yes, Theisen-Eaton is married to American decathlon champion Ashton Eaton.  Yes, he was rooting for her.  Yes, some Americans were upset about him rooting for a foreigner (sort of like how I was rooting for Usain Bolt the other night), even though the foreigner in question was his wife.  So they wanted him to root against her and for a fellow American?  Well, an American Olympic heptathlon champion this year was a long shot; the highest ranking American, Barbara Nwaba, finished in twelfth place.  But still, Eaton rooted for his better half, so that makes him a traitor.  Yeah, he should be put in front of a firing squad.

You know, I'm getting sick and tired of dealing with stupid people . . ..     

No, You DON'T Have To Live Like a Refugee!

I've been cracking jokes about the sillier side of the Olympics, both here and on Facebook, and of course I love to do that, but even I have to acknowledge any effort by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to live up to the ideal of peace through sport.  Reacting to the refugee crisis caused by interminable wars in the Middle East and Africa, IOC President Thomas Bach orchestrated the creation of a Refugee Olympic Team, comprised of ten refugee athletes, to compete in Rio under the Olympic flag in order to call more attention to the global refugee crisis and also recognize refugees' worth.

The most visible face of the refugee team is swimmer Yusra Mardini (below), a Syrian Christian who fled the civil war in her homeland. Her story is quite inspiring; she and was able to arrange to be smuggled with her sister Sarah, also a swimmer, on an overcrowded boat from Turkey to Greece.  Out in the Aegean Sea, the boat's motor died; Yusra and her sister pushed the boat with two other people through the water for three hours until they reached the Greek island of Lesbos.  From there the Mardini sisters made it to Germany (where their parents also settled), and Yusra pursued her Olympic dream by training in Berlin.   

She made  the Refugee Olympic team, and at Rio she swam the butterfly and freestyle races, both one hundred meters, and though she never had a chance of advancing out of the qualifiers, well . . . I know it sounds corny, but by competing, she'd already won.  :-)  

Yusra Mardini, eighteen years of age at this writing, says she plans to continue her swimming career.  I hope she gets a medal one day, be it for Syria, Germany, or even another refugee team.    

One Last Time (And Two First Times)

The 2012 Olympics were supposed to be the last Olympiad not just for Michael Phelps but also for cyclist Kristin Armstrong, who came back to compete in Rio at the same time she turned 43.  Although she didn't finish the women's road race, she struck time-trial gold in that event, her third straight Olympic gold medal in the time trials.

And the Phelpster?  He won his twenty-third Olympic gold medal and his twenty-eighth Olympic medal overall as part of the U.S. team in the men's 4x100 relay swimming medley . . . right after the American women (including Simone Manuel) won the same race on their side.

I just have one thing to say to both of them . . ..  You sure you both want to retire now? :-D  

And here are some interesting firsts for swimming: Pernille Blume of Denmark won her country's first swimming gold medal in the 50-meter women's freestyle and Gregorio Paltrinieri of Italy won the gold in the 1500-meter "metric mile" freestyle - which was Italy's first gold medal in that event. His fellow countryman Gabriele Detti took the bronze, while American Connor Jaeger took the silver and set a new U.S. record in the event.

Who won the women's metric mile freestyle? Uh, there is no such race in the Olympics.  Gee, maybe if there were - it is included in championships - maybe Italy would have won a gold in the 1500 free already.

More Miscellaneous 2016 Olympics Musings

The U.S. women's soccer team lost to Sweden at the Olympics and so was eliminated from medal contention.  The gave up the game to the Swedes in penalty kicks to break a tie.  Oh, well, you can't win 'em all.  And the men can't win at all.

This would be no big deal if not for post-game comments from American goalkeeper Hope Solo, who stalled for time before Swedish player Lisa Dahlkvist scored the winning goal and thus fired the shot heard 'round the world, hadn't offered this sour quote after the game:  "We lost to a bunch of cowards. The better team did not win."  Asked to expand on that, she said, "Sweden dropped off. They didn't want to open play. They didn't want to pass the ball. They didn't want to play great soccer."

And with that, Solo wins the Nancy Kerrigan Award for Bad Sportsmanship.  But then, at least Nancy Kerrigan could argue that she should have won the women's figure skating gold medal in 1994 because figure skating is a subjective sport.  Soccer is very objective - the team with the most goals wins the game.  The Swedish ladies didn't have to play great; they just had to win.  And they did.

Meanwhile . . . how about Maya Dirado?  She upset Hungary's Katinka Hosszú by six one-hundredths of a second in the women's 200-meter backstroke race.  I turned away from the telly thinking Hosszú was going to win, then I looked back barely in time to see Dirado touch the wall first!  Even when I saw the replay, I couldn't believe it. I'm sure Dirado couldn't believe it either.

And now that Hosszú has to settle for silver, is her husband responsible for her loss of the gold?  Well, he should be held responsible.

Also, Michael Phelps went into the water with the hope of winning the 100-meter butterfly. He ended up losing to Singaporean swimmer Joseph Schooling - whom Phelps once met when Schooling was a kid back in 2008 - and sharing the silver with South Africa's Chad LeClos and Lazslo Cseh of the Czech Republic. Yes, three-way ties happen.  Did fifth-place finisher Li Zhuhao of China get a bronze medal? No, but he should have. Why waste a bronze medal by not handing it out?

Oh, yeah, Schooling set a new Olympic record in the 100 fly.

Also, congrats to American swimmers Anthony Ervin and Nathan Adrian for winning gold and bronze, respectively, in the men's "splash and dash" 50-meter freestyle.  Although, I would have preferred to see Ervin show more modesty, in the style of Tom Dolan, when he won.

And while you weren't paying attention, brothers Gary and Paul O'Donovan of Ireland won the silver medal for in the lightweight men's doubles rowing competition - Ireland's first medal in these Games and its first Olympic rowing medal in history.  Ethnic pride here!

Whoever said "You don't win silver, you lose gold" obviously never won a silver . . . and obviously wasn't Irish. :-)

Katie!

Allow me to play Inspector Clouseau for a moment or two to make the case for Katie Ledecky as the greatest female distance swimmer of her time.

Fact: Katie Ledecky just won the Olympic gold medal for the women's 800-meter freestyle race and set a new world record in the event.

Fact: The record she broke was her own, set in January 2016.

Fact: After she set the Olympic record for the "800 free" at the London Games in 2012, she set the world record in August 2013.  What just happened in Rio marks the fourth time she's broken her own world record.

Fact: She's only the third woman to win back-to-back gold medals in the 800-meter Olympic women's freestyle race.  The first two were Janet Evans (maybe you've heard of her!) in 1988 and 1992 and Brooke Bennett (who I used to dislike, but not anymore, and I explained all that here)  in 1996 and 2000.  

Fact: In the final fifty meters, Ledecky was so far ahead that, at one point, it looked like all of the other swimmers were still going in the other direction.      

Fact: Katie Ledecky just swam eight hectometers to glory. 

Fact: Eight hectometers are the equivalent of eight hundred meters. :-D

Two Women Named Simone

Well, how about this?

On the left is American gymnast Simone Biles.  On the right, American swimmer Simone Manuel.  They just won big time in their respective sports at the Olympics!  

After winning a gold medal as part of the women's gymnastic team in the team competition, Biles won the individual all-around gold medal last night.  Then, Manuel upset, well, just about everyone in the women's 100-meter freestyle swim race, including the Campbell sisters from Australia, and became the first black American woman to win a gold medal in an Olympic individual swimming event by tying with Canada's Penny Oleksiak and sharing the gold with her.  Ms. Biles, Ms. Manuel: You gals rock! 

I first saw Simone Manuel swim her way on to the team at the Olympic trials on TV in July.  I remember that moment vividly . . . because when she was talking to the press afterwards, the cable service went out. 

*#!!@ severe thunderstorm! 

Olympic TV Musings

The New Jersey Star-Ledger reported today that the ratings for NBC's Olympic coverage this time around has been underwhelming.  That mystifies me, as most of the events have been televised live, although women's gymnastics has been shown in tape-delay form (and by the way, for those who don't mind spoilers, Simone Biles won the gold medal in the women's all-around - nice work, Ms. Biles!).  NBC has been able to show a lot live events, especially in prime time, since Rio de Janeiro is only an hour ahead of New York (yes, Rio is two time zones away from New York, but we're on daylight savings time and the Brazilians aren't, as it's winter down there), so there are plenty of opportunities to see the action as it happens.  

Olympics ratings have always been hit or miss for NBC, ever since it began covering the so-called Summer Olympics beginning with Seoul in 1988 (it added the Winter Games starting with Salt Lake City in 2002).  At Seoul, long before it had sister cable channels and Internet streaming, NBC broadcast so many hours of competition that the lackluster ratings made it look like what humorist Paul Slansky called "overkill of the highest order."  Its ratings for Barcelona in 1992 were better, then they went through the roof in Atlanta in 1996 - no surprise, given the fact that those Games were in the United States (the only such occurrence since NBC took over the Summer Games from ABC)  and in the Eastern time zone.  Paradoxically, some of the biggest American names to emerge with smashing victories in Seoul were past their peak when they competed in Atlanta.  Therefore, according to the Nielsen numbers, more Americans saw Jackie Joyner-Kersee, for example, withdraw from the Olympic heptathlon in 1996 than saw her win it in 1988 and 1992.  

That sucks.  

So what's causing the ratings to drop in 2016?  The lack of athlete sob stories?  Not enough travelogue features?  Ryan Lochte's hair?  Dan Hicks and Rowdy Gaines not knowing when to shut up, as when, during the 800-meter swimming heat earlier today, they were going on and on about Lochte and Michael Phelps while the heat was in progress, even though neither one of them was in it?  Well, of course they weren't - it was a women's heat! 

Please come back to NBC, Hannah Storm.  Your husband needs you to save him from himself.

I don't hold out much hope for the ratings during track and field . . ..        

Sex and Sexism the Olympics

Who'd have thought the biggest delicacy discovered at the Olympics in Rio would be a Pita covered in oil? :-D

Ha ha! I am referring to Pita Taufatofua, of course.  He's the Olympic athlete who was the flag bearer at the 2016 Olympics' opening ceremony for Tonga, a Pacific island country heretofore known for issuing postage stamps in silly shapes.  The judo competitor appeared at the ceremony shirtless, his torso covered in oil.  (No doubt he upstaged the U.S. of A.'s flag bearer, Michael Phelps.)  And women loved it; they ogled Taufatofua's well-oiled physique so much that their husbands must have been . . . scared shirtless! :-D

I wrote back in 2012 during the London Games that I have no trouble with women checking out the men at the Olympics, because after all, men check out the women too.  (Beach volleyball's Kerri Walsh-Jennings is still hot, by the way.)  But I have yet to hear any women make derogatory or dismissive comments about male athletes at these Games, while men have been making so many comments like that about female athletes that to list such sexist remarks in their entirety on this blog would take too long. So I'll focus on just two of the many misogynistic swipes - the number of which is rapidly approaching triple digits - in the coverage of these Games.  

One comment was a product of what Brad Paisley might call "accidental sexism."  When Hungarian swimmer Katinka Hosszú won a gold medal, NBC commentator Dan Hicks called her coach/husband Shane Tusup as "the man responsible" for her victory . . . as if Hosszú herself had nothing to do with it.  Hicks apologized, explaining that he meant that Tusup's coaching was a notable factor in her victory and regretting that his attempt to convey credit for Tusup for his role as a coach didn't come out right.  Gee, ya think, Dan?  Okay, had Hosszú's coach been a woman, Hicks might very well have called her coach "the woman responsible" for Hosszú's win, and a coach's contributions to the performance of any athlete of either sex are key to an athlete's successes.  But what if Hosszú had been kept off the medal podium by her competitors, and what if her husband were still her coach?  Would her husband have been called the man responsible for her loss?  I doubt it. I'm sure Hannah Storm - Dan Hicks is her husband, you will remember - would agree with me.  

For the record,  I may have said that Tusup was an asset for Hosszú, but I never said he deserves all the credit for her wins.  In fact, I have since been led to understand that his coaching style is so unorthodox and punishing, she may be winning despite his coaching methods.      

The other comment that caught my eye was when Tim Bannon of the Chicago Tribune reported that Corey Cogdell won the bronze medal in women's trap shooting and primarily identified her as the wife of Chicago Bears lineman Mitch Unrein.  That's all she is - a football player's wife?  What?  What's up with this Bannon guy, anyway?  Did he consider Cogdell's victory insignificant because it was only a bronze medal? Or because he thinks trap shooting isn't a real sport like football?  Is he upset that Chicago didn't get the 2016 Olympics?  Or is he peeved that American football isn't taken very seriously outside These States?  I could go on and on making such conjectures (and I would if I had nothing better to do today), but diminishing Cogdell to a mere spousal status is flat-out degrading.  Was Florence Griffith Joyner ever called Al Joyner's wife?  No, because she was a greater track athlete than he was.  (Jackie Joyner-Kersee was also a better track athlete than her brother Al as well, and no one ever called her Al Joyner's sister.)      

Oh yeah, I ought to tell you also about a sexist swipe People magazine had in its special 2016 Olympics issue, which hit the newsstands before the Games began, in one of its items about Olympians past.  American track star Michael Johnson was referred to as the first person to win the 200-meter and 400-meter track races in the same Olympiad. Actually, that was American Valerie Brisco-Hooks, who did it in 1984 at the Los Angeles Olympics; Johnson won both races in the 1996 Games.  Johnson was the first man to win both races in the same Olympiad, and the second woman to achieve that feat, France's Marie-Jose Perec, did so in 1996, the same year as Johnson's accomplishment.  Hey, I love Michael Johnson, he's a cool customer . . . but let's set the record straight here - and not diminish Brisco-Hooks's achievement! 

Alas, this sort of thing is likely to continue.  And if you think all this obsession with Pita Taufatofua is trivial nonsense but, at the same time, you have no problem with comments from guys like Hicks or Bannon (at least Hicks apologized) because you don't see the problem, well, you have a problem yourself.  

Give Me Silver, Blue and Gold . . .

. . . the colors of the sky, I'm told.  And, the colors that comprise the color of Ryan Lochte's hair!

I think the only time I've seen that color before was when I bought a pack of winter-ice chewing gum.

Even my ladyfriend who likes to check out Ryan Lochte is appalled.  But at least he's not wearing that grill brace over his teeth! 

You know, I could point out that the most radical thing Janet Evans ever did to her hair was let it grow, and that she had a short cut in her early twenties but now sports longer locks, and that she looks good with either short or long hair, and that she's never looked ridiculous . . . like this, but I won't.  Oh - did I just do that? ;-) :-D    

International Olympic Corruption

A friend of mine from my writers' group alerted me to a report on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that appeared on "Real Sports," the HBO Sports show hosted by Bryant Gumbel.  The report depicted how the IOC has an unsavory interrelationship between itself and countries that bid for the Olympics.  See, the countries (cities, not countries, are supposed to vie for the Games, but we all know that's a lie) bend over backwards to satisfy IOC members and their greed.  They don't so much bribe members of the committee as they are blackmailed by them.

The problem turns out to have be much worse than the nasty wheeling and dealing that brought the Summer Games to Atlanta in 1996 (how else could the Olympics have been been held in a city more defined by the 285 beltway than by anything resembling a downtown?) and the Winter Olympics to Nagano, Japan in 1998 (no skiing facilities, no sledding amenities, just craggy mountains that even the local monkeys wouldn't roam across).  IOC potentates are expected to be wined and dined at considerable expense and receive all sorts of favors, causing bidders to spend a lot of time, money and energy on the Games.  This was supposed to be cleaned up after all of the bribery that plagued the organizing committee for the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics (and was rectified by Mitt Romney when he took it over), but no, it still goes on.  The money spent on the facilities for the Games comes out of public amenities for the poor and the middle class.  That's why Sochi was still a mess after the 2014 Winter Olympics and why Rio de Janeiro has become even more uninhabitable for the locals.  

Maybe Bill Kristol was right back in 2009 when he said Chicago didn't need the 2016 Olympics.  Lord knows Chicago needs a whole lot of other things.  Like a mayor who's not in the pocket of big business.    

And who makes most of the money for the Games themselves?  I'll give you a hint; it's not the host cities.  The host cities, in fact, are left holding the bag for maintenance costs for those same facilities.  The IOC gets walks away with most of the profits.

International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach (below), who was a gold-medal fencer for West Germany at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, was supposed to do something about all this, and given that he is a former athlete himself, the athletes were expected, so I have been led to understand, to benefit from his presidency.

Yeah, well, without the athletes, there's no Olympic movement.  It's supposed to be all about the athletes, because it's the athletes who compete, it's the athletes who break world records and all that, and it's the athletes we all revere, not the IOC members . . . and it's the athletes we all develop silly celebrity crushes on; I wonder if you all know who I'm talking about? ;-)  Ha ha, I have a ladyfriend who loves to check out Ryan Lochte, and not necessarily when he's swimming.

So I hope Bach gets all that and pursues some real reform in the IOC.  Because it is indeed all about the athletes.  After all, despite the fact that Bach was an Olympian himself, no one tuned into the opening ceremony at Rio to check out Bach's sexy bod. :-p       

And if Los Angeles does lose its bid for the 2024 Games, that will mean that Angelenos didn't compromise their integrity - or, at least they didn't compromise it as much as the residents of the city with the winning bid.