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

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.

Maryland Rocks!

Michael Phelps.  Katie Ledecky. Those are the only names you really need to know right now.

Phelps just won his twentieth and twenty-first Olympic swimming gold medals (he has 25 overall now!), taking first in the 200-meter men's butterfly and the s 4x200-meter freestyle relay with teammates Conor Dwyer, Townley Haas and Ryan Lochte. And Katie Ledecky just won the 200-meter women's freestyle, a personal tradition of hers, I'm led to understand.

It's official: In competitive swimming, Maryland is the new California.  That's going to get some knickers tied up out in Orange County.

Ryan Lochte's hair?  Oh, I'll get to that! 

23 Skiddoo!

The U.S. just won the men's 4X100 freestyle swimming relay.

And Michael Phelps was in it! 

He just won his twenty-third career Olympic medal, which, oh yes, is his nineteenth gold. 

Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude! :-D

Special mention goes to Nathan Adrian for bringing it home. :-) 

Miscellaneous Olympics Musings 2016

Congratulations to Chase Kalisz for winning the silver medal in the men's 400-meter individual swimming medley.  This kid is on his way to bigger and better things.

Katie Ledecky is a strong favorite for the women's 400-meter crawlstroke - er, freestyle - later today, and Michael Phelps swims in the men's 200-meter butterfly qualifiers tomorrow.  Like Phelps and Ledecky, Kalisz is from Maryland. That state is becoming a bigger powerhouse in swimming than it ever will be in presidential politics.

As for annoying commercials . . . the United Airlines ad is kind of silly, especially with the synchronized swimmers and their smiles, but it's hard not to smile yourself when Missy Franklin shows up in it.  Another swimming star in the making, she.  

Also, and this is embarrassing, I have to correct something I wrote last year about Boston's canceled bid for the 2024 Olympics.  I said that opposition to holding the Olympics in Boston "has been wildly unpopular there." When you think faster than you type, the risk of internal contradictions goes way up and you end up saying the opposite of what you mean.  I meant to say that opposition to the holding the Olympics in Boston "has been wildly rampant there."  The original error, well, you know the drill . . . it has been corrected.

I need a full-time editor.

Olympic Zika Fallout

I have been hearing reports that a lot of golfers are refusing to compete in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro because of fears of catching the Zika virus.  I thought, "Wow, that's astonishing!  

"Golf is in the Olympics now?"

Yes, and rugby too!  (Golf was last in the Olympics in 1904, and rugby was last in the Olympics in 1924.)

But a lot of athletes - and not just golfers (I don't know about the rugby players) are staying away from Rio due to fears of catching Zika.  Brazilian officials are downplaying the risk to athletes and spectators in Rio, pointing out the the Zika-carrying mosquitoes in the area should be dormant owing to the fact that it is winter in the Southern Hemisphere right now, as if the pollution and the overall dubiousness of cleanliness of the place weren't bad enough to warrant concerns.  

To think that if the United States Olympic Committee had gotten its act together much sooner than it did, the 2016 Olympics could have been in Chicago, and we could have all avoided this.  Then again, Michael Phelps may not have competed; his mother never said, "I want him to compete in 2016; I want to go to Chicago!"  Be that as it may, anyone who does go to Rio for this carnival of sport had better make sure their immunizations up to date and plenty of insect repellent for the trip.

And I offer the same advice to Debbie Phelps that I offered to Janet Evans last week: Don't drink the water.

Oh yeah, the first transmission of Zika in the U.S. that is not related to foreign travel occurred in southern Florida. Has anyone checked if Rick Scott vetoed any bills giving state assistance to Florida municipalities for moquito control lately? :p