A fitting end to a historic Olympic run by Phelps. His final medal race didn’t end with drama, but with all the memories hes given us throughout the games….. he’s earned a easy race.
The first video below is the race, and the second video is an interview with Bob Costas afterwards.
Just in case you didn’t believe me in my last post about Bela Karolyi, this man truly gets hyphy while watching gymnastics. I was unable to watch this as it aired on tv this morning, because the gymnastics final didn’t happen until well after midnight.
What human being with a job is going to stay up until 1am watching gymnastics?? NBC is pissing me off so much.
[vid from awful announcing
The dominant story for the Beijing Olympics has been Michael Phelps and his quest to become the greatest Olympian in history. It’s been great watching him crush the hopes and dreams of his competition every night, but the bulk of my entertainment has come from an unlikely source.
Former U.S. women’s gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi has been teamed up with Bob Costas in an analyst capacity, which is proving to be a great move from NBC’s brass (despite ruining the Olympics for west coast viewers). I have absolutely NO IDEA what Bela is saying 70% of the time, but he’s so passionate and animated when it comes to gymnastics that he consumes the viewers.
In this video of Bela and Bob, you get to see Karolyi lose his mind around the 1:00min mark in the video while watching the games. It’s GREAT.
Karolyi has been adamant in his stance that the Chinese women’s gymnastics team has been cheating by using girls under the age limit of 16 since before the games started. His criticisms could have very well factored into the decision to ban him from attending the actual events here at the games (which is why he’s forced to sit in a studio with Bob Costas).
“They[the Chinese] are using half-people,” Karolyi said. “One of the biggest frustrations is, what arrogance. These people think we are stupid.
“We are in the business of gymnastics and we know what a kid of 14 or 15 or 16 looks like. You don’t have to be a gymnastics coach to know what they look like at 16.”
Karolyi’s claims were proved to be correct today, when Read the rest of this entry »
I think I speak for a lot of people when I say I’m completely jaded when it comes to a swimmer breaking any kind of record.
I’ve watched the Beijing Olympics religiously since it started (despite NBC disrespecting west coast visitors), and it seems like every time someone jumps in the pool they’re setting some type of record. Was it like this in my parents generation too? Are today’s athletes THAT much better than they used to be? The straw that broke the camels back was the Men’s 4x100m freestyle relay on Sunday night, they absolutely demolished the previous record by FOUR seconds.
This article on Sports Illustrated provided an interesting tidbit about swimming events:
There are 32 events on the Olympic program, and in 26 of them, world records have been broken since the conclusion of the 2004 Athens Olympics.
Kinda saps the luster out of the moment doesn’t it?
If they’re walking around half naked then it’s fair game.
[Image snagged at Blog Xilla]