The London Olympics: 16 Days of Awesome
Have been terribly scarce here, but couldn't let an Olympics pass without a round-up of the highs and lows of London.
Congrats, first of all, to the Brits for staging a beauty. All that pre-Olympic misery turned out to just be British moping. London put on a really nice Olympics. The crowds were, I think, second only to Lillehammer's in the enthusiasm department. And they were duly rewarded with a medal haul for the home team that even Her Majesty's best couldn't have dreamed of. Boris Johnson turned out to be strangely prescient about the home team’s ability to medal in sports where they get to sit on their butts-rowing is about as fun to watch as paint dry (and the same goes for cycling), but they really killed in those sports. Go Brits!!!!
I cannot say the same for NBC, which butchered the coverage of this Olympics. How much do I loathe thee? I cannot even begin to count the ways. And I’m not even really miffed about the time delay issue. NBC had so many other problems, that was the least of the coverage issues. I am in mourning that the next 3 Olympics will be covered by a network that doesn’t even know how to do a medal ceremony.
Track & Field : Lost a lot of respect for Usain Bolt as a person even as I gained even more respect for him as a sprinter. Definitely the best of the latter in history. Not particularly impressed with his arrogance (sorry, the cute antics don't make up for it), however. And the contention that he's the greatest Olympic athlete is almost snicker-worthy. He wouldn't even make my top 10 list of Summer Olympians. When push comes to shove, he's a sprinter. That's it. Still, Jamaica was understandably ecstatic about their sprinting team-especially the sweep of the men’s 200m. REALLY impressive.
People I gained a lot of respect for on the track? So many. But let’s go with Mo Farrah, Jessica Ennis, Allyson Felix, Leonel Manzano (despicable how ignored he was), Oscar Pistorius, David Rudisha, and Kirani James (go Grenada!). Special mention goes to U.S. racer Manteo Mitchell for running on a broken leg (!!!!) in order to keep the U.S. in the 4X400 relay-that’s dedication of the insane variety. And even Usain Bolt was forced to admit that the best athlete of the Games was unquestionably Ashton Eaton. To the decathlete go the spoils! And a final kudo to our relay teams-they finally didn’t drop the batons!
Tennis: A British male won at the All England Club-a Scot no less. I haven’t heard cheering like that at Wimbledon since they had to stage the first Middle Sunday back in 1990. So a giant heap of strawberries and cream to Andy Murray-not many can claim they blew out Roger Federer on Centre Court. Congrats to Venus & Serena for their continuing doubles domination (I loathe both of them for various reasons, but readily acknowledge how amazing they are in the doubles). And a special award to the royal duo of Will and Kate for sitting in the cheap seats and doing the wave-adorable!
Swimming: Now someone who will make the top 10 list of all-time Olympians: Michael Phelps. The best ever Olympian? You can argue that, but can’t deny he’d be part of the argument. He may not have started well in his first race (where Ryan Lochte blew out the field-no small feat in the 400IM) and that 200 Fly had to hurt, but the man definitely knows how to make a golden exit. To dispute his status as one of the greatest athletes of all time is looney tunes. Actually, this is the second Olympics in a row that was really made by the action in the pool. Swimming races turned out to be way more dramatic than the land stuff. And the swimming was generally fabulous, especially for the American team. You know we’re raking it in when Ryan Lochte wins 5 medals and some people call that a disappointment. And though Lochte (who one media outlet dubbed the Jeff Spiccoli of Swimming, earning my undying admiration) was nice eye candy, I award cutest swimmer award to Nathan Adrian-who pulled a Phelps in winning the 100 Fly by 100th of a second). The best swimming revenge award goes to the French; I have no doubt the wine was flowing after they avenged their relay loss in Beijing. On the women’s side we kicked serious butt, too. Missy Franklin, Rebecca Soni, Katie Ledecky, Dana Vollmer broke records and took names. And the list goes on. We rocked the pool (and not just in the best “Call Me Maybe” viral video)!! Only two down notes: The female Chinese swimmer who got close to Lochte’s split time, but denied doping (not buying it at all-let’s see how this plays out years from now because the IOC now gets 8 years to re-test samples) and the South African swimmer who admitted to winning gold in the breast using an illegal dolphin kick. If you’re going to cheat, don’t boast about it.
Archery: Katniss’s trainer missed out on medals, but the U.S. men’s team took out South Korea in the team competition and got themselves a silver. That was no mean feat, so I award them a golden arrow. Brady Ellison losing before the medal round ranks way up there on the shock-o-meter though.
Soccer: The men’s side was bizarre. Spain got its butt kicked. Shocking. Mexico won the gold medal. Even more shocking. The women avenging their World Cup loss to Japan? Way cool!
Judo: I’m not a huge fan of Judo (not my favorite martial art as far as viewing goes), but I award Kayla Harrison well deserved kudos for her gold.
Basketball: Didn’t watch, didn’t care. But we won both the men and women, so yay!
Beach volleyball: I may have liked this more if so many other sports weren’t kicked to the curb for coverage of women in bikinis (British weather permitting). But I am disgruntled by the overexposure (on all counts), especially when the best volleyball of this Olympics was unquestionably being played indoors. I think it’s going to be a while before Brazil gets over choking in the men’s final, though their female counterparts can console them.
Diving: The Chinese only took 6 gold. We are SHOCKED. Yet also delighted. Still, the Chinese can take heart in the fact that Chen Ruolin was so far ahead of her competition on the platform it wasn’t even funny. The men’s platform, however, stole the show. A special award to Stefan Feck who failed so utterly in his springboard dive, which made the divers seem all that much more human (even when some of them were essentially jumping off a 3-story building).
Gymnastics: I think enough has been said about the U.S. women’s team to last a lifetime (had major coverage fatigue at one point). I was actually pretty dismayed at how sloppy and not artistic so many of the routines were. The race for difficulty is making gymnastics a whole lot less fun to watch. And I think some of the scoring was very suspect (especially when it came to the Romanian women). I will always remember the Japanese team waving those hundred dollar bills at the referee in order to protest their score. And McKayla Maroney’s morose behavior on the podium after blowing the vault event has only been rescued by that viral “not amused” campaign. That said, I will give a tip of the cap to the British men’s team for making the team competition fun (and killing it on the pommel horse, which was the Bermuda Triangle for most during these Olympics); and to Epke Zonderland, the men’s Dutch high bar winner for a routine so fabulous I watched it 4 times in succession.
Table Tennis: Oscar Pistorius may have taken most of the press coverage, but my own personal acknowledgment to one-armed Olympian Natalya Partyka who deserved just as much coverage. She plays a mean game of ping-pong.
Shooting: The Annie Oakley award goes to Kimberly Rhode for winning her fifth medal in 5 Olympics. And she shot 99 out of 100 targets in the skeet. Wow!
Best comebacks: That’s easy. David Boudia was a hair’s breadth from being eliminated in the men’s diving platform qualifying round. Tom Daley sucked there also. Boudia took gold and Daley was ecstatic about his bronze. And both of ‘em deserved it. That final round (along with the performance of Qui Bo) was amazing! The Chinese can take heart in that they win second place in this category for their men’s gymnastic team-they were g-d awful in the team qualifying and then killed it in the finals and took gold.
Best scandal: A three-way tie between the boxing ref getting tossed for fixing matches, the American Judoka getting booted for pot, and the Chinese badminton teams getting thrown out for losing on purpose. Truly tragic is what happened to that Korean fencer, who literally had to sit on the field of battle in tears. The IOC should be ashamed of themselves for the latter.
Best Celebration: Crazy discus winner Robert Harting. No doubt how excited he was about winning!
I could write tons more, but I have an Olympic-sized toothache right now (I have a sneaking suspicion that a molar of mine will be sporting silver metal tomorrow), so I shall sign off from London for now. See you in Sochi in 18 months!