More musings from the Beijing Olympics. No NASCAR again etc etc

Gone in 9.69 seconds

In the two days since the last of my Olympic musings the Blue Riband athletics event has come and gone. It's the 100m metres. I'm not really sure the "Blue Riband" label is warranted, true it's the event that will most likely grab the headlines and live long in the memories of those that watch, but surely the "Blue Riband" of Athletics should be the epic decathlon, two days of great all round athletes, rather than 10 seconds of greased-whippet running. Anyway - rant over.

The 100m metres needed a positive storyline, after all the pre-games press inches have been very negative - drug related and negative. And from the off it looked like it was going to get one. The Jamaican World Record holder Usain Bolt, the man whose time he beat, Asafa Powell, and the reigning Olympic champion, Tyson ####, all competing against each other on the biggest stage. This was going to be good.

And the preliminary rounds didn't disappoint, with all three through to the semi-finals, but while Tyson #### struggled through his round, Usain Bolt seemed to be barely breaking sweat. There are times watching sport on TV when you find yourself almost involuntarily yelling at the TV, and so I found myself yelling "He's jogging, he's bloody jogging" (needless to say his jog is faster than I could run in even the most optimistic of my dreams) as he started slowing down seemingly 2/3rds of the way into the race, still winning my an insane margin.

But things went off the rails in the semis - ####, lacking 100% fitness was beaten into the final, and while two other Americans - Walter Dix and Darvis Patten - made it through to the final it made the way clear for an almost uncontested Jamaican 1-2 between Bolt and Powell, with Michael Frater threatening to add a third Jamaican to to the podium.

The final. About 10 seconds of the most explosive sport you can get. When you say 10 seconds it sounds very quick, but it always seems to last double that as commentators scream analysis and runners move back and forth for the duration of the race. There was an air of expectation. If Usain Bolt can win by that distance easing down long before the end, what could he do it he was pushed. We may never know. Because, in fairness he wasn't, he again felt able to start his arm-waving celebration a good 10metres before the end, and while Bolt ran a new World Record time of 9.69 seconds, Michael Johnson, commentating for British TV estimated he could have run 9.65 - a truly epic time. While Bolt was wheeling away on a lap of honour (which presumably also smashed a few world records) it was only then that TV cameras cut to the silver medallist celebrating, but not Powell, as the world expected but Richard Thompson of Trinidad and Tobago, and then the bronze, Walter Dix. In the various replays it showed Powell finishing 6th, in a historic race that saw the highest number of finallists run under 10 seconds in Olympic history, with Powell being the last of the six.

"I won by this much?" L-R - Thompson (Trinidad & Tobago), Bolt (Jamaica), Patten (USA), Frater (Jamaica) - (Photo: New York Times)

When the man who until very recently held the world record only finishes sixth, what does that say about a sport? That it moves as fast as it races.

Now pray no-one tests positive.

Phelps rumbles on

Ah, the unstoppable juggernaut that is Michael Phelps, but today a suprising new chapter was added to his ever expanding saga. He won (but it was really, really, really close) - see the venerable Lisa Horne's analysis for more.

I first heard of this through the article linked above (damn these time differences making everything happen at 3am) and at first wonder just how close it would need to be for the human eye to start telling you that someone who finished second had won. Now, a bunch of hours on I've seen the race, and to tell you honestly I still think Phelps finished second. Be it my eyes, camera angles of the quirks of physis that affect light going through water, but I could swear that the Serb gets the touch. To hear that the Serbian team's protest was rejected after the judges reviewed TV footage. I don't know what footage they were watching (or indeed how big the TV was) but I want it.

  How?!? Phelps (top) outreaches his Serbian opponent, although it doesn't look like it here (Photo - BBC.co.uk)

Of course, I would never doubt the Olympic judges, or the battery of electric timing wizardry they point at the walls of swimming pool, but I'm a natural born cynic and with the Chinese with a little slice of history on their patch in site the window for a conspiracy is at least half open.

Union Jack Underpants

In sport there are few days when you can stand up and be proud to be British, today was one of those few. So indulge me. (for this section "we" = "Britain")

In what the (very unbiased) British media was dubbing Super Saturday Britain won 9 medals.

• Rebecca Adlington won a second gold medal in the 800m Freestyle swimming, beating the World Record by a Phelps-esque 2 second and making her the most sucessful British female swimmer ever (for an island nation you'd think we'd be better at swimming).

• The Mens coxless 4 took Britain's 3rd consequetive gold medal in the event, apparently another one that is labelled a "Blue Riband" event, although that might just be because we'd just won it. Two other crews won bronze in their races.

• At the track cycling we took 5 medals. Chris Newton got Bronze in the moderately sensible Points Race, before Chris Hoy and Ross Edgar got gold and silver respectively in the entirely unhinged PIzza-delivery-bike-following insanity of Keirin. Meanwhile in sensible events Bradley Wiggins and Steven Burke got gold and bronze in the 4k pursuit.

Aside from being entirely biased, this section does have a point. How does 9 medals (4 golds, 1 silver and 4 bronzes) in a single Olympic day compare to all time records.

I have no idea whether any stat for this exists, but surely 9 medals is a pretty sound benchmark.

                                      Nope, I have no shame

And other observations from the Beijing Olympics days 5 and 6

Is Michael Phelps the Greatest Ever Olympian?

5 down, 3 to go. That’s the story of Michael Phelp’s Olympics so far. He’s two gold medals away from the immediate single-games target set by Mark Spitz at the 1972 Munich games, but in one, perhaps more important, respect Phelps already has Spitz beaten, with his latest 2 gold medals he moved clear of an illustrious list including Spitz and Carl Lewis (who both have nine golds) to become the most successful Olympian ever.

 OK, so it's Mark Spitz, I was getting fed up with Phelps' fizzog

But, as the debate that no doubt graced many bars goes, is he really the greatest Olympian ever. That he’s very, very good is not in doubt, his performances have been nothing short of phenomenal, often embarrassing the rest of the Final field. Including managing to win with his eyes closed after his goggles filled with water winning Gold, counting his strokes to guess where the wall was. It’s difficult not to forget that Phelps, with his 11 gold medals, is still 23 and went to his first Olympics at only 15, the age at which he set his first world record – the 200m Butterfly – the record he surpassed with his eyes close. The fact he is 23 means he could conceivably compete at London in 2012, and wherever it may be in 2016.  

But is he the greatest ever? Or more, is it fair to compare swimmers to track and field athletes or any of the other sportspeople who come together for an Olympiad. One thing is certain. It is far easier to win a huge haul of medals in one go for a swimmer. Male swimmers compete in 17 swimming events, and while obviously they range hugely in distance – from 50m to an epic 10km – and across the four strokes, if an athlete is good at all four (as Phelps is) the potential at a single games is mammoth. And while Phelps’ 8 events is headline-grabbingly high, he’s not alone in such busy schedules. Spitz, obviously competed in seven events back in Munich, while at Beijing he was joined by Katie Hoff who aimed for 6 golds, but went away with only a silver and two bronzes.

While other events, such as Cycling, where between road and track disciplines men can compete for 9 golds, and Gymnastics, where up to 8 are available, offer another potentially huge success for relatively little additional training, there are other events like Athletics. While it’s not unheard of, as Carl Lewis did, for sprinters to combine 100m, 200m, 4x100 relay and long jump, it’s hugely rare for athletes to compete in many more events, as the differences between them are so huge. While saying that the range of events realistically open to (very good) swimmers is akin to allowing 100m sprinters to compete in separate events for “100m with one arm tied back” and “100m with the other hand tied back” is very simplistic, bordering on moronic, it’s not entirely untrue.

Whether or not he’s the best ever, his next event takes place in a few hours, with the 200m Individual Medley, followed by Saturday’s 100m Butterfly final. But here the spotless performance seems to be slipping, he finished an incredible second in the heats for the Butterfly and is facing a stern test in the Medley from Ryan Lochte – but is a gold medal for Lochte worth enough to put a stop to Phelps (and possibly incur the anger of the world)

Dude, where’s my country?

Representing your country is the sort of thing every child dreams of. But sometimes when adulthood comes around strange things happen to your dreams. This is the pattern of sportspeople changing country seemingly on a whim.

It’s not just an Olympic thing, but it comes into view at the games more than anywhere else. Unfortunately, if anyone is actually reading all of these, I have to tell you that Olympic Canoeing legend Benjamic Boukpeti is part of the problem. While his medal will go down as Togo’s first, it does take something away from the achievement when you learn what his intended celebration is. To go to Togo for the very first time! I joked that the Beijing organisers would be frantically looking for a Togo-ese flag, it seems that Benjamin was probably following them around.

But I’m being unduly harsh on Benjamin, he’s far from alone.

J.R. Holden, a 32 year old Pittsburgh born Shooting Guard, is the lone American competing in the Basketball.....For Russia.

Xu Huaiwen is competing in Badminton singles (female) for Germany, after being told she was too short to play for her native China.

The Georgian female Beach Volleyball comprising of Cristine Santanna and Andrezza Martins, is Brazilian, with both women being born in Brazil. Both women have been given nicknames, ‘Saka’ for Santanna and ‘Rtvelo’ for Martins, that appear on their “costumes” where the surnames of everyone else are. Sakartvelo means “Georgia” in Georgian. 

Yes, there's a reason, honest, look up. Besides that, you can probably think up your own caption.

While these athletes, and many others who have gone turncoat like them, deserve to be at the Olympics, you can’t help by feel that is doesn’t quite mean the same for them as if they were winning for their native country, or perhaps their native country is not really theirs now.

Congratulations China!

OK, I’m getting sick and tired with all the happy Chinese people winning Gold medals, I’m all for host nations doing well, but it’s starting to get annoying now. But one Gold medal deserves special mention – their win in the women’s single archery.

Zhang Juan Juan’s win was nothing special it itself, but her opponent, from South Korea was representing a country that has won the gold medals in Olympic women’s archery for the last 24 years.

South Korea are so fanatical about archery that in their training camp, where most nations have a general set-up for training in all sports, has an exact copy of the main archery venue from Beijing, simply so their archers could get comfortable in the arena.

So, well done China, now give everyone else a chance.

Or alternatively more musings about the Beijing Olympics. There's even less NASCAR here than last time, and that was just a picture....

They Tricked Us.......

I take everything positive I said about the Olympics opening ceremony, basically because because a lot of it came together not in around the Birds' Nest stadium in Beijing, but in a post-production office infront of a bunch of techno ####ins. First came news that the flaming footprints, symbolising gunpowder (you know the stuff I praised in my day 1+2 blog entry) had been computer generated, and then added to the "live" broadcast. And if that didn't make you feel dirty enough they've even started medling with children's voices. The red dress-ed girl who we all saw singing at the ceremony, was not infact singing at all, in what is probably China's answer to Milli Vanilli. Instead the voice of another was played, and the girl on stage - 9 year old Lin Miaoke mimed over it. Of course, you can say that such practices have been going on in show buisness seemingly forever. But it gets slightly more sinister when you look into the official reason for it, which is (apparently) it was in the best interests for China. Yes, the People's Republic felt it so necessary to have a perfect singing nine year old that they risked the integrity (especially if you think of several high-profile mime screw-up) of the ceremony.

Left: Who you Heard  Right: Who you Saw (BBC.co.uk)

It's bad enough that, with performance enhancing drugs everywhere in sport, you have to take every great performance, every heroic come-back, every underdog-come-good story with a sizable pinch of salt. Now it seems that even the Opening Ceremony is not averse to some performancing enhancing jiggery-pokery.

There's something in the water

It's become perfectly clear for whatever reason that the Water Cube, the venue for Beijing's swimming events, is seriously fast. There might be something in the water, the sides might be slightly sprung, allowing a better push off on the turn, or alternatively, the swimmers might just be getting better (although if you can't trust a 9 year old girl, who can you trust).

World, national, Olympic records are all tumbling seemingly after every race, a certain Mr Phelps has three World Records already. There also seems to be a high number of what I have come to refer to as 'Outboard motor moments', when a swimmer will pull back an absolutely enormous gap in a very short distance, like they had strapped an outboard motor to their feet (see I'm putting nothing past them). My first sight of this phonomenom came in the 400m Freestyle when Briton Rebecca Adlington seemingly flew the final length to win gold, despite not being place 1st, 2nd or 3rd at any of the split time after any of the previous 7 lengths.

But then came the real miracle, the race that has been the subject already of a handful of blogs around here - America's win in the 4x100m relay. This was what I thought was a crucial part in Michael Phelp's potentially historic Olympic - where he relies on other people to get him gold medals. I feared that the relative faliability of, well, everyone else compared to Phelps may threaten his chances. But as it happens, exactly the opposite happened. After three legs the French team were leading by a seemingly insurmountable distance. Commentators were already writing the obituraries for Phelp's 8-gold title. Maybe so was Phelps. One man hadn't. That man was Jason Lezak, swimming the anchor leg for the US. In the final 50m Lezak gained a distance equal to the entire body length of his French rival to come home first, breaking the World Record by 4 (yes 4) seconds. I don't know what sort of plans there are inside the US swim team, but no matter how many medal Phelps gets I think Jason Lezak's name should be just after his in the history books.

So it's 3 gold medals from 3 events for Superfish, with three World Records to boot. While he ultimately aims to get 5 more gold medals, he only needs one more to gain another, very sizable accolade - that of the most successful Olympian ever. I don't think it needs pointing out just how massive that is.

                                       Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

Medals Togo

In the run up to the Olympics I read one blog on here (that I haven't the energy or the courage to face the Whoops! monster to find) that asked who this year's Eric the Eel world be. For those of you who don't know Eric was a swimmer from Equatorial Guinea who competed in the 2000 Olympics, he famously was claimed to have trained by outswimming crocodiles. This was probably made up, as at the time he managed - double that of the medal contending athletes - he would have been eaten long before Sydney came around.

Anyway, since then I've been looking for a spectacular underdog story to match Eric, and I think I've found one, and this one even wins a medal. His name is Benjamin Boukpeti. He is a canoeist. He is a legend.

His country, Togo, had never won an Olympic medal before. If I was asked where I though any Togo-ese medal would come from I would have picked one of the events where the African nations traditionally do well, such as the long distance athletics event. I would not have picked canoeing. But that's probably why I'm tryping this from my house, while others are being paid to make predictions and intelligent comments in Beijing.

Boukpeti finished 3rd in the K-1 slalom event, bringing forth one of the best celebrations I've ever seen, involving general hysterics and smashing his paddle in half over the front of his boat. Meanwhile the Beijing organisers were probably frantically looking for a Togo-ese flag.

                       The Man, The Boat, The Paddle(s). The Legend