Olympics

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Party pooper. I didn't even get to talk about the exclusive CFL 5 yard penalty, "unnecessay lingering", for leaving one's hand on a player's butt for more than 3 seconds.

Oh, right:

Canada is still sucking.

 

Back off topic ....

I'll take the hit for the back-to-back thing. The only problem with Moon was he was a quaterback in the "golden age of quarterbacks" -- four or five (depending on the poll you're looking at) of the top ten quarterbacks of all time played at that same time frame. If you look at the top twenty, nearly half came from that time frame. The 83-85 drafts were phenomenal for quarterbacks -- there was nothing like it before or since.

When you have to dig for QB's better than Moon with names like Montana, Elway, Marino, Farve, Young, etc. ... that puts him in pretty damned good company.

 

I never realised before just how much Canada underperforms at the summer Olympics. You really do save it all up for the winter codes don't you?

 

They run better in parkas.

 

Yeah, I guess there's only so much money we're willing to invest in training, and it would be pretty embarrassing if we sucked at winter sports.

Oh well, at least we won bronze in women's soccer today.

 

Canada actually has the 11th most medals at the moment - so not actually THAT bad. You'd probably like to have a few more golds though.

 

This was Hungary's most successful Olympics in the past 20 years: only 8 from the 204 countries have a better position in the usual ("gold medal-driven") table of countries. (This is the table on the official Olympics homepage.) I'm truly satisfied and happy. Only "big" nations and powers (USA, China, Great Britain, Russia, South Korea, France, Germany, Italy) could "beat" us, so we concluded in position #9.

We couldn't get our 4th in-a-row Gold in waterpolo, however. Our team became only the 5th, every dream has an end. Croatia truly deserves its Gold medal, they played beautifully.

 

One thing I heard from the closing ceremonies last night was that 85 different nations received at least one medal. At first that sounded like a lot, but then after thinking about it, since over 200 nations were in attendance, that's less than half. Most nations came to the Olympics and went home with nothing.

Although that might have more to do with opportunity than anything else. Some nations had very small Olympic delegations, and were only competing in one or two events. So if you didn't medal in that one sport you were competing in, you were out of luck.

And that got me to thinking about Michael Phelps. Even though he has won more Olympic medals than anyone, I'm not sure he's hands down the greatest Olympian ever. He's certainly the most decorated, but does that mean the best?

The reason I bring this up is because of the number of events he competed in. While he was at the games in 2000, he was still a teenager, and didn't win any medals. Starting in 2004, and continuing in 2008 and 2012, he competed in 24 different Olympic events, winning a medal in 22 of them (including 18 gold medals). Looking at it strictly from that perspective, the medal count speaks for itself.

OTOH, most Olympians, even the ones that a fortuitous enough to compete in 4 different Olympics, rarely have the opportunity to even compete in that many events. Swimming is one of the few sports where that happens. Gymnasts have the opportunity to compete in up to 6 events. Talented track and field stars may compete in 3 or 4 events. Obviously, if you play in any team sport like basketball or volleyball, you're limited to one.

So it's difficult to compare across sports. Look at Usain Bolt from Jamaica. Not only has he won gold in all six events he competed in over the last two Olympics, he set records in three of those events. If he goes to Rio like he plans in four years, and wins 3 gold medals there, is his string on 9 for 9 over the course of three Olympics less impressive than Phelps' total?

It should be pointed out that I have nothing against Phelps. I'm just saying that there are special circumstances surrounding his run. Obviously any person who can accumulate 22 medals in 24 events - over 90% of those he competed in - takes a tremendous amount of talent and dedicaiton. He is a great a Olympian. He is the most decorated Olympian ever, and he is probably the best swimmer who ever lived. I'm just not so sure he's the greatest Olympian ever. (To really play devil's advocate, look at Jesse Owens. How many more medals could he have won if the Olympics weren't cancelled due to WWII in 1940 and 1944?

 

That's true, but a lot of swimmers race in multiple events. It's almost like the exact opposite of most other sports where there are specialists. The only swimming specialists are the distance swimmers, where they had that insane 800-meter event. Let's put it this way... excluding that crazy 800-meter event, there are 12 swimming events for men and women. Two of those events are relays, requiring 4 people to participate. So there are 18 different spots to place people, counting the two relays as 4 each. Both the US mens and womens teams consisted of 6 swimmers. So all of them are competing in multiple races, with many of them racing twice in the same day. Lochte's experience isn't even unique - it happened with one of the US womens swimmers too. (Although she won gold in her second race.) EDIT: Swimmer was Missy Franklin [/edit]

I also am inclined to believe we saw more about the two US swimmers because we're from the US. I find it hard to believe they were the only two who were potentially hosed because of some scheduling quirks. Phelps - along with every other swimmer who was racing in the finals - had days that required him to race twice. Because the qualification and the finals were scheduled just a couple of hours apart, if you made the finals you were racing twice. If you were fortunate enough to get scheduled in one of the earlier qualification races, you were given more than a 20-minute break. Since it happens to a lot of swimmers from a lot of nations, I feel that this balances out.

 

Woohoo! Another gold medal for New Zealand after Ostapchuk from Belarus was disqualified for doping. Go New Zealand!

 

If I were that New Zealander I would feel cheated twice. Not only did I not win because someone was doping, but I also got cheated out of standing on the podium while my national anthem was played. That's part of the glory you dream about when putting in four years of work to compete at the Olympics, and while the medal correction can be done after the fact, nothing is going to be able to bring back the experience of having won the medal while in London. It's sort of like a, gee... thanks... type of thing.

Although I do believe the Olympics only catches a small percentage of the dopers. I think the cheaters typically stay a step ahead of the testers. Take the Jamaican sprinters. Usain Bolt has never been busted for doping, but a few years ago, two other members of the team were, and both served two-year bans. In this Olympics, three Jamaican runners entered the 200-meter event, and they finished in the top three spots (with Bolt winning) In the 100 meter, two of the three finished on the medal stand (with Bolt winning and an American taking bronze). They all competed in the relay, and they won there too. Given the history of doping -especially in track and field events - I feel I am justifiably skeptical when I see a small, underdeveloped island nation with just a couple of million people producing the top three fastest sprinters in the world. Oh, and the trainer for the Jamaican Olympic sprinting team is Angel Hernandez, a former chemist at... wait for it... BALCO. So it does raise some eyebrows.

And it's not just Jamaicans. I think doping is rampant in track and field. The US has had it's share of doping charges as well. (Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery both forfeited their world record setting gold medal runs in the 2000 Olympics for doping.)