Olympics 2008 - Part IV

I began writing this on 18 August, and never posted it. Here it is. The fun part is that I've only watched through the 14th of August and we have 54 - yes, 54 - more "episodes" of the Olympics - you know, the ones that ended two weeks ago! - to watch!

The more I watch this, the more I really get bent with the guys doing the announcing during the gymnastics. Are these all different guys for the different events or is it just the same three people throughout?

In any event, while they have been okay throught the swimming and diving, they have been consistently negative and sometimes outright rude during the gymnastics. They began doing it with the women and then on Tuesday they pulled out all the stops and really got mouthy. I was quite surprised at how openly negative they were.

One of the U.S. men's team had a bad floor routine. He wasn't unskilled, but his first landing went south and his feet folded under him - the wrong way. He very likely hurt his ankles. At no point did anyone express concern. Instead, the one guy made denegrating remarks about how bad that was, and as it coloured the remainder of the routine - again, most likely due to injury - he closed out by saying that this was a very bad showing. Something actually might have clicked in Mr. Announcer's pea-sized brain, however, as he ort of backpedaled and amended it to a mere bad.

It was bad. No argument. But there was no call for being so critical. I understand that the announcer at one time did Olympic gymnastics. Clearly his memory of this wasn't very good, since he has apparently conveniently forgotten how much it sucks to make a poor showing. And had his ankles taken that sort of abuse, I should think he would expect a teensy bit of sypathy for it.

But the U.S. team did get a bronze medal for its efforts. And the Chinese, who got the gold, weren't exactly perfect. They took the easier way out. When it came to their final apparatus, the high bar, they all had a colourless but well executed performance. But the U.S. team, who took the higher risk of higher-rated moves for level of difficulty, at least gave us something to ooooh and aaahhh over. I'd have taken the U.S. team's high bar over China's any day. They legitimately beat us in almost everything else - rings, pommel horse, floor routines and the whaddya-call-it (the things that they take running start, push themselves off the apparatus and do some huge flip to land - duh... braindead!); but this closing effort was dull and uninspired. (A lot like the Germans when they did the pommel horse to compete with us for the bronze medal. They were solid but uninspiring performances.)

The swimming heats were all good to watch and I especially found Aaron Peirsol quite fun to watch. He, unlike many of the male swimmers, is cute as well as talented and primed for gold. I'm sorry, I know I'm a critic. Michael Phelps is a hell of a swimmer; he has the most incredible body I have ever seen; he is a winner in many, many ways, and yes, he grows on one. But he is not and isn't ever likely to be good-looking. The other American swimmers were ranging from homely (who was the guy with no upper lip? Uh... hold on... ah. Brendan Hansen. Absolutely NO upper lip) to okay, but Aaron Peirsol was very attractive - open friendly face, happy bright blue eyes, just very sweet looking. And the women... good gods. Katie Hoff is cute, so is Coughlin and Coventry, but they all look like men from the jaw down. Big bull necks, huge musculature of shoulders and laterals, and then down to non-existant waists and slightly bulky thighs and of course (my personal pet peeve) no breasts.

I could not give up having breasts.

But the female swimmers all did well. I found myself hoping the French woman, Laure Manaudou, would win, just to show the slimy ex-boyfriend and his new woman how good she is - and she's very good. Unfortunately, in the race I saw, she spent her energy at the outset of the race (and it was a long one) and came in quite late for the end. But she still did well and the Italian woman who supplanted her with the boyfriend did not show. I don't have too much of an issue with her being the slimy boyfriend's current girlfriend, but she was lacking appropriate Olympic sportsmanship.