Photo by Julie Jacobson/Getty Images Men's Olympic Gymnastics team with their bronze medals.
Well I guess I'm going to be posting a lot about the Olympics now because they are sweet. Last night I watched until nearly 3am...when they started the replay of the prime time coverage. I got to see Phelps get his 9th career gold medal, which ties him for the most in history with Finland's Paavo Nurmi (track & field, 1920-28), Soviet Union's Larisa Latynina (gymnastics, 1956-64), and the American greats of Mark Spitz (swimming, 1968-72) and Carl Lewis (track & field, 1984-96). Then hopefully tonight he can break the record.
However, to me that wasn't the highlight of last night. It wasn't when Phelp's teammate Vanderkaay managed to also get the bronze in Phelps' race, when Natalie Coughlin barely out touched Kirsty Coventry in the women's 100 m backstroke for gold while her teammate Margaret Hoelzer grabbed the bronze, or even when Aaron Peirsol had a burst at the end of the men's 100 m backstroke to grab gold. Nope, the highlight of last night would be a bronze medal for the US that they barely were able to hang onto. In the men's gymnastics they had lost their top two guys and were not suppose to have a chance to medal in this years Olympics. But half way through they were leading the way. The Chinese looked great and were able to pass them as the Americans certainly had some really bad performances. However, they also put in some amazing ones in the high bar and here and there impressive showings with no huge mistakes. Then on the last event, pommel horse, there was 2 horrible performances that put their chance of a bronze medal in jeopardy. The last guy to go was Alexander Artemev who was only on the team as an alternate. Worse then than that was he didn't make the team because he had made some big errors in team tryouts on the pommel horse. He got going and just seemed to pick up momentum and get better and better after he had this one sweet move with only one hand. It was so great that I started applauding even before he finished because that was awesome...and virtually secured the bronze medal (the German's mathematically had a chance on their final event but it was very unlikely).
USA! USA! USA!
5 comments:
Hey, why don't you talk more about how awesome the chinese players were? :)
there were lots of great moments last night.. but definitely my favorite was the gymnastics, too.
I didn't talk more of the chinese players because I wanted leave material for your blog.
The Olympics are amazing because they unite the world in competition.
How awesome is it that the best of the best in the WORLD are able to bring out the best in each other?
To answer your question: pretty awesome.
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