Olympic Retrospective: Beijing Style (extra spicy)

With the conclusion of the Olympics in Beijing on Sunday, a proper retrospective is in order (limited of course to the mainstream events- sorry don’t have time to search through all the Judo or synchronized swimming footage).

First the good thoughts: the single greatest performance of the games was Jamaican Usain Bolt obliterating the field in the men’s 100m sprint. It wasn’t just that he set a new world record, it was how he did it. He built up a massive lead in such a short period of time and even let up the last 20 meters or so in order to do a little showboating. With that speed and 6′5″ height, memo to NFL GM’s- throw that dude some footballs and see if he catches any. (technical note: NBC blocks Olympic videos on Youtube so you’ll have to translate this vid):

Second greatest performance has to go to Jason Lezak in the final leg of the Men’s 4X100 freestyle relay (swimming). Down a body length with less than 50 meters to go and Michael Phelps’ gold medal streak on the line, Lezak hunted down Frenchie Alain Bernard to grab the gold.

What’s amazing is not only did Lezak swim the fastest 100 meters in history, he also bested his fastest personal time by more than a second and a half. Phelps’ 8 gold’s will forever be in the record books and also what everyone will talk about, but Lezak’s performance is one of the gutsiest and awe-inspiring I’ve ever seen in any sport. Once again, NBC screws me (and you) by not allowing the video to be embedded. Sorry.

Here’s the link

Or, you can watch this video which is very similar:

Third best performance also goes to Usain Bolt, this time in the men’s 200m sprint. Maybe I’m biased in when it comes to sprinting because anyone with two functioning legs can open their front door and start running, whereas most other Olympic events require basic instruction just to simulate the event. Once again Bolt obliterated the field, this time breaking Michael Johnson’s 24 year old world record and doing it in stunning fashion. Yet another thwart from NBC, but this video gives you an alluring blend of French play by play with bizarre Jamaican rap.

Now on to what sucks about the Olympics. First and most glaring is gymnastics- and there’s plenty here to really get me riled up. The scoring system still sucks and is too subjective and inconsistently applied. The Chinese clearly broke the age rules (have to be 16 during year of Olympics) and yet not only got away with it, but won the team gold. This girl (He Kexin, won gold in uneven bars) looks like she might (emphasis on might) be 14 years old. She sure as hell isn’t 16. Total bullshit.

Also pissing me off in gymnastics is their tiebreaker rules. American Nastia Liuken and the aforementioned He Kexin of China both scored 16.725 on the uneven bars. As a result of the tiebreaker, Kexin got the gold and Liuken got the silver. Again- more bullshit. Most other sports in the Olympics would award two gold medals in this scenario. As an alternate solution, they could have had the gymnasts fight each other for gold. We don’t normally advocate violence in gymnastics but you know you’d watch that.

Another thing that’s ridiculous about the Olympics is the fact that baseball and softball will not be part of the next installment in 2012. Apparently there was a vote and those two sports didn’t make the cut. Of course that begs the question- assuming all events are voted on, how the hell have some of the other “sports” stayed in the games. Take equestrian dressage for example. If you didn’t catch this, it’s basically a horse doing a sequence of dance moves. It’s absolutely and completely absurd. And they give medals out for it. To the humans, not the horses.

Then there’s sailing, for which 33 medals in 11 events were handed out. Like the equestrian events, sailing is an activity for silly rich people and doesn’t really seem to represent the “Olympic spirit”.

Other events that baffle me as to their continued inclusion in the Olympics include badminton (tennis for people who don’t want to run and/or want to recreate “The Matrix” with little racquets), anything synchronized, Shooting (survival tactic, not a sport), and Trampoline (training tool for gymnastics/ski jumping or activity for promiscuous girls on cable shows).

Finally, I leave with you a suggestion to improve future summer Olympics. The decathlon has deep historical roots in Olympic lore but it’s just not compelling anymore, as evidenced by NBC’s coverage of it which amounted to about 15 minutes. Rather than the decathlon in the future, I recommend the “Cracktathlon”. The cracktathlon would consist of 10 events like the decathlon, but would be randomly picked from all Olympic events prior to the start of each event. For example- event # 1…400m sprint. Event # 2…Kayaking. Event # 3…Judo. Good luck.

You’re welcome.