[Rapiddude]

Ninja, I agree with Zippy. China's "approach" to the Olympics is nothing like conventional marketing. Their government agencies pull 4 year old children out of their parents' homes if the government doctors think their bodies will be suited to gymnastics. Then they bring them by the hundreds to training centers where they live in dorms for years (by the ages provided on TV, probably 12-14, but in reality, probably only 7-9) and then come Olympics, their tryouts weed out the vast majority, who just go back to "normal" life, I guess.

Think about how you would feel if your government took you away from your parents from the ages of 4-12, made you live in a foreign dorm for years doing training 16 hours a day, 6 days a week, then put under immense pressure to qualify for the team, and THEN, most likely get sent home. What do you do after that?

[zibTefapparia]

Phelps with 5 medals so far. He's an amazing athlete and he's not an asshole, which is a real bonus.

[pobrierce]

I agree. He really is an amazing athlete. After he won the 200-meter butterfly tonight, he seemed "upset", like he didn't complete a goal.

Didn't he beat yet another world record?

vvv spoilers vvv




The US Women's Gymnastics Team has placed second in the finals, with China being #1. Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin performed very well tonight, with Alicia Sacramone having many mistakes, a major one being on the balance beam.

More to come I'm sure...

[MrGunjMan_]

Swimming records are being broken in almost every race.

In a semifinal heat of the 100m freestyle, Alain Bernard (France) finished 47.20, breaking the world record of 47.24 set by Eamon Sullivan (Australia) earlier in the week.

It was followed by the 2nd semifinal, in which Sullivan took back the world record with a 47.05.

Federica Pellegrini (Italy) lowered the world record she set a day earlier in the 200m freestyle with a 1:54.82.

All of Phelps wins so far have been single or team world records.

[Faumpiggueria]

High-Tech Swimsuits Approved by Olympic Committee Promise to Even the Competition



By Jose Fermoso June 06, 2008 | 3:45:38 AMCategories: Sports

Speedo's new LZR Racer swimsuits promise to boost the times of the fastest swimmers in the planet at this year's Olympics, but they won't be the only high-tech suits to reach for the finish line. On Wednesday, the International Olympic Committee approved new high-tech swimsuits designed by Arena, Adidas and Mizuno, all considered to be on par with the high-tech Speedo design credited with 37 world records since its release earlier this year.

The $550 Speedo LZR Racer swimsuit uses ultrasonically bonded seams that fit a swimmer like a true second skin, as opposed to the stitched-up suits of the past. With low-drag panels embedded within the fabric, the suit was designed in conjunction with NASA scientists in order to find the best performing fabric. However, the design also led to a controversial feature: potentially illegal levels of buoyancy (due to a mix of polyurethane layers.) There are several studies on the importance of buoyancy in competitive swimming, one of which is found here.

When Speedo-sponsored athletes began setting an inordinate number of records immediately after using the new suit, several rival companies (as well as the national delegations they sponsor) protested that the tech had gone too far and the competition had become unfair.

At that point, only one other company (TYR) had managed to create a suit with similar breakthroughs. If the other companies’ suit designs had not been accepted, Olympians would have faced a tough choice: Either swim with a LZR Racer and face a substantial fine (about $5K), or swim with your own and face the prospect of losing the race because of the competition’s substantially better equipment.

Still, the accusations against Speedo’s potential illegal maneuverings are not going away. A couple of weeks ago, TYR sued Speedo and accused the company of conspiring with the U.S. Olympic team to suppress the competition and force all competitors to wear their suits. This, of course, would have looked good for Speedo -- millions of eyeballs will be watching the games and many of them will end up buying the gear the athletes use.

Because the other manufacturers took almost three months to catch up to the Speedo suits, the whole issue may still affect the results of the races. The athletes that were not sponsored by Speedo started to use the high-tech prototypes of the competitors only recently.

But despite the ongoing controversy, you can definitely count on one thing at the Olympics this year: Record-breaking times in the pursuit of athletic history -- even if it takes a few layers of space-age plastic to do it.



*****

The Speedo LZR Racer suit worn by Phelps can "lower racing times by 1.9 to 2.2 percent."

[stastony]

The US Women's Gymnastics Team has placed XXX in the finals, with China being #Y. Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin performed very well tonight, with Alicia Sacramone...etc etc

More to come I'm sure...

(Partially edited)

Anywhoo, I think that was good. But teh one thing that Alicia has to know is that that did not matter in the end.....

More on that when the replay airs!

[Shinegayboyx]

Olympic trickery

Published: August 12 2008

The joy of sporting contests is that anything can happen. When you are a totalitarian state, however, this makes it risky to host them. The Chinese government has responded by trying to control every conceivable element of the Olympics, often by rather dubious means.

The stunning, widely used footage of firework “footprints” leading to the Olympic stadium during the opening ceremony was, it transpires, computer-generated. We now know why a film director was asked to run the event.

Lin Miaoke, the little girl who apparently sang the Chinese anthem, was in fact lip-synching to the voice of another little girl. A meeting involving a politburo member decided that although Yang Peiyi was the best singer, she was not pretty enough to take part in the ceremony. She should be heard, but not seen.

Then again, cheering crowds are being bused into stadia by the government, armed with noise-makers and decked in colourful attire to improve the leaden atmosphere inside. In some cases the visitors are taking the places of real fans, who have found themselves unable to buy tickets.

The reality is that the faults officials were trying to correct are not faults at all. No one would have complained that China had not followed its creeping barrage of fireworks with a helicopter. The little girl rejected as the face of the opening ceremony may have had imperfect teeth – but little girls usually do. And, we all know that not all Olympic sports are sell-outs.

Official obsessiveness was, of course, doomed to fail. The 10m air rifle competition was scheduled first so that China would win the first gold medal. But Katerina Emmons, a Czech, set a new world record and won while the Chinese competitor, Du Li, did rather badly.

Foreign companies often complain of Chinese counterfeiting, but the games are spectacular enough without fakery. Rather than announcing China’s arrival as a modern, dynamic country, they risk reinforcing the view that the Beijing government is comprised of control-freaks.

The London 2012 organisers may be tempted by this trickery. Any unfinished stadium could be fitted with a computer-generated roof for television viewers. A digital opening ceremony could even beat Beijing’s display of thousands of drummers, dancers and men dressed up as Confucius – a few hundred morris dancers will not suffice. But they should steer clear of computers. London does not need to offer grander spectacle, more a gentle reminder that it is all just a game.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

[Xtatotvk]

August 15, 2008

As Phelps Collects Golds, His Place in History Is Debated

By JERÉ LONGMAN

BEIJING — Michael Phelps has won 11 career gold medals, more than any Olympic athlete in any sport. But does that make him the greatest Olympian ever or, remarkably but somewhat less loftily, the greatest swimmer ever?

The debate is raging among veteran Olympic observers here at the Beijing Games. Are Phelps’s accomplishments in the pool more impressive than the nine gold medals won by Carl Lewis and Paavo Nurmi in track and field? Or greater than Eric Heiden’s five victories, from 500 meters to 10,000 meters, in speedskating at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y.?

Does Jesse Owens’s refutation of Aryan supremacy, by winning four gold medals before the Hitler viewing stand at the 1936 Summer Games in Berlin, give him a moral validity that supersedes Phelps’s athletic legitimacy?

For his part, Phelps is avoiding the debate.

“I just swim,” Phelps said Thursday. “I don’t think about it.”

David Wallechinsky, the vice president of the International Society of Olympic Historians, gives the nod for greatest Olympians to Lewis and Nurmi. His point is this: It is much easier to win multiple medals in sports like swimming and gymnastics, than in track and field, because there are more individual events. And fewer countries produce elite swimmers than runners, making track a more democratic sport.

Lewis won the long jump in four consecutive Olympics, along with five additional golds in the 100- and 200-meter sprints and the 4x100-meter relay, becoming a model of longevity. Runners compete vertically. They pound their bodies harder, and must work their hearts and muscles harder, than swimmers, who compete horizontally.

Swimmers recover quicker and, during major international competitions, generally compete in fewer rounds than runners. Lewis not only sprinted but subjected his body to the enormous gravitational forces of the long jump, where landing was the equivalent of jumping out of a truck at 25 miles an hour.

“Very few people have won the same event four times; only Carl Lewis won the same event four times and won nine total gold medals,” Wallechinsky said.

Nurmi, the great Finnish distance runner, won nine gold medals and three silvers in the 1920s. He won five gold medals at various distances (some discontinued) at the 1924 Paris Games, including the 1,500 meters and 5,000 meters, which were held about 90 minutes apart.

“That’s almost inconceivable,” Wallechinsky said.

Phil Hersh of The Chicago Tribune, who has covered 14 Olympics, rates Phelps sixth on the list of greatest Olympians. His top five are Lewis; Nurmi; the gymnast Larysa Latynina, who won 18 Olympic medals, nine gold, for the former Soviet Union in the 1950s and 60s; the canoeist Birgit Fischer-Schmidt, who won 12 Olympic medals, eight gold, for the former East Germany and unified Germany from 1980-2004; and the rower Steve Redgrave, who won a gold medal in five consecutive Olympics for Britain from 1984-2000.

“Lewis didn’t have as many relays as Phelps; what if he would have had a 4x200-meter relay, or some kind of medley relay?” Hersh said. “Nurmi, because of what he did and the fact that he lost an Olympics because he was declared a pro. Latynina, just look at her record; it’s unbelievable. Fischer-Schmidt competed over a 24-year period in canoeing, which is not a child’s sport.”

Dick Pound, a member of the International Olympic Committee from Montreal and an Olympic swimmer at the 1960 Rome Games, said it was difficult to compare Olympic champions — “it’s like comparing cave drawings” — but that Owens stood out to him.

“He stood for a lot of things,” Pound said. “He’s one of the greatest. I’d like to have 10 athletes to play with instead of one. But in terms of performance, if Phelps pulls off eight golds, he’s been pretty dominant in a pretty hotly-contested sport.”

John Powers of The Boston Globe, who has covered 16 Olympics, said he gave the nod to Phelps as the greatest Olympian. Phelps swims all four strokes, compared to the butterfly and freestyle that Mark Spitz swam when he won seven gold medals at the 1972 Munich Games, Powers said. Plus, Phelps has had to swim more preliminary rounds.

“In terms of the pressure he’s under here, winning eight overall medals last time in Athens, seeking eight golds this time, I’d go for Phelps,” Powers said. “He’ll have 17 races here. And the sport has become more global. Spitz’s biggest competition in 1972 was his own guys. Phelps is going constantly, morning and night. He’s had to be good twice a day. Track guys don’t do it every day. And Phelps is doing it at a time no one’s done before, with finals in the morning. I’d put him up there.”

Perhaps the best argument in Phelps’s favor is that he is swimming a range of distances that convert to track races from a quarter mile to a mile (sprinting is about four times faster than swimming). No quarter miler is also dominant as a miler.

Phelps has superior aerobic capacity, compared with track sprinters, gained by swimming more than nine miles a day during peak training periods, said Genadijus Sokolovas, the director of sports science for USA Swimming.

“Track and field sprinters come to their races from short-distance training,” Sokolovas said. “They do a lot of speed work, not as much endurance. As a result, sprinters don’t recover so well. They don’t have enough aerobic capacity. If they trained differently, it might be a different situation. Michael’s ability to recover after such high volume training and race is amazing.”

Only 23, Phelps does have a chance to become the greatest Olympian, Wallechinsky said.

“If he returns in London in four years and wins a few more gold medals, that would show a greater longevity,” Wallechinsky said.


Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

[cl004]

Debate debate debate.

Geez, some of these guys get so hung up in this! Swimming is a different animal than Track, and he should be lauded for being able to bring home the most gold overall, but also acknowledged that it is with swimming and not with the Decathlon or something.

There just seem to be more events with some common ground in swimming than track. It would be like the 100M dash running, running backward, skipping, and power-walking. Then the same for the 200, the 400, and the relays.

So I think they should keep them slightly separated when considering them in the record books, but also, for now, they should SHUT THE HELL UP AND LET THE GUY COMPETE!




BTW, that line:

Runners compete vertically. They pound their bodies harder, and must work their hearts and muscles harder, than swimmers, who compete horizontally. Is such a load. Yes runners have more physical punishment to their body parts than swimmers, but saying that they work their hearts and muscles harder is a load.

I get more tired swimming 100M then I do running 100M. Saying that one is harder than the other just because you are "horizontal" is baloney.

[AnthonyKing]

See, you're debating it too.