Jason Lezak, three-time Olympian beat the French by 1/800 second, or whatever, to win the 4x100 men's freestyle relay. The team was trailing the Australian, then the French right from the get-go and how Lezak, the last leg of the relay did it was just beyond me, of course, I don't know dickson about swimming. But what's important is he did it, for himself, for his country, for the Olympics, for the sports, for the human race and in some way for Phelps so his dream for 8 Olympic Gold can still be alive. Bernard, The French man who swam ahead of Lezak except for the last nano nano second cried a pool of tears at the Water Cube. No such luck for America's Katie Hoff who was in some odd way like the French beaten by Lezak, lost her Gold just by a touch of fingers to England's Rebecca Adlington.
This is the freaking Olympic, to be the best you can be, to give it all out. For those who don't like it, there is always Project Runway.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
-
LG just up the ante by introducing its own touch screen cellphone a week after Apple made the iPhone announcement. The PRADA phone is a col...
-
New York City is falling apart .... Buildings are collapsing , the financial market is in a tailspin and the dollar is not the dollar it us...
Yes I watched that race live in the wee hours of the morning last night (or more correctly this morning, whatever). It was amazing!! Lezak deserves the gold, but Phelps swam his best and did his bit to contribute to the gold also, beating the world record time for his individual leg even though it was his stated least favourite race (all these from the BBC live commentary, as I also know dickson about sports). In fact, from my mere armchair spectator standpoint, the only guy who didn't pull it for the U.S. team was the black guy (sorry I didn't catch the names of the second or the third swimmers in the relay so blatant racial markers will have to do), who allowed the French to get ahead of him even though in the previous leg the other U.S. swimmer managed to lead the French by almost a full second. Lesak had to undo the damage that the black guy did and managed to just outwit the French by eight-hundreds of a second (or 0.08, and not 1/800).
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, it also struck me that the Lesak win by the mere fact that his arm stretched further than the French guy is a complete mirror example of how the Brits "stole" the gold from Hoff. The BBC commentators were jumping up and down when Becky Adlington AND Jo Jackson got into the top three. Personally I think Becky not only "stole" the gold from Katie, but also "stole" it from her teammate Jo because it was Jo who was pressuring Katie through the course of the race and Becky only pipped in at the very end.
It almost seemed like an extremely condensed, live-action modern demonstration of the tale of the tortoise and the rabbit, in which those who seem slow at first won the race at the end at the expense of the early fastrunners.
At least Katie Hoff has the grace of a good loser though, which cannot necessarily be said of the French.
Oops, should be "eight-hundredths of a second"...
ReplyDeleteAnd yes I'm spending way too much time watching the Olympics...
I thought you are taking a break.
ReplyDeleteThe black kid is Cullen Jones, native New Yorker from the Bronx. I don't blame him, the French guy was swimming at a record shattering speed, according to the NYTimes. If anyone I think Phelps should have gotten the lead in the first leg. Well if it could.
I read a little bit about the trash talking of the French. I don't know. I think Phelps says he got fired up by those talks. So maybe that works for Phelps.