Posted on 08/15/2008 7:18:22 PM PDT by Blogger
Scared the cat big time..
OUTSTNDING!
GO USA
I love the Phelps commercials by Visa
Commercials are when I am trying to keep the kitchen clean and am on the computer..I will pay more attention..
I LOVE THIS!
Now I hae to go find the cat..LOL
Here's my take:
Swimming farse (1) generating medals on demand, in total contradiction with definition of sports, with - four different styles instead of simply the CITIUS maxim (the fastest, period);
You seem to to forget the "Altius" and "Fortius" parts. Presuming you know what those mean, I have to point out that the butterfly stroke is both stronger, in that it requires more physical strength to swim it, and higher, because your body comes out of the water.
Since the olympics isn't ONLY about the "fastest", you need to have events that will take care of the "higher" and "stronger" apart.
- proliferation of distances that have been proved today to be totally redundant (e.g. 100 and 200 m), with the same people in the podium each time;
Here I have to beg to differ again.
The 100 free was won by Alain Bernard from France, and the 200 free was won by Michael Phelps. Not the same person, it would seem
The 100 backstroke was won by Aaron Peirsol, and the 200 backstroke was won by Ryan Lochte, both of the US, but different people.
Now, both the butterfly and the breaststroke distances were won by the same person in each, but neither of them swam the backstroke.
All this pushed to the utter limits with
- events combining four styles (medley) ...
- ... and relays where there is no difference to the individual races except the addition of each performance, i.e. no relay that is passed.
So, ditch the decathlon and pentathlon, and triathlon, or any other competition that requires more than one discipline to win. If the medleys are a farce, then surely the events I have mentioned are, because they involve more than one style of competition. Also, there are medley relays in track, where each participant runs a different distance.
- ... and relays where there is no difference to the individual races except the addition of each performance, i.e. no relay that is passed
Can I have a translation, please?
Note: (1) At the Olympics even the swimming farse pales in comparison with the array of medals in other "sports", beginning with those decided not by measurable performances but by point giving judges, from gymnastics to boxing. Note also that one of the side effects of declaring as sport what in fact is not, leads to grotesque best "athletes" (e.g. children in gymnastics).
If you hate swimming so much less than the other sports, why waste your time watching the olympics?
So who made your definition of *sport* the only valid one? Other people have other opinions of what a sport is. Too bad if you don't like it. Get over yourself.
BUMP!
ping to post 345
Your questions are beyond me. Maybe someone more knowledgeable about swimming and engineering might have the answers.
I’m now celebrating Phelps’ number 8 gold medal. So glad the team won this last relay, and now he has the amazing record of 8 golds.
An incredible effort, and he surely is the greatest athlete on the planet.
At least medals are awarded for distinct independent performances. The Biathlon Sprint event not only awards a medal in its own right, but it can also give the winner a significant advantage in the Biathlon Pursuit event. I like the Pursuit event, but IMHO the qualifying round should not award a medal by itself. If there's to be a "Sprint" medal it should be a separately-run event.
and what are we west coast Freepers supposed to do for hours before the race takes place? a "spoiler" in the title, without the title revealing the results would be courteous... that's all i'm hoping for...
Not as far as I know. It's just no motion BEFORE the buzzer goes off. Once the buzzer goes off, it's fair game, but the faster the reflexes the better.
If someone moves before the buzzer, why not just warn them and delay the start (if one person moves, and another person jumps after the first person's motion but before the warning, let the second person get back up). A second false move by the same person would then be a disqualification (since the buzzer wouldn't sound, the latter person would be disqualified before the start, rather than after the race).
Alternatively, I think it might in some ways be better to have a false start result in a time penalty of somewhere between 3x and 10x the false start margin or a motion penalty (e.g. have a focused light in plain view of the contestant which signals a requirement to re-touch the starting wall to get credit for the lap). In most cases, such a penalty would knock a contestant out of medal contention, but that would seem much less unaesthetic than having a contestant compete hard only to discover afterward that a mistake at the beginning had rendered everything afterward completely meaningless.
“Good morning Mr. Phelps, your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to win 8 gold medals in Beijing.”
Spitz was accepted to dental school in Indiana, but moved to California instead to pursue his swimming. After the Olympics, he landed several endorsement deals, earning about $7 million in short order. He parlayed that into real estate, entrepreneurial projects, etc, supplementing that with corporate speaking gigs. He's been very successful, but it hasn't been as a dentist.
He never attended dental school, much less became a dentist, and even sued Proctor and Gamble when they put him on a "History of Dentistry" poster. He once said,“I’m probably the most famous dentist who never became a dentist in the world.”
As for his absence from Beijing, he said, "I was working with a corporate sponsor who elected not to bring their US contingent over to China, and they piled on more work for me here in the United States, which was great. So I wasn't able to get to the Olympics and watch Michael in the first couple of days. And they thought, some of these reporters, that I was supposed to be invited by some entity, and I told them that that wasn't really the case, that doesn't happen that way."
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