Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Mystery solved and other Olympic reflections

Judging from Michael Phelp's near 'nad-tastic celebration at the starting block after the US men's stunning 4x100 freestyle relay win, I guess swimmers DO shave their entire body. Fortunately, Phelp's camera-ready styling for the International Male catalog didn't overshadow an amazing come from behind win.

Did you catch it? I remember before the event, the commentator was muttering pessimistically--he claimed that he kept doing and redoing the numbers and his calculations always pointed to the men's team from France winning the relay event. The dramatic capper came from the French men's team themselves, proclaiming that they would smash the Americans. The race was neck and neck, back and forth, and the last leg the French were leading by half a body. Then out of nowhere, in the last 20 meters, Jason Lezak closed the gap and passed the French team and won by a tap.

Not only did Jason Lezak set a record for best time for his split, not only did they prove the French wrong, come from behind, and win the gold, but they also set a World Record for the event. If you saw it live, you experienced an Olympic moment. You know what I'm talking about.

I started gluing stuff down in our Olympic memory book, old-school scrapbook style. Here's a picture I cut out from the papers from the Opening ceremony.


I'm hooked on these games.

I'm moved by the stories of some of these Olympians, like Oksana Chusovitina, who is a 33-year-old gymnast who is competing at her 5th Olympic games. Originally on the gold medal-winning Soviet team in the '92 Olympics, she is now competing for Germany as they were able to accommodate her son when he had leukemia. What can I say? I'm so rooting for her on the vault.

Also the amazing story of Lopez Lomong, one of the "Lost Boys of Sudan" who eventually made it to the US and is competing in the 1500m in the Olympics and even carried the US flag during the Opening ceremony.

I'm even moved by some of the commercials--love the "Go World" Visa commercials narrated by Morgan Freeman and nearly cry during the Coke commercial featuring Olympic and Special Olympic medal winners, featuring the opening bars of Breathe Me by Sia.

Some commercials on the other side of the spectrum is that annyoing Zyrtec commercial (time in a bottle? sure lady, put "2 hours of time" on that bottle already) and that ridiculous McDonald's commercial with athletes proclaiming that they get up early...for their Southern style chicken biscuit sandwich. I'm sure fried chicken in a biscuit is just screaming "breakfast of champions".

My minor criticism--what's up with that new scoring in gymnastics? 15.75? Not quite the same ring as pefect 10.

3 comments:

dad said...

i apologize in advance, but my favorite olympic moment so far has to be this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-SbdmcZim8

Pound said...

i did see the lezak win, but didn't realize it was so momentous! i was just thinking how much cuter he is than michael phelps HAHA.

Anonymous said...

My name is Susan Ward and i would like to show you my personal experience with Zyrtec.

I am 30 years old. Have been on Zyrtec for 3 months now. I thought I was dying! It must be cancer or some disease. I felt that bad. I exercise 6 days a week and I know my body very well. I new something wasn't right but never thought it would be an allergy pill to blame. Within three months these symptoms hit hard. I tracked it back to the day I started taking this medication. The side effects didn't hit me right away. I was just happy to be able to breathe. So I'm assuming the clinical trials for this drug were not long enough to witness these types of side effects. I'd rather deal with the allergies than these side effects. Glad to know others feel the same. I'm not just going crazy.

I have experienced some of these side effects -
Major fatigue, gained 13 lbs in 3 month period very unusaul for me). wild mood swings, major depression, loss of short term memory. Stop taking the pill and fill almost back to normal.

I hope this information will be useful to others,
Susan Ward