Oh man that was sweet.

She was at least twice, if not 3 times, as old as some of those Chinese gymnasts ;)

SI

haha - well played sir

After promising to "SMASH" the dreams of Michael Phelps, and throwing away a win in the final 10 meteres of the race, there is a new international signal for choking.

I still can't get over that race. Absolutely great. I wish they would replay the last 50 meters again

SI

I'm sorry, there is already an international signal for choking militarily:

I'm not entirely sure that barely losing to the World Record in 100m split is exactly "choking".

lol - wait - strangely those are the same!

What an incredible race. Glad I was able to watch it.

So now breaking a world record isn't enough and they've progressed to shattering multiple records in one event.

New WR 400Free Relay - by 4 seconds
New 100m Free WR - set by Australian leadoff
Fastest Relay Split ever - (and i think they were saying earlier 46.6 was the previous record) Lezak had 46.06
New 100m Free AR - set by Phelps on leadoff for the hell of it

What do these people do the other 4 years? They don't peak for the World Championships or something? Or do they only bring out the cold, deep, specially made pools for the Olympics?

lol @ bishop

I do wish the world championships were televised and made a bigger deal out of though

That, by far, was the greatest Olympic moment I have ever seen!

Watched this race last night - incredible. Couldn't help but get excited over the last 50m or so.

Would have loved to see the guy from France interviewed.

Sounds like I went to bed too early

We were up, but my wife wasn't paying attention to the race. I had to rewind so she could watch the thing again after she heard me screaming at the TV and jumping up and down.

So the French guy saying "we're going to smash the americans" gets to have his words crammed down his throat eh?

just watch it on nbcolympics.com silly.

amazing 4x100 Free relay - Phelps was neck and neck with the Frenchy (Frenchy set a WR on the first leg, Phelps set an American record), the 2nd and 3rd legs were fairly neck-and-neck although France had a slight lead, the French anchor was the WR holder in the 100 free going into the race (who had just lost his record to his teammate), and the Americans had a 32-yo anchor who was behind by like a full body-length at the turn it seemed, managed to pull back even about halfway down the back-50 and then drafted in Frenchy's wake until the last 10-15 meters where he got energy from SOMEWHERE to pull even with Frenchy and out-touch him at the wall by .08 seconds, in the process setting a WR for fastest relay-split (46.06).

Looking at my posts on the board you can see - sure seemed like the Americans were done and there was no way he was going to catch up, and then BAM...there he was, and you could see as they came into the wall that he was going to out-touch him...it was just...amazing.

The top 5 finishers all broke the WR that the US B-team had set that morning in the prelims (which was itself what...1+ seconds faster than the old record). So in the span of 24-hours the WR went down by like over 5 seconds.

Awesome race. My wife and I were jumping on the bed screaming like little kids.

I think this bears repeating, just to emphasize the magnitude of this event. Two teams that broke the previous world record didn't even receive medals.

So, before the Olympics began there was some story I saw about how swimmers were wearing these outfits that helped them a lot.

I didn't watch the relay, so I don't know if everyone was wearing suits or just the lower part, but since everyone swam so fast I'll assume everyone wore those suits?

Do you think this is right? Shouldn't swimmers just wear a speedo or something? Isn't technology getting too advanced to allow full, aerodynamic suits?

After blowing the lead he had at the turn, I don't think there's any question the dude choked as bad as the Maginot Line did in 1940. :p

nah. i mean sure it'd be nice if they all just wore regular speedos and you could compare records and numbers across eras, but the world doesn't exist in a bubble, and the public would get bored if they weren't seeing records broken (or so the argument probably goes). I'm sure there's a way to quantify the effect of the suit though and adjust the times accordingly to stack up swimmers from different eras...maybe?

besides what's the harm? at least they're not doing PED's (hopefully).

I saw a statistic that claimed the top suits cut about 2% from the times of swimmers (no idea what distance that would relate to, though). So it's certainly substantial. However, as my understanding is that anyone can choose to wear the best suits -- and all of the top companies have their own versions, it seems -- outside of sponsorship concerns, it seems like the technology is level across the playing field, much like tennis.

Can some one help me figure out where to watch online? Looking through the nbcolympics.com site, all I see are video clips and not actual footage. And their entire schedule thing is completely blank.

Ahh finally found it, Not sure why the schedule thing is completely blank though.

In every sport, people are always looking for the best equipment. NASCAR is always trying to build a faster car, tennis is always building a better racket, football is always building a better helmet and better pads. The only real difference is this jump in technology is a bit higher than most.

As long as everyone involved in the sport has access to it, I don't see the problem.

In my view, this actually undermines the magnitude of the event. It renders it plain to see that there's a fundamental difference between the settings. From what little I know, I guess it's the suits, but whatever it is -- it's perfectly clear that there's a material difference at work here, not just incremental improvement among the athletes.

Exactly. I know every sporting event will have some kind of technological aid over time, so I didn't think much about the suits... but after reading that two teams broke thee old record and weren't even top three...! That just seems really wrong.

The other big talk has been regarding the pools, and that different pool sizes (depth, width) affect the times. Plus some rules changes on strokes that make it difficult to compare eras.

Regardless, despite all the record breaking going on, it's fun to watch the judges just kind of sauntering along the deck at the same pace as the swimmers furiously paddling away...

Not sure I follow. If everyone has access to the same technology, doesn't it prove that the playing field is pretty level when the winning team has to overcome four world-record performances in order to do so, and the separation between first and second in a four-man relay is .08 seconds?

Clearly the suit technology cuts down on drag and such in a significant way, but let's consider how much improvement there is. If we assume the 2% figure is accurate (and that a swimmer accidentally slowing his tempo a fraction doesn't offset the gains), then the Americans gained what, about 4 seconds? "About", of course, being a huge margin for error considering the increments of swimming time, but for rough math, there we go. Fwiw, they broke the world record by just under 4 seconds. If they swam in basic Speedos against the rest of that field (of which most, if not all, were wearing the better suits) they'd have finished 6th assuming the other times remained the same -- and still been right on the line of breaking the previous world record.

The difference between first place and last place was 4.63 seconds, an incredibly close gap considering that each team had 4 chances to lose a fraction of time here or there. My sense is that if the technology is available to every swimmer, the question becomes more about comparing new records to old ones rather than "undermining the magnitude of the event". Having watched it, it didn't matter what the final times were, really -- as spectators we witnessed a thrilling come-from-behind victory that was determined by less time than it takes for a hummingbird to flap its wings once.

Sample size, anyone? Relays are always relatively uncommon in the daily life of the swimmers, so they have much less opportunity to set times. In contrast, at the women's 4x100 the Dutch world record holders failed to break their own record, while the rest of the field was miles away.

I have two little pleasures when watching the lesser-known events. One is trying to think if I could be good at the event - realistically I know there's no chance I could compete at the world-class level, but I used to dominate Badminton in middle school gym class, and I swear I could take some of those guys out there.

The other is imagining the best US athletes playing in these. LeBron in Team Handball is the one I was thinking about yesterday. One of the Europeans who actually plays/watches can disagree with me, but I swear he'd score 50 goals a game without trying. I don't even know exactly what the rules allow for trying to stop drives, but who out there could stop LeBron?

Off-note, but it looks like Chicago made the final list (along with Tokyo, Madrid, and Rio de Janeiro) for the 2016 Olympics.

The thing I can't figure out is Phelps + most others weren't wearing the full body-length suits for other events. Do they only help freestyle swimmers and detract for other strokes? wbatl1, do you know anything about that?

Phelps and the top swimmers don't have to swim their fastest races to make the finals, and as such you'll see several of them either taking a lot off late in a race and such (not shaving, etc.).

I'd like to see how good at rugby some of our football players could have been.

According to my wife, NBC's coverage sucks badly, pretty much to the point of not bothering to tune in.

Except for Phelps swimming, I've been avoiding NBC, and been watching a ton of MSNBC and NBCOlympics.com

I was really hoping that Los Angeles would have been able to beat out Chicago

Your wife is a liar! She's a liar! The coverage ain't bad, could be better. It shouldn't stop anyone from tuning in though as the events are top notch, especially the swimming.

If there in Chicago there will be soccer games in Minneapolis at TCF Bank Stadium, which would be fun.

Interesting, that aerial shot of the fireworks from the Olympic Ceremonies? Computer Generated.

They DID do fireworks, it was just that they couldn't provide an aerial shot for them, due to the risk of the helicopter being damaged.

Says a lot for how far computer generated stuff has gone.

Cyclists continue to be the stupidest atheletes on this planet.

Cyclist Moreno kicked out of Games - 2008 Olympics - SI.com

:p

I prefer more T than A, but those lil white half-mesh bikini bottoms are showing some serious A.

I thought I was pretty clear, but I'll try again.

The race was exhilarating. Awesome to watch, and I don't really care much about the Olympics or rooting for people who happen to be from my country. Ranks *way* there in sports events I have ever viewed. Thrilling.

I'm also not saying that it lessens the amazing outcome. Nor am I saying the playing field was not level. I was just responding to a comment above that the complete crushing of the world record made the event more momentous.

What I'm saying is just that the fact that 5 out of 8 teams beat the all-time world record time tells us all that the times of this setting are clearly not on par with those from other eras and settings. Plain and simple. So, the "amazing that they crushed the world record by so much" stuff rings hollow to me. It's clearly substantially a function of different suits, different pools, or something else besides suddenly all the top swimmers just got a *ton* better than they all were six months or four years ago.


Oh, and I'd have to quarrel with you on the hummingbird wingbeat stuff, not that I have a general problem with hyperbole or anything, it's just bad math.

:eek:

thats what i consider quality programing

michael phelps is just...not human. He's unbelievable. A total freak.

can he do the spitz +1? (8 Gold medals, 8 World Records)