Even the threat of those 90 yard bombs would help your offense though. He'd get double coverage every time, so you are opening up the middle of the field.

Unless of course, he only runs his routes hard when the play is designed for him.

Funny. I started thinking about what position Bolt played on the soccer pitch.

Congrats by the way to Richard Thompson on getting the silver.

Relatively slow acceleration + cornerbacks jamming Bolt at the line = cross one receiver off the possible catch list.

He is 6'5 - alley oop corner pass.

and, I am not sure the "slow acceleration" means what we think it does in track terms versus football terms. I would be willing to bet he would have one of the fastest acceleration in the NFL.

The bigger issue is how he would react to a guy like Ed Reed hitting him under the chin.

Yeah, Jamaican track stars do not generally/ever equate to NFL players. Fun to dream about it, though.

What ?

Phelp's is a part of breaking 8 WR's and Bolt breaks 1 and he is the story of the olympics ? I think most are just tired of hearing about Phelp's but that does not change the fact that he broke 8 WR's using 4 different strokes (or something like that). When Bolt breaks the record in the 100m, 200m, 400m and 100 Hurdles THEN he would get my vote.

Hell, Bolt's not even in the Long Jump, so whatever he does in these games, it won't be as impressive as Jesse Owens or Carl Lewis.

Was watching some rowing a bit ago and wanted to congratulate the Candians around here on finally getting on the board...

I would like to hear Bolt's rendition of the Jamaican national anthem.

Wow... after Bolt's 100m run, the Jamaican women SWEEP the 100m dash, winning the gold and two silvers as the 2nd place was a tie. Something in the water there!

Uh yeah... he starts running the 100m like exactly one year ago and then is so damned fast that he can slow down during the last 15m and STILL breaks the World Record by 0.2 seconds. That's jaw droppingly incredible. And he never had to run full tilt in any heat. Hell, in the QF, he basically coasted the last 50m!!

Who cares about all the gold medals and records in the pool, that 100m race was absolutely incredible.

This is the part that puzzles me. "Who cares?" Phelps has 14 Gold Medals. The 2nd place swimmer of all-time has 9. I mean, Bolt's performance in this race was remarkable and should be celebrated, but Phelps has FAR outdone every single competitor in his event in the history of the Olympic games. Seriously, no one is even fucking close.

"Who cares?" What the hell are you people smoking?

You two Georgia guys shouldn't be arguing. Instead, you should be helping your fellow citizens track down that bigfoot colony.

Hey...hey...we were already on the board with a Gold and Bronze in Women's Wrestling!!!!!

RESPECT!!!!

;)

I think Phelps was amazing, but that's absurd - swimming lends itself to far more medals than other sports. You have the 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1500M races, along with one in each style (freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke, butterfly), along with the medleys and relays, etc etc. Running has far less.

Mark me down as somebody more impressed by Phelps' accomplishments than those by Bolt.

When it comes to a great story, I'm really interested by quantity. I want to see great stories in a competition. Lezak's come from behind win over Bernard in the 4*100m relay was a GREAT story. Phelps wins 8 GM with 8 WR, impressive, but doesn't really call to me that much as a story (thought his win in 100m fly was).

I think you might just not have a full understanding of the situations in all of those races then.

Thanks for your condescension, but I believe I do.

you're welcome

Absolutely. Bolt's race was incredible, but Phelps is the story of this olympics. 8 gold medals ends all discussion.

+1

This is why I pick Bolt, btw (in case people are still confused):

BBC SPORT | Olympics 2008 blog

The reason I'd pick Phelps is Phelps uses his entire body, swam FAR more races, and shattered records in similar manners. Bolt may have run the most ridiculous 100 ever, but it's such a specialized thing compared to what Phelps did.

Please stop this.

Right, but as I said in the very post you quoted, Phelps is FAR ahead of anything any other swimmer has ever done, all of whom had the same advantages of multiple events. We can compare performances agaisnt historical competitors in other events.

Phelps has outclassed every swimmer ever, both in a single Olympics, and especially in an overall Olympics. However, there are two Track & Field athletes that have won more Golds in a single Olympics than Bolt is even eligible for this year.

If the way to put Phelps into perspective is by way of Mark Spitz (and I think it is) then it's at least possible that the way to put Bolt's 100m into perspective is by way of Bob Beamon and the 29-2 from Mexico City. Yes, it was only a ten second event, and doesn't demonstrate the breadth of accomplishment that Phelps has shown with his amazing effort - but it's possible that his 100m will stand as a singularly unbelievable accomplishment.

The thing is... there's plenty of reason to think that Bolt hasn't even shown us what he can really do. So, unlike Beamon and his totally jaw-dropping world record in a signature event...Bolt may just be introducing a new standard in his.

There is no easy way to try to measure these two accomplishments relative to one another, especially right now. But to the extent that track and field matters as a sport -- Bolt has the potential to be a sort of Mike Tyson (try to remember the young knockout artist on his way up) or Tiger Woods figure, I'd think. That's pretty exciting. You don't have to diminish Phelps in any way to see that.

As huge as Michael Phelps achievement is (kudos to him), it quickly shows how messed up the medals distribution is. The only group of events where you can set or break his record is at swimming or ski walking. In other sports, players need to compete in more heats and can win only one medal, unless they start competing in two different sports).

14 distances is still way too much. Sure, for world championships swimming it's nice and all, but at the Olympics they should trim it down to (edit: almost) half of that:
short distance (100m)
long distance (400m?)
100m butterfly
100m backstroke
100m breast stroke
medly (400m?)
4x100m relay
4x100m medley relay

And while they're at it, nuke the double bronze medals in the fighting sports, let those two people play one more time for that single medal!

If you don't think sprinters/runners use their whole body, you haven't competed in track events much.

hahahahaha

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Right now, this seems like the Bolt is the new flash (pun intended) while Phelps is the guy who we have seen and heard already. Most people already know the Phelps story. Most people are tired of the Phelps story. Not many people know the Bolt story. This is the first time, those who have don't watch track and field have seen him run. Bolt has been a world class sprinter for years now and was the world record holder in the event. I think Bolt may be the better story just because he is the unknown. However, to me, the greater accomplishment of these Games so far has to be Phelps.

Bush praises swimmer Phelps’ Olympic performance

CRAWFORD, Texas (AP)—President Bush praised Olympic champion Michael Phelps on Sunday for his performance in the swimming pool and outside it.

“If you can handle eight gold medals, you can handle anything, get ready for Iraq” Bush told the record-breaking medalist in a telephone call to Beijing from his Texas ranch.

Phelps won eight gold medals, eclipsing Mark Spitz’s seven-gold performance at the 1972 Munich Games. Phelps now has an astonishing 14 golds in his career, five more than any Olympian ever.

In the call, Bush said he and first lady Laura Bush were thrilled by Phelps’ achievement and that the swimmer had handled himself with “humility,” White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

“He told Michael ‘Laura and I are proud of you. Our family is proud of you, but most importantly, America is proud of you. We’re excited for you,” Johndroe said.

Bush was in Beijing, cheering from the stands, when Phelps claimed his first gold medal by smashing his own world record in the 400-meter individual medley. Afterward, the president and his father, George H.W. Bush, the 41st president, posed for a photograph with Phelps’ mother.

“Give your mom a big hug for me,” Bush told Phelps on the phone. “Forty-one and I were honored to get a picture with her.”

What a strange thing to say.

Hahaha that Iraq line cracks me up. What the hell.

I kinda like that he refers to his dad as "forty-one" in casual conversation.

He's probably only half kidding about the Iraq line. Phelps is on his way over there right now ;).

Getting back to track & field, and quantifying great performances in different sports, the guys who excel in the decathlon are still without peer, in my opinion. Take a look at these marks from the current world record holder, Roman Šebrle:

100m - 10.64
400m - 47.76
1,500m - 4:21.98
110m hurdles - 13.68
high jump - 7'1"
pole vault - 17'1"
long jump - 26'7"
shot put - 54'
discus - 162'
javelin - 233'6"

For someone to be able to excel in ten events over a grueling two day period, requiring speed, strength and endurance, is more impressive than anything else I've ever seen in the Olympics.

There's no incentive for Bolt to run 9.59 and break the record by that much. Now he can smash it 2 or 3 more times and keep making bank.

Someone else has to break it first to make him setting a new record relevant.

Eh, Bubka broke the pole vault record 35 times and was still considered relevant. Even though he shit the bed in 2 different olympics.

Anyone watch the woman's vault a little while ago? Pretty wild event with one girl getting no score for one of her vaults for going before the light went on, to the Chinese girl almost landing on her knees, yet getting a better score than our American girl Alicia who only had small hops on her landings, to a 33 year old getting the silver.

I'll happily admit to the fact that it takes all of the first day of swimming heats at the Olympics to make me never want to watch swimming again (until 4 years later, when I seem to forget and need to be reminded again) might make me a little biased when I say this, but what Bolt did (shatter a record, destroy the rest of the pack, and still have more in the tank) is far more impressive than any of the WRs or ORs that Phelps set in the pool - A pool which is scientifically engineered to be the "fastest pool" the Olympics has ever seen.

Having said that, all swimmers were obviously facing the same conditions and Phelps (and, when applicable, his teammates) was better than the rest of the pack. I'm not trying to steal any of the shine from his 8 golds - he's an amazing swimmer, and clearly the best in the world.

Running records are just a lot more "sacred" to me, and Bolt just absolutely blew me away.

I completely agree. Even though it likely means less medals for my country, I'd happily sacrifice that for more TV time for other non-swimming related events. I mean jeezus, over here the first week of Olympics coverage is basically just swimming after swimming, with the very occassional snippet of coverage of the other events.

why are they more sacred though? aren't they

1) statistically more likely to be doping
2) also utilizing technology - tracks designed to be "faster", as well as scientifically-designed shoes that are both lighter and designed to aid the runners in all kinds of ways with cushioning and stuff like that (that I freely admit I don't totally understand)

??

the answer to both of those questions is: "yes"

The difference is that the advancements in track-and-field in that sense get less airtime than the changes in the swimming.

There really aren't any "sacred" sports anymore where you don't see the impact of technology - maybe something like discus or shot-put is the only type of event.

1) Call me cynical, but I'm pretty much operating under the assumption that there is a ton more doping going on across many events than we'll ever know about.
2) Yeah sure, but it's not even close to the work that has gone in to the pool. It's been studied less on the track because it's record after record in the pools that are getting smashed on an hourly basis, not those on the tracks.

Anyone watching fencing?

I've watched probably 4-6 hours of Sabre fencing over the past three days. I fenced sabre for a couple of years and really enjoy watching it. What a challenging sport to watch and keep up with.

I just want to say that gymnast Alex Ardemev (sp?) quickly became one of my favorite guys at this Olympics and it sucked to see him fall tonight on the pommel horse. He tried to make it even harder then normal and I don't know if the extra hard part wore him out like the commentator suggested, but it would have been great to see him win a medal. He was without a doubt to me the most exciting guy I saw in that event, he just pulled some very cool moves.

If its so easy, why don't runners do the 100, 200, 1500, 3000, maybe throw in some hurdles and the steeple chase? People complaining about the events need to really think about it. The strokes are ENTIRELY different (why most swimmers specialize) and the distances make the race entirely different (why you don't see many runners doing multiple distances). Are the number of events in swimming a little out of control? Sure. But stop saying that T&F is superior and its harder to switch distances -- why is it supposedly easier to do in swimming than T&F?

:eek:

Liu Xiang achillies prevents him from running the 110m hurdles. Big news for China!

If you are going to include every swimming event you also need to include long distance running, walking and maybe triathlon and pentathlon/decathlon. When you put all those together I bet the difference in events is pretty slim.

I wonder what it would take for a swimmer to have an incredible achievement. I mean if someone comes along and smashes Phelps record with like 12 Golds in the 2016 games, will people be saying, "Big deal! There are too many swimming events!"?

How many races did Bolt run for his amazing achievement?

How many races did Phelps swim for his amazing achievement?

But the record he set the other night broke his own record, and people are talking about it.

OK, Let's settle this once and for all:

SWIMMING SUCKS

OK, now let's go back to our TVs and start enjoying the proper Olympics.

;)

The fact that Bolt hasn't run the 100 competitively and now shows up running fast times is not all that surprising. He has been around for a couple years running the 200, which too is a flat out sprint to the finish. His training for the 200 and 400 more than prepared him for the 100. It's not like he was a middle distance guy then all the sudden wins a sprinting event. He has been training as a sprinter since he was young. My guess (and just a guess) is that somewhere along the line he has greatly improved his start and first 20 meter times.

While his accomplishment is great, its not that far out of the park as people may think. To this day, Tyson Gay still has the fastest recored time in the 100 at 9.68, to which he also pulled up at the end of the race. Obadele Thompson also has also run a 9.69.

Bolt's race was extremely exciting but to those that follow T&F it was a little disappointing in the fact that it had the potential to be a show down of 3 world class sprinters that have ALL run 9.74 or faster but ended up being a 1 man race, which made it look even more dramatic. His Jamican counter-part, Asafa Powell, showed just how easy it was to one day run a 9.74 and the next be in the back of the pack. Tyson gay may say he was 100% but the lack of ability to train for a month prior to the olympics had to take a toll on his abilities. Had Gay not been injured we could easily be taking about him. While Bolt's best event supposedly is the 200, he best time of 19.67 run THIS year still trails Tyson Gays 19.62 run last year.

I think track events are, in some sense, more "sacred" than swimming events. Phelps' performance certainly has been incredible, but that being said, running is somehow more elementary, more basic, more fundamental and more universal in a human sense. Everyone on the planet who has the physical ability to run has done so at some point in their life. This can't be said about swimming. That's what makes Bolt's performance so amazing to me. He is far and away the fastest on the planet doing something all of us who are physically capable have done at least once in our lives. Phelps is great, but I can't say the same thing about him.

I enjoy the swimming events far more than T&F.

dola: I don't get the amazingness of Bolt. He beat a WR by .02 that he had already beaten before. So what?

Geez you people, both achievements were awesome and I don't think you can compare them.

The 100M is one of the premier events, so it gets a lot of attention and means a lot to some countries. Donovan Bailey said it best when he said that Bolt will have a holiday and his face on money one day. Swimming might not have the same wow factor, but Phelps had to win many races and perform at his best in each one in order to achieve what he did. Maybe not individually as sexy as the 100M, but eight golds is frickin' crazy. I do agree that swimming needs to lose some races though.

Good weekend for Canada, we went from 0 medals to 8 in a couple of days. We are now tied with Phelps! :)

We have to win eight medals every two days now.

you can't swim?

:) I can swim, but I know a lot of people who can't and have no desire to learn.

I know a lot of people that don't run and refuse to do it.

flojo gonna come back to life and put michael phelps and usain bolt to shame. she gonna put on one of them swimsuits, grow her nails to 16 feet long, and run on top of the water so fast, itll shut all yall up

calling it now

If there were a medal round for unadulterated assinine hyperbole, pumpy would be the Universal record holder and gold medal champion.

Hoo boy. you thought there was bitching about the new gymnastic scoring system? Wait till tonight. It's a fucking doozy.

So how does that work, if you had a higher difficulty on a tie?

I was actually looking forward to seeing this cat. Damn it.

Whoever had the best starting difficulty would win, I believe.

But it went beyond that, to the third tiebreaker

It went to throwing the highest and lowest judge's scores out, averaging the others, averaging deductions, blah blah blah. I read through it and got confused. There's gotta be an easier way.

there is:

throw out the score of the athlete who isn't the minimum required age of 16. :)

Seriously, even standing one podium higher she's still only as tall as Natsia. On a side note, her self-satisfied smile makes me cringe.

I still think Nastia still might end up getting the Gold (and another one in the team event) after all is said and done.

Seriously, I'm not one to get worked up over gymnastics, but it's hard not to feel insulted every time that Chinese girl is on the screen. She should really have "China thinks you're stupid" stamped on her forehead.

Natsia got screwed, that tie breaker system is wacky. They automatically throw out the highest and lowest scores when figure the normal score for someone, and in this tie breaker they then threw out the next lowest as well. It is a dumb ass way to do things IMO.

In debate, they have a tiebreaker to eliminate the highest and lowest scores, then they go with double high low. The tiebreakers in gymnastics just seemed wonky and intended to screw someone over. But then, it's a sport that's just screaming for controversy.

Yeah, it seems like the tiebreaker essentially rewarded the zygote for having another low score attributed to her. In judged sports, I think generally high and low scores are tossed within the confines of ONE COMPETITOR'S score, not over the scores of two competing rivals to determine a tiebreak. That's just stupid.

Ah well, this is one of the many reasons people only pay attention to gymnastics once every four years.

I find it funny how the men's vault was also a tie right after this, and their tie breaker was the guy with the highest score on one jump. Still don't like the tie breaker system, but at least for that event the tie breaker is less dumb.

The olympics have been a farce ever since they dropped Tug of War as an official sport.

+1

I choose this over 120 hours of beach volleyball.

Absurd. The speed/endurance ratio differences are so dramatic between the 100 meters and the marathon that I can't believe you're even serious. Furthermore, you're trying to include events with field components. Swimming is just swimming. Perhaps you should include the diving events along with the swimming ones?

Here's an interesting tidbit:

There are 4 medal events available to track athletes in which the individual athlete will cover 200 meters or less. The 100 meters, 200 meters, 110 meter hurdles, and the 4x100 meter relay.

There are 13 medal events available to swimmers in which the individual athlete will cover 200 meters or less. I'm too lazy to type them all, but there are 13 of them.

Furthermore, do you really not see how the fact that Phelps passed another swimmer who held the men's record for most gold medals in an Olympics and at the same time a swimmer also holds the women's record for most gold medals in an Olympics clearly shows that the playing field for this "record" is tilted in favor of dominant swimmers? It can't get much more obvious.

Agree. If it was good enough for Battle of the Network Stars...should be good enough for the Olympics.

Yeah, but the original list included the 400m, 800m, and 1500m swimming events, which was really cheating. People don't swim the 800m and the 200m, for example.


There are 13 medal events available to swimmers in which the individual athlete will cover 200 meters or less. I'm too lazy to type them all, but there are 13 of them.[/quote]

I would argue that the 100m running event is more analogous to the 50m swimming event. For instance, the 200m swim certainly isn't a sprint like the 200m dash is.


Which is why we don't compare Phelps medal haul to a track athlete's medal haul. But what we can do is look at how Phelps has done against every other swimmer in history, and compare that to how a certain track athlete has done against every other track athlete in history.
Phelps now has 14 medals to the 2nd place swimmer's 9.

Maybe you aren't comparing him to others. But have you not noticed the "Greatest Olympian Ever" crap they've been blaring?

And while I agree that 200 meters in swimming is a lot more difficult than 200 meters in running, endurance wise, the point is that there are over 3 times as many events in the same range. The speed/endurance ratio difference in 200 meters compared to 100 meters is roughly the same. Not the same, but roughly.

And if you prefer, while there are 3 ~100 meter events in track, there are 6 swimming events of exactly 100 meters.

I like how for two years, only TWO teams competed. And in one of those years, some Mixed Team bizzaro stuff took place. And you have winners like "Milwaukee Athletic Club." And if you click on the Mixed Team mumbo-jumbo, it shows that the U.S. and Cuba won in something as a combined team. Sweet.

Can someone tell me what's going on in the men's diving? I was watching this before leaving for work this morning... Interested in how that Canadian guy is doing. He was 2nd when I left.

why can't they just have one more routine in the event of a tiebreaker? like a sudden death overtime. then they take the avg of your two scores?

But why isn't he one of the greatest Olympians? In a single Olympics, he's done better than everyone in the history of his event. In multiple Olympics he has absolutely fucking crushed everyone in the history of his event (14 Golds to 9 Golds). All of these people I'm comparing him to had the same advantages with similar swimming distances, but none of them could do it. Only Phelps could.

Nevermind, following on Live Result

weehee, silver for Despaties! :)

Great comeback after flopping one in the preliminaries and qualifying 9th.

FM

Yay! I think we matched the 2004 total medal count now?

You know, if you look at the men/women split per country... France is just crazy. 25 for the men, 3 for the women. Everyone else is pretty close.

I said "the 'Greatest Olympian Ever' crap" and you said "one of the greatest Olympians."

Those extra two words make a huge freakin' difference, don't you think?

Wow, that's reminiscent of the East German women vs. men splits.

I'm just sayin'.

;)

sigh...

:deadhorse:

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

FM

Yep, although 1 less gold (replaced by a bronze this year). Impressive rally given where we were at a few days ago. I think they heard us discussing the idea of revoking sex privileges in the village if they didn't perform. It's all about motivation :)

I would say that if someone is clearly "one of the greatest Olympians ever" that I would certainly not consider it crap for someone to call them "the greatest Olympian ever". My point is he certainly belongs in the discussion and seems to be as good a choice as anyone else.