The Official XXIX Summer Olympics Thread

#201
#201
Most random piece of information I found out from msnbc's olympic broadcast today:

Michael Phelps has reached the max limit of friends on facebook at 5,000 :blink:
 
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#202
#202
Vercingetorix said:
The sheer range of what Heiden did was IMO more impressive than what Phelps is doing. It was as if one guy showed up to the summer games and won gold medals in the 100m, the 200m, the 400m, the 10k, and the marathon.
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I disagree. Even as small as the competitive swimming population is, there are at least NCAA teams and competitions to draw people in.

Speed skating has no such counterpart, so the sheer number of worldwide speedskaters he had to beat was pretty limited.
 
#203
#203
BigPapaVol said:
I disagree. Even as small as the competitive swimming population is, there are at least NCAA teams and competitions to draw people in.

Speed skating has no such counterpart, so the sheer number of worldwide speedskaters he had to beat was pretty limited.
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They have a 1500m swimming race. Is Phelps competing in it? Nope. And no way he's going anywhere near the 10k open-water swim either. Phelps is racking up an enormous gold medal count by doing basically the same thing over and over. If they'd given away medals in Lake Placid for skating 500 m, and then another one for skating 500 m with your hands held behind your back, and then 500 m for doing it again with your hands held above your head, Heiden would have won all those too.
 
#204
#204
Phelps is swimming in medal races and an hour later in trial heats...he is swimming in 17 races for godsake. Is there anyone else that is even swimming in 10?
 
#205
#205
warren's out in boxing. he thought he was ahead a point (when he was actually down one) and stayed away from his opponent for the last 30 seconds:no: so now he's already done after the 1st round
 
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#207
#207
VOLinthaATL said:
Phelps is swimming in medal races and an hour later in trial heats...he is swimming in 17 races for godsake. Is there anyone else that is even swimming in 10?
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He's clearly by far the best in the world at swimming the length of the pool two to four times using two particular strokes, which are no more artificial constraints than skating while holding your arms over your head like I posited above. He's regarded as a god mainly because the Olympics provides eight separate events (including three relays) that fit those criteria.

I'm not running down Phelps; I just think the range of what Heiden accomplished is more impressive. I'd be more impressed by Phelps if he competed in the 50m and the 1500m races, too.
 
#209
#209
Vercingetorix said:
They have a 1500m swimming race. Is Phelps competing in it? Nope. And no way he's going anywhere near the 10k open-water swim either. Phelps is racking up an enormous gold medal count by doing basically the same thing over and over. If they'd given away medals in Lake Placid for skating 500 m, and then another one for skating 500 m with your hands held behind your back, and then 500 m for doing it again with your hands held above your head, Heiden would have won all those too.
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I don't disagree with your point, but the number of people worldwide that Heiden had to beat is miniscule relative to what Phelps deals with.

In the vein of your comment, if they lined up 2 billion more 7 year olds to beat Phelps in any swimming event, he could beat all of them in any swimming event, regardless of distance.

You would, however, agree that his dominance of the medleys and different strokes is something impressive, in this era of intense specialization, no?
 
#210
#210
Vercingetorix said:
He's clearly by far the best in the world at swimming the length of the pool two to four times using two particular strokes, which are no more artificial constraints than skating while holding your arms over your head like I posited above. He's regarded as a god mainly because the Olympics provides eight separate events (including three relays) that fit those criteria.

I'm not running down Phelps; I just think the range of what Heiden accomplished is more impressive. I'd be more impressed by Phelps if he competed in the 50m and the 1500m races, too.
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He won the 400IM which is actually the length of the pool 8 times doing every swimming stroke they have down and back...
 
#213
#213
BigPapaVol said:
You would, however, agree that his dominance of the medleys and different strokes is something impressive, in this era of intense specialization, no?
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It's enormously impressive. We're comparing titans here. I'm just ridiculously impressed by the fact that Heiden was able to excel in both sprints and endurance races. In comparison, Phelps just seems to be gold medal after gold medal for doing pretty close to the same thing.
 
#214
#214
Vercingetorix said:
It's enormously impressive. We're comparing titans here. I'm just ridiculously impressed by the fact that Heiden was able to excel in both sprints and endurance races. In comparison, Phelps just seems to be gold medal after gold medal for doing pretty close to the same thing.
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then you take Eddy Merckx over Armstrong all day long, right?
 
#215
#215
Vercingetorix said:
It's enormously impressive. We're comparing titans here. I'm just ridiculously impressed by the fact that Heiden was able to excel in both sprints and endurance races. In comparison, Phelps just seems to be gold medal after gold medal for doing pretty close to the same thing.
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but I'd still argue that Heiden didn't have to beat very many folks and was often racing the same guys in the different distances.

Nonetheless, I loved Heiden then and now, so don't want to try and diminish what he did, but I liken it a little to the fencing championship, where there might be 7 people worldwide competing.
 
#216
#216
Just watched last nights events. Phelps is a beast, of course, but I really liked that Jonathan Horton guy on the gymnastics team.
 
#218
#218
BigPapaVol said:
then you take Eddy Merckx over Armstrong all day long, right?
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Absolutely. It's not even close.

For awhile Armstrong was talking about retiring from the Tour de France so he could try his hand at the Giro d'Italia and other races, but it never happened. I would like to have seen him get outside that comfort zone. Even if you take juicing off the table, you could certainly argue that Armstrong was more a creature of a system and team built entirely around succeeding in one race than anything else. Merckx's resume is way more impressive than Armstrong's.
 
#219
#219
But I do think Armstrong could have excelled at any particular phase of the race, or even won multiple jerseys in a single race, but the focus on the jersey and the race's modern specialization changed much of that.

Hell, Eddy smoked during the tour and probably used everything available to him to make him better, including drugs.
 
#220
#220
BigPapaVol said:
Hell, Eddy smoked during the tour and probably used everything available to him to make him better, including drugs.
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For some reason, cocaine was apparently fine but steroids somehow crosses a line. I don't quite get it.

I guess that as everything in sports gets increasingly specialized, I really appreciate the generalists that much more. I look at a guy like Heiden who won every race against guys who specialized at the various distances, and then had a good career as a professional cyclist after that, and I'm really impressed. Phelps is obviously the best swimmer in the world, but when I compare him to guys like Heiden and Carl Lewis, most of what he's doing seems like variations on the same theme.
 
#221
#221
Phelps (at this pace) will become the best athlete ever at his sport, twice. i think it's safe to assume he will at least medal in his remaining events and probably win gold in his individual events.

Heiden only raced in one Olympics. i don't discount what he did, but i think being the absolute best at what you do twice is far more impressive.
 
#222
#222
This is going to sound like a joke but I swear I just turned around and looked at the TV and wondered what was wrong with my focus that was causing me to see double . . . then I realized it was that goofy synchronized diving.

How do they justify removing something as popular as baseball as an Olympic sport but having Synchronized diving?
 
#225
#225
All I know is that they better keep badminton. I started watching it as a joke, but for some reason I've watched it on CNBC pretty much every night.
 
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