Olympics and Whatnot

There is actually a reason for my lack of posting recently. My schedule typically runs like this: sleep for ten hours, watch 3-4 hours of Olympics (recorded, or live), go to work for about 8 hours, go out for two hours, and repeat. Needless to say, not many movies have gotten watched (though I did see the mediocre Pineapple Express), which sort of makes my Netflix a bad investment. But the Summer Olympics only come around once every 4 years, so whatever.

It's tough to watch sports that are not Swimming or Gymnastics, because those are the focus of much of the American media circle. With that said, I will begin there.

Gymnastics are immensely entertaining, and I'm so glad USA won the gold and silver in women's all-around events. Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson performed amazing, and it proves that Alicia Sacramone was a weak link (with two crucial falls in her performances). Nastia deserved the gold for her fantastic routines (namely on uneven bars and beam, in my opinion). Shawn was great, but Nastia is a lot prettier, so she wins by default.

And how can we ignore the phenomenon that is Michael Phelps? He is a beast. Tonight he got his eighth gold medal this year, which means he went eight for eight. With his closest victory being by only .01 of a second, it was quite a thrill to watch him compete. Seeing his final race tonight is bound to be a piece of history long remembered, and I don't see anyone coming close to his accomplishments for a long, long time.

More entertaining than Gymnastics and Swimming are events such as Football (Soccer), Handball, Diving, a select few tennis matches, and Field events. Fortunately I have some random Soccer HD channel which shows almost all of the Olympic soccer games during the day.

Handball is a great sport which seems not so popular in America (we don't have either a team in either men's or women's). It is a fun sport to watch, especially because of players like Anita Gorbicz, who -- while not only a pleasure to look at -- make some of the most ridiculous plays ever. In a match between Hungary and Brazil early on, the score was 28-27 for Brazil with one second left in the game. Time was called on a foul, and it was expected that the ball would be quickly passed and then shot at the last second in an effort to tie; however, the ref placed the ball in the player's hand (not Gorbicz, some other chick), and she rocketed the ball overhand, much like a baseball pitch, straight into the goal before anyone knew what hit them. It's plays like that which make the Olympics so entertaining.

Another fantastic match was woman's Tennis singles, Serena Williams against Elena Dementieva. Williams was the number four seed and dominated early on, taking the first set 6 games to 4. During the second set Williams was up 4 games to 1 (I believe, or 3 to 0), but Elena managed to win 9 games in a row. This gave her the second set and must have messed Williams up mentally. Up 4 games to 0 in the last set (yeah, it must have been 4-1 in set 2), Williams managed to win a couple games, but Elena closed out the match, forcing an upset and creating a fantastic comeback. Great match.

And it stinks that a lot of these lesser sports aren't more widely broadcast. But I watch what I can, and maybe I'll report back in a few days.