Random Observations While Watching the Olympics – Part II

Some More Highlights from London 2012

by Channing Kapin, Contributing Writer

I don’t want to seem like a Negative Nancy, only criticizing The Olympics, because there have been some terrific moments.  Like Michael Phelps shaking off the rust and winning his 19^th and 20^th medals to become the All-Time, Super-Ultra Olympics Medal Leader.  That includes a gold victory over arch-rival Ryan Lochte.

It’s not easy to win 20 medals, even if swimming is a sport you can dominate over a couple Olympics, has far more events you can compete in for medals, and has several of those Team Relay races, so you don’t have to even be the best swimmer in the water.  But still, kudos, to Phelps who has been dominating for three Olympics, and the US Women swimmers who have been winning every single race.  I mean, do other nations even win medals?  Not according to creative NBC editing, of course.

(RELATED: Click HERE for part 1 of this Olympics series)

Big cheers to the Women’s Gymnastics team for crushing the poor pre-teen girls from other countries.  Seriously though, I admire gymnasts, and the women have to put up with a lot more crap than the dudes.  First, they don’t get to wear shorts, like the dudes, instead forced to wear extra shiny leotards that don’t leave much to the imagination.  They also have to fake-dance through the floor event to over-dramatic music, then suffer through other gymnasts tinny over-dramatic music while you’re doing backflips trying not to fall off a balance beam.  The dude gymnasts don’t dance or listen to music in their floor routines.  Hmm.  And the women don’t get to play on the rings, quite possibly the funnest apparatus in the  Olympics.  If they had Competitive Water-Sliding then that would be the hands-down funnest apparatus.

I know it’s pointless to complain, but the Women’s All-Around gold medal would’ve been a tad more exciting if the results weren’t ruined by every damn news website, news radio channel and my yahoo mail news.  Hell, even newspapers, telegraphs and pony express scoop the Olympics coverage on a nightly basis.

Controversy in Badminton?  Yeah, we knew those little girls were all corrupt.  They just looked shifty.  This one is comical as four teams got booted from the Olympics for tanking games.  And they were so bad at tanking that they actually served the shuttlecock UNDER the net.   The crowed booed, Badminton commissioners got egg on their face, and then people moved on with their lives.  Because in America where our sports are billion dollar industries, we’d NEVER consider losing games where customers paid hard earned cash to watch them.  Like the last two games of the NFL season when Super Bowl contenders rest their starters.  Or how the Warriors somehow lost 17 out of their last 20 games to secure the #7 draft pick.  I mean, that’s nearly a third of the season that they were trying to lose games, and that was a GOOD strategy.  But the Warriors are GREAT at tanking, not like these Women’s Badminton tanking pretenders.

I got to watch some Men’s Dream Team Basketball.  Sweet.  I watched the first lackluster half against Tunisia where Kobe launched lackadaisical threes, but the team still managed to overcome the awesome Tunisian threat to win by 9.  And then they destroyed Nigeria by 80 points.  We were waiting for a good Dream Team Butt-Stomping to continue to stoke the flames of the phony “Who’s the best team of all-time” argument on Sports Talk.  I think we’ve proven our point as Basketball World Champions and should just let the college kids play in future Olympics.  I love good basketball, but shooting 80% in a game and nailing 29 3-pointers is ridiculous.

A special moment for the sad sack British Basketball team.  For some reason, against heavily favored Spain, the Brits nail a 3 pointer to cut the lead to one, then don’t bother fouling the Spanish with 8 seconds remaining.  Do the English even know how to play basketball?  Sorry England, every American fan would’ve been shouting “Foul him!”  It’s in the nuances of the game that the Americans are always supreme.  And also heavy fouls if anybody drives the lane.

I have one final gripe about the NBC coverage… I swear there are other events than swimming.  I know there has to be.  There’s a little girl winning gold at Judo.  I would pay good money to watch that over Lochte-Phelps winning another damn swimming heat.  For the love of God I’m ready for some track and field.  Give me a discus, a hurdle or two and a pole vault and I’ll be happy.

I also need to creatively figure out how to set my DVR for any and all wrestling next week.  And then I have to hide from all of the 24/7 Greco-Roman wrestling talk overkill to keep from spoiling the results.  That’s sarcasm by the way.