The Olympics

It has come and gone so fast, like it always does. I just got into the routine of coming home after work to 8 hours of Olympic coverage and now it's gone. Last night Jon and I sat bored stiff. No more Heroes (yes we finished season 2 already) and no more Olympics. I'm fortunate enough to still have hours of footage of events I heard about but wasn't able to watch. That will be comforting for a few more days.

The 2008 Olympic games were pretty outstanding. Let's review some of the highlights:

1. Duh! Michael Phelps winning his 8 gold medals (and in great fashion with the Olympics being 8-8-08)
2. U.S. Men's gymnastics getting bronze with like 10 alternates on the team
3. "Smashing" France in the 4x100 meter relay in swimming (take that!)
4. Nastia Liukin getting Gold in all-around gymnastics (not a surprise but it was great to knock out China for a change)
5. The Chinese being ridiculously underage (but there is always a need for some type of scandal, steroids are overrated)
6. Treanor and Walsh dominating in sand volleyball for their 2nd gold
7. U.S. women's' soccer outing Brazil in soccer 1-0 in overtime for gold for the second time
8. Glenn Eller winning gold in trap shooting. Not that cool sounding at first, but he was the youngest of the final 6 contestants, is active in the U.S. army and set a world record!
9. Our U.S. doubles ping pong team (who were Chinese) that got the farthest ever in any Olympics. They were outed by their Korean counterparts!
10. The U.S.'s Shalane Flanagan who got the bronze in the women's 10,000m. The only U.S. woman to ever medal in this event, and she did it after having a stomach virus for 3 days! I cried when she won. But that is just how important these Olympic games are to me!

Now lets take a look at the not so amazing Olympic moments:

1. Both the men's and women's 4x100 meter relays dropping the baton on the final leg and loosing out on Olympic gold. Tragic in itself, but even more so because the same thing happened in Athens. Can't we learn!!!!
2. Women's water polo team loosing out to The Netherlands in the last minute of the game. The men also lost to Hungary.
3. Wallace Spearman getting disqualified in the 200m final for stepping on the inside line of his lane, forfeiting his Silver metal
4. The bronze medallist in the 200m final also stepping on the inside line of his lane and forfeiting the bronze. Luckily two U.S. runners were there to accept both medals!
5. Nastia Liukin being outed for gold on the uneven bars by the 12 yr old Chinese girl in a tie-breaker. Tragic!
6. The U.S. not winning any medals in diving and China dominating in every diving event by like 100 points.
7. U.S. Softball being outed for gold again, and this is the last year for it. (Isn't softball like basketball in that we should dominate and have no competition!)
8. U.S.'s boxing hopeful Andrade outed in the quarterfinals by South Korea's JungJoo. He left the match crying but I don't blame him! Then China won gold....again.
9. The U.S. having no athletes compete in the singles matches for a metal, however the Williams sisters pulled out a gold in doubles, and the Bryans managed a bronze
10. Newcomer Katie Hoff being out-touched for gold by England's Rebecca Addlington in the 400 m freestyle by .07 seconds. She was robbed!

(Please note that these events are not rated, they are simply listed in the order I remembered them)

So many great memories to take with us from this year! Now, on to the 2010 winter Olympics in Canada! Let's hope they can out-do China's show, but without the whole winning half the gold medals part.