Commentary and news about sports and sports teams — and media coverage of them.
In 2004, according to an article at Slate Magazine, 495 out of the 500 fastest times ever recorded for running 100 meters were set by men of West African ancestry.
Most Caribbean and African-American athletes are of West African descent.
Several factors contribute, of course, but one appears to be significantly higher levels of “fast twitch” muscle fibers among West Africans.
“Cannot play media. Sorry, this media is not available in your territory.”
That’s what you see if you try and watch the video of say Jamaica’s Usain Bolt winning the 100m in world record time UNTIL NBC IS GOOD AND READY FOR YOU TO SEE IT. Bastards.
A race of less than 10 seconds and he’s cruising with a big lead. Awesome.
Bolt, is that the greatest name ever for the “world’s fastest human,” or not?
Here’s [Michael] Phelps’s typical menu. (No, he doesn’t choose among these options. He eats them all, according to the [New York] Post.)
Breakfast: Three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise. Two cups of coffee. One five-egg omelet. One bowl of grits. Three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar. Three chocolate-chip pancakes.
Lunch: One pound of enriched pasta. Two large ham and cheese sandwiches with mayo on white bread. Energy drinks packing 1,000 calories.
Dinner: One pound of pasta. An entire pizza. More energy drinks.
When Lin Miaoke, 9, belted out “I Sing for My Country” as the Chinese flag entered the national stadium, she became an instant celebrity and was quickly dubbed a “smiling angel.” The image of her dressed in a pretty red dress appeared around the world.
But she apparently wasn’t the one singing. Chen Qigang, the ceremony’s music director, told state broadcaster CCTV that the voice hundreds of millions of people heard was that of 7-year-old Yang Peiyi. Yang had the voice and was supposed to perform but was yanked at the last minute because she had crooked teeth.
Here’s the video of the song.
Will all these swimming world records, someone better give a drug test to the pool.
Undaunted, the Sap-o-Meter stayed up late churning the treacle, and it’s got a new record to show for it: an inspirational 38 Sap Points.
If you watch enough NBC, you know that there’s a flag-waving mom behind every extraordinary achievement. Well, supporting last night’s record-breaking performance were a remarkable 13 mothers—that is, 13 mentions of the words mom or mother. NBC also continued to dream big, with a robust six mentions for the second consecutive night.
James Fallows continues to have interesting stuff about the Chinese Olympics.
“A member of the U.S. Olympic diving team was disqualified from competition today when it was learned that he did not have a sufficiently compelling human storyline to exploit on the NBC telecast of the worldwide sporting event.”
Here’s the video of the U.S. victory in the men’s 400m freestyle in case you missed it (as I did).
Exciting stuff.
May require software download.
“Michael Phelps and relay teammates relish their golden moment”
Umm, didn’t they all swim the same distance? And wasn’t it Lezak in fact that was the hero?
School starts this week in Albuquerque — Wednesday is the first full day. NewMexiKen never started school before Labor Day and none of my kids did either. What’s with this August-to-May school year anyway?
I bought regular gasoline yesterday for $3.58 (I’m rounding off the tenth of a cent from now on). I was thinking I shouldn’t fill up (that is, I should buy short), because the price will continue to drop at least until election day.
What percentage of time during the Olympic coverage on NBC is actually spent watching athletes do athlete stuff? 10 percent? 15 percent?
There are rumors that McCain will pledge just one term to offset the age issue. I know an even better way — no terms. The Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch tells us Why McCain would be a mediocre president. “A careful look at McCain’s biography shows that he isn’t prepared for the job. His resume is much thinner than most people think.” Amazingly, McCain is even more of a dilettante than W.
Remember my rant about Comcast and the comment from a representative of Comcast? Well, it seems the outreach is real:
From a sparse desk dominated by two computer screens in the new Comcast Center here, Mr. Eliason uses readily available online tools to monitor public comments on blogs, message boards and social networks for any mention of Comcast, the nation’s largest cable company. When he sees a complaint like Mr. Dilbeck’s, he contacts the source to try to defuse the problem.
“When you’re having a two-way conversation, you really get to clear the air,” Mr. Eliason said.
The New York Times has more — Complaining Bloggers Have a Cable Company’s Ear.
The iPhone is great except for battery life, which is OK at best.
During an Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) swim meet, Duke Paoa Kahinu Mokoe Hulikohola Kahanamoku broke the world record in the 100-yard freestyle swim by 4.6 seconds in Honolulu Harbor on August 11, 1911. Officials were so incredulous at his time that the AAU would not recognize his feat until many years later. Duke Kahanamoku swam using a unique combination of an Australian crawl stroke with a flutter kick to add speed.
Known as Duke, or the Duke, he was a three-time Olympic gold medal winner. He broke another record and won a gold medal for the 100-meter freestyle swim at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics where he also won a silver medal in the 200-meter relay event. The 1916 Olympics were not held because of World War I. Kahanamoku broke his own record at the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, winning gold in both the 100-meter freestyle and as a member of the U.S. 800-meter-relay team. At the 1924 Olympics in Paris, he won a silver medal in the 100-meter freestyle (his brother, Samuel Kahanamoku, won the bronze medal and Johnny Weismuller captured the gold). Kahanamoku also was an alternate member of the U.S. water polo team that won a bronze in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics.
The Library of Congress has more on Duke Kahanamoku, the Father of Surfing.
“There was much talk about whether some of the pixies on the Chinese women’s gymnast team are really 16 years old (they have to be at least 16 at some point during 2008 in order to compete). There are rumors that some are only 14, or even as young as 12. But that’s nonsense. One of those girls was clearly 9.”
“If I have it figured correctly, when it’s noon here, it’s 1 a.m. tomorrow at the Olympics and sometime last night on NBC.”
David Thomas of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram quoted at Sideline Chatter.
While watching the Colorado Rockies defeat the hapless San Diego Padres 6-3 Friday night, Ken, official oldest child of NewMexiKen, suggested that baseball adopt that European soccer practice of dropping the poorest team in the league each season and moving up the best team from the next level.
Good bye Mariners. Good bye Nationals or Padres.
Hello Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees. Hello Iowa Cubs or Salt Lake Bees.
Don’t like the Olympic coverage that’s on? Try watching online.
There’s nothing on as this is written because it is the middle of the night in China, but at times you can watch full live coverage of any event without commentary.
The same link will let you find customized TV listings for your location and cable provider. At least NINE channels are carrying events! NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, USA, Universal HD, Telemundo, and more.
Did you know handball was an Olympic event?
Again, James Fallows with some Olympian insight.
This is normal! I switched just now to Korean TV, where I saw the Korean team playing soccer. Then NHK, the Japanese network, with a badminton doubles match involving a Japanese team.
The Olympic Games are for “the youth of the world,” but they’re organized and scored by countries. It’s no surprise that countries treat them as vehicles of national pride, and assume that their people will be most interested in their own athletes. So anybody who was saving up to write an angry letter, blog post, or op-ed about NBC’s chauvinistic coverage: don’t bother! They’re actually more above-the-fray than most.
Anyone up for a more modern pentathlon?
As in an Olympic event combining something more 21st century than the current combo of fencing, shooting, swimming, horseback riding and running.
“Its replacement could be WiiSports, a pentathlon of tennis, bowling, golf, baseball and boxing,” wrote Lorne Chan of the San Antonio Express-News. “There’s plenty of skill involved with perfecting the tennis power serve or getting the right spin on a bowling ball.
“There would also be the added joy of seeing a 9-year-old win the gold medal.”
James Fallows watches the Olympics opening ceremony in real time and tells you what to look for when you watch it 11 hours later in NBC time.
The first 35 minutes sound awesome!
“But I guess it’s useful for Democrats to get a reminder that the Republican Party plays presidential politics by the same moral code that guided the bad-boy Oakland Raiders in their heyday: ‘Just win, baby.'”
Robinson continues: “The latest bit of snarling, mean-spirited nonsense to come out of the McCain camp was the accusation, leveled by campaign manager Rick Davis, that Obama had ‘played the race card.’ He did so, apparently, by being black.”
Jill and Byron and their three boys are on vacation, tonight taking in the ballgame at Fenway. Jill has been an Angels fan since she was a wee Sweetie herself and tonight she got some excitement. Not only did her Angels win 6-2 over the Bosox, but Angel pitcher John Lackey took a no-hitter into the ninth, giving up a single and home run with one out. He hung on for the win.
NewMexiKen saw a one-hitter (Nolan Ryan) in person once, but never a no-no. By the late innings I was so excited at the prospect of Jill and family getting the chance, you’d have thought I was there myself.
Byron, by the way, had this to say earlier in the evening:
“Yankee stadium has some charm. Wrigley has tons of charm. Fenway has no charm. This stadium needs to be blown up.”
An online newspaper (albeit sports newspaper) that looks like a newspaper — Sporting News Today.
What d’ya think?
Joe DiMaggio did not get a hit on this date in 1941. Too bad, if he had his consecutive game hitting streak would have been 73. As it was, he hit safely in 56 consecutive games up to this date — and 16 after. (44 is the best by anyone else.)
At AmericanHeritage.com a couple years ago, John Steele Gordon told two good DiMaggio stories:
A few years before he died, in 1999, when baseball salaries had been going through the roof, a reporter asked DiMaggio what he thought he might be paid if he were playing baseball then. DiMaggio smiled and answered, “I’d just knock on Mr. Steinbrenner’s door and say, ‘Howdy, pardner.'”
The other story concerns his brief, disastrous marriage to Marilyn Monroe. Monroe was a film actress, used to working in front of cameras and technicians, not audiences. After their wedding, DiMaggio and Monroe went to Korea to entertain the American troops fighting there against the Chinese communists. There were perhaps 5,000 soldiers on the air-base runways waiting to greet them, and when they stepped out of the plane, the soldiers started cheering. Monroe, startled by the ovation, turned to her husband and said, “I bet you’ve never heard such cheering, Joe.” DiMaggio, who had brought a sold-out Yankee Stadium screaming to its collective feet more times than he could count, just said quietly, “Oh, yes I have.”
Then he beat her.
With 330 Division I schools in the U.S., picking the nation’s top athletic program is a daunting task. For nearly two decades, the Collegiate Directors of Athletics have done so, using components like a “64-team non-bracket point system” to determine the Directors’ Cup winner. (Stanford finished on top in ’07-08 for the 14th consecutive year). But critics argue that its formula is extremely complicated. Moreover, Stanford will likely continue to dominate for years to come.
In an effort to be a little less complicated, we came up with a different scoring system, a three-pronged formula that puts the emphasis on national titles, top 30 finishes and conference championships. The results are in and Arizona State is No. 1, based on its three national titles (softball and men’s and women’s indoor track and field) and 12 top 30 finishes.
NewMexiKen is not pleased. Arizona Friggin’ State!? To this University of Arizona grad, Arizona State is still just Tempe Normal School. Its teams aren’t the Sun Devils; they’re the Normals. (Tempe Normal School became Tempe State Teachers College in 1925 and Arizona State College in 1945. It became ASU in 1958. They’ve been the Sun Devils since 1956.)
SI.com’s Top 25 Rankings of the college programs
Seven Pac 10 schools in the top 25 — including Arizona. Four SEC. Three Big 10. Three ACC.