Phelps Phan...

Given the topic of my posts recently, I guess you can probably tell that, like a large number of Americans and other sports fans in the world, I've been caught up in Olympic fever this week (or more specifically, Phelps fever).  As if the 4x100m freestyle relay wasn't exciting enough, the 100m butterfly final last night will probably played be over and over again on any highlight reel for these 2008 Beijing Games, as Michael Phelps tied Mark Spitz's record for most gold medals in one Olympic Games by beating out Milorad Cavic by 0.01 seconds.  Conspiracy theories will probably abound for quite some time as to whether the Omega touch sensors were rigged given the fact that Michael Phelps is partially sponsored by the time-keeping company, but it's great to see that the Internet has already been hard at work to debunk such theories.  Sports Illustrated has a frame by frame review of the finish, which is pretty incredible to see just how behind Phelps (on the left of the picture) seemed to be at the end:

Frame by frame review of the broadcasted video from NBC further shows just how close the race was.  Amazing!

Slightly better form than Eric the Eel...

OK, so Equitorial Guinea won't be an Olympic swimming powerhouse for awhile. Here's the underwater view of the epic 4x100 freestyle relay this past week, though, to show why the United States will continue to be a dominant player in pool for a long time to come.

The greatest swimmer ever...

Sure, Michael Phelps is getting all the Olympic glory this week in Beijing with all his gold medals and world records as he attempts to become the greatest Olympian of all time. But let's not forget the Olympic heroes in the pool of games past. Previous American swimmers like Mark Spitz and Matt Biondi, the great Ian "Thorpedo" Thorpe from Down Under--incredible athletes indeed. They don't hold a candle, though, to the amazing swimming prowess of Equitorial Guinea and "Eric the Eel." From Wikipedia:

Eric Moussambani, nicknamed "Eric The Eel" by the media after the name first appeared in an article by Craig Lord in The Times newspaper in London,[1] won brief international fame at the 2000 Summer Olympics when he swam his heat of the 100m freestyle in 1:52.72 and won, because the two other competitors Karim Bare and Farkhod Oripov were disqualified for taking a false start. His time was more than twice that of his faster competitors, and outside even the 200m world record. However he had set a new personal best and national record.

Terrorists beware...

Above is a picture of just some of the anti-terrorism drills going on in Beijing to prepare for the Olympics. It's so silly looking, it's kind of scary. Somehow, I don't think Dean Kamen had this in mind when he invented the Segway.

Sore loser?

If you recall back to the Summer Olympic Games of 1988 in Seoul, Korea, one of the biggest upsets was the defeat of Carl Lewis by Canada's Ben Johnson in the 100 meters running a time that shattered the standing world record. You also probably remember that the Canuck lost the title of "fastest man alive" and the gold medal after he tested positive for steroids. Carl Lewis, having finished second in that race, was awarded the gold medal, and Ben Johnson returned to Canada in shame. After serving a temporary ban from sports, he attempted a rather unsuccessful comeback to sprinting, and his career ended for good with a lifetime ban from track and field after he tested positive again a couple of years after returning to the sport.

This past week in an interview with the Melbourne Herald Sun, Johnson claims that his positive drug test was part of a set up orchestrated by Lewis involving a beer he drank with a family friend of the superstar American sprinter. Why he brings this up 18 years after the fact is a mystery to me. Regardless of whether his claims or true or not, he still admits to using drugs during the Olympic Games:

Number one, that day the drugs that they find in my system was not the drugs that I was using," he said.
Number two, Ben Johnson was sabotaged in Seoul. Somebody set me up.
I'm not denying at all that I was taking drugs but that's the drugs that I was using that they claiming.

Unless the guy can prove that Carl Lewis was using performance-enhancing drugs that day, I could care less whether or not he did have a hand in setting up Ben Johnson. What a bozo.