Rec’ing On…Beijing Olympics – Part 4

My day started with watching the soccer match between the USA women and the kiwis from New Zealand. I’m so happy I did as the U.S. scored the fasted goal ever in women’s Olympic competition: 40 seconds from the start of the game. Entering the match, the U.S. was fairly certain that they would end up second in their group to Norway, who would be playing Japan. A win or draw by Norway, or a loss with a difference of goals between them and the U.S. of four or less, and Norway would win the group, leaving the second-place Americans to face the most dangerous team in the world, Brazil, in the quarterfinals. What a surprise to find the U.S. not only beat New Zealand by a score of 4-0, but Norway losing their match to Japan 5-1. This not only left Norway to face the Brazilians in the bracket of death, but found the Americans in as accommodating a draw as they could have ever hoped for.

A huge shout out to Brandi Chastain for the outstanding job she’s been doing color commentating. This woman has an outstanding practical knowledge of world-class soccer, and has a style of delivery that makes you want to raise your level to what she says you’re capable of accomplishing. Why in the world is she a TV analyst and not on the sidelines helping the team to improve is beyond me.  USA soccer needs to hire her. I’m pretty sure her C.V. is still on file.

At the end of the day…the women’s gymnastics competition.  As with the men, it was fun to watch. China and the U.S. were far and away the class of the field. While the errors by Alicia Sacramone were tough on the U.S., the fact remains that China’s margin of victory was such that eliminating those goofs would have only served to tighten the score but not materially affected the outcome. Clearly, she felt she let her team down, but she took the risks she needed to take. Sometimes gravity wins: it’s the nature of the sport. Lift your chin up, Alicia…you put yourself out there.

There has been a lot of talk about how some of the Chinese gymnasts are underage.  When you see them compared to the United States WOMEN, I don’t think there is any doubt about that.  Most humans, being good at knowing what humans look like, can see that China did indeed pepper their team with girls…at least one of whom was so young that calling her 12-years-old would be considered generous. I do have to give a nod to the protestations of Bela Karolyi: he participated with some underage gymnasts back in Romania’s glory days on the mat, so he knows whereof he speaks.

Mind you, I don’t want to detract from the accomplishments of China’s gymnasts.  They don’t have control over anything other than their own routines, and they performed well. Good on them. While we can’t really remove all age restrictions so as to protect the bodies of the young athletes, there must be some objective way to determine chronological age.  Or perhaps we need to change it to physical age: i.e. scans of growth plates evaluated blindly by an impartial group which won’t pass gymnasts for senior competition until they are sufficiently mature.

But back to sports.  Once again…Michael Phelps…blah, blah…world records…gold medals…blah, blah, blah.

Yay to Cat Osterman for pitching a complete-game no-hitter against Australian in Softball.

Kudos also to a surprise silver medal in Individual 3-day Event by Gina Miles, riding McKinlaigh. 3-day Event is an equestrian competition, one where there is no gender segregation, where the competitors do dressage on one day, a cross-country race littered with challenging and immovable jumps on a second day, and on the final day they do show jumping. It’s quite the challenge and is very beautiful to watch.

And a final tip of the hat to Kristen Armstrong who won cycling’s women’s Time Trial…the second American cyclist ever to win the gold medal.