Swimming and Gymnastics Get Too Much Olympic Attention

Welcome to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics taking place in 2021! Obviously, the Olympics were delayed because of the global pandemic, and it's definitely odd seeing events with no fans. While I had all types of ideas for Olympic related  blog posts, I'm too late to do a preview. Instead, this post is part of my new series, Hills I'm Willing To Die On. And today's hill is that swimming and gymnastics get too much attention at the Olympics.

This certainly isn't designed to be an anti-Simone Biles, Katie Ledecky, or Michael Phelps post. They are all incredible athletes who deserve all of the accolades they receive. Phelps is the most decorated Olympian ever with 28 medals including 23 golds. Many people see these numbers and also consider him to be the greatest Olympian ever. Ledecky comes into the Tokyo games with 6 medals and will compete in four individual events and at least one relay event. Meanwhile, Biles earned 5 medals in Rio and has the chance to double her medal total in Tokyo. Again, these are all outstanding athletes and their accomplishments may not be matched in these sports for years if ever. 

The point of this post is more about these sports themselves. Women's artistic gymnastics has four individual events (vault, uneven bars, balance beam, and floor) as well as the team competition.There are six individual events for men (floor, pommel horse, rings, vault, parallel bars, and horizontal bar) gymnastics plus the team. There are 37 different swimming events! 37! Yes, it's incredibly difficult to qualify to compete in multiple events, but the opportunity to do so is there. For example, Ledecky is competing in the 200, 400, 800, and 1500 free events. The distances are different and preparation for and the races themselves are different, but it's the same stroke. Meanwhile, if you play team handball, you have one chance to win a medal. There isn't a team handball event and then an individual one. There's one opportunity to win a medal in baseball and softball. The Olympics does not have a home run derby or skills competition. If you throw the javelin, it's all about who can throw it the furthest. Why not have more opportunities for javelin athletes? Maybe have an event to see who can throw the highest too? Perhaps archery and javelin athletes can have team events to combine accuracy and distance. I understand that this sounds silly, but why not? 

NBC will show gymnastics and swimming more than other sports in part because they have so many events. Yes, Biles and Ledecky are superstars, but as I mentioned, in many events, athletes have only one chance to win a medal. I understand that I can go out and find rowing and baseball and skateboarding on TV or online, but I wish there were more focus on these other sports and athletes. 

Who Wore It Better - Part II

Breaking news: Michael Phelps is really good at swimming. But, how does the Olympic great match up against the Night's King from Game of Thrones?

So who wore it better? You make the call!


The original who wore it better between the Night King and Mike Tomlin is available here.

Phelps photo by Laszlo Balough of Reuters.

The Greatest London Olympics Preview

This is not your typical Olympic preview debating whether Michael Phelps or Ryan Lochte will win more medals or dissecting the U.S. men’s basketball team. Instead, this preview highlights some of the more random parts of the Olympics and my friend Ric Blas competing in his second Olympic Games for Guam in Judo. I’m sure that you’re wondering how I know an Olympic athlete, particularly one from Guam. Did you know that I was fairly well known in the judo world for my prowess on the mat? You probably didn't know this since it isn't true. I did earn a white belt from doing one month of karate though!

Actually, I noticed Ric during the Beijing Games, since he was difficult to miss as Guam’s flag-bearer, and he later agreed to do an interview with me. While I’ve never personally met Ric, we’ve been Facebook friends for the past four years, and he’s a very cool guy. While NBC will focus on swimming, gymnastics and track and field, I highly encourage you to find Ric’s judo matches and support him. I’ll include some pictures of Ric from London throughout this piece and you should check out this recent interview of Ric by Guampdn.com (even though my interview was significantly better), but let the Olympic preview begin!

- The complete roster of the American Olympic team includes three people named Sean. Therefore, I would also like to invite Sean Furey, Javelin Throw; Sean Rooney, Volleyball Outside Hitter; and Sean Rosenthal, Beach Volleyball to share any thoughts on the Olympics since this blog is Sean's Ramblings! [ESPN]

- The best name in the Olympics is clearly Dong Dong of China. Dong Dong is the favorite to win gold in the Men's Trampoline after earning a bronze medal in Beijing and winning the 2012 London Test Event. Yes, I am 12 years old sometimes. [NBC Olympics]

- With Rafael Nadal withdrawing from the Olympics stating that he is "not in condition" to compete, I'd like to congratulate Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray and Roger Federer for winning the men's tennis Olympic medals! It's just a matter of who wins gold, silver and bronze.

- The first athlete kicked out of the Olympics for steroids is Voula Papachristou of Greece. Wait a minute, Papachristou was actually expelled for a racist joke on Twitter. [Yahoo]

- Meanwhile Australian swimmer Stephanie Rice is also on Twitter and posted this picture earlier this summer.

- Donald Sanford was born in Los Angeles and attended Arizona State University where he met his future wife. This doesn't sound at all unusual, right? Well, his wife is an Israeli who was studying abroad. Sanford is now an Israeli citizen running track for Israel. Despite being born in America and attending ASU, Sanford can now be deported any time he visits Arizona based on the state's laws. (That last line is not in the article.) [The Times of Israel]

- Archery will likely be more popular this year than ever before courtesy of The Hunger Games. I put the over/under of references to Katniss Everdeen and the movie/book during the Olympics at 72,591.

- This is a list of all Olympians that have ties to Western Pennsylvania. [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review]

- Amazing story about Guor Marial, a runner that does not have a country. [ESPN]

- With Bravo airing some Olympic events, I'm looking forward to seeing The Real Housewives of London.

- The second greatest Olympic name is William Speed Lane Fox-Pitt. Yes, Speed Lane is really his middle name. It’s like Megan Fox and Brad Pitt had a son who became a British equestrian guy. [Facebook]

- Let me address Michael Phelps. First, does his mother still have a clothing line at Chico’s? Phelps is expected to break the record for most Olympic medals by surpassing Soviet Union gymnast Larisa Latynina who won 18 medals in the 1956-1964 games. While this is an amazing accomplishment, it’s not really fair. As a swimmer, Phelps competes in 7 or more medal events during the Olympics. Meanwhile, the greatest wrestler (for example) of all time can only win 1 medal during the games. There’s no team wrestling event or different styles of wrestling, such as arm wrestling or a steel cage version, like there is for swimming. I feel like Phelps should compete in one swimming event and then try to medal in shot put or something.

- Americans Gabby Douglas (gymnastics) and Ellis Coleman (Greco-Roman wrestler) are both nicknamed the Flying Squirrel. If either or both of them win a medal, Ithaca College will create a flying squirrel mascot. (No one who reads this blog will understand this reference.) [Rapid City Journal]

- Speaking of Ithaca College, good luck to Meghan Musnicki '05, a member of the US Olympic Rowing Team. [Ithaca College Athletics]

- A friend of mine knew track athlete Aires Merritt from the University of Tennessee. Unfortunately, he can't share any of the stories due to attorney-client privilege, a confidentiality agreement and the Hippocratic Oath.

- Daniel, a friend of Sean's Ramblings, created a Team Israel Olympics video page. Check it out throughout the Games. [Sass Video]

If you made it all the way to the end of this preview, thank you. I'll have much more about Ric throughout the Olympics and you can follow him on Twitter.

TMI Thursday: Why Is Michael Phelps Swimming to the Winter Olympics?

Perhaps you have seen the recent Subway commercial featuring Michael Phelps swimming in a pool and beyond. He manages to break through the swimming pool wall, swims across a street, passes a Subway, where Jared just happens to be their encouraging Phelps, swims through a corn field effortlessly tossing a cow and chicken and heads toward Vancouver and the Winter Olympics. For the sake of this post, let’s find the fact that there is a 1,000-mile swimming pool not at all unusual. My bigger question is why is Michael Phelps heading to Vancouver? The last time I checked, swimming was reserved for the summer games.

This is a bit of a tangent, but during my junior year of high school, I joined the diving team. I was going to be the next Greg Louganis. (I'm scared to see what the comments are going to be after writing this sentence.) I skipped playing on the soccer team in the fall to work on improving my grades. At some point a few months into my junior year, I realized that my grades were fine but I missed being part of a competitive team. That's why I joined the diving and swimming team...or at least that's I told myself and others. In retrospect, I joined the diving team because of a girl.

So every day, I worked on my dives in practice. I established a solid front/regular dive, back dive and inward dive. (This is an inward dive, but not me doing it.)



However, I could never master a reverse dive.



OK, Greg Louganis' dive involved a lot twists and flips. There was no way I could ever figure that out. This is what your standard reverse dive looks like:



So anyway, my diving and swimming career didn't take off. I never dove in a meet and my participation on the swimming team was laughable as I failed to figure out the flip turn. Fortunately, I never hit my head on the diving board. I also didn't end up dating the girl on the diving team, although she was the subject of a past TMI Thursday involving my first kiss.

However, this is all a tangent of another tangent. My diving coach was known as Papa Polar Bear. On January 1st every year, he led the Polar Bear Club into Pittsburgh’s Monongahela River for the Polar Bear Plunge. The temperatures were regularly below freezing, and there was often snow, but people annually jumped and swam in the river wearing only bathing suites.

This brings me back to Michael Phelps. Perhaps, they should have swimming in the Winter Olympics; outside! Think about how popular the Winter Classic is for the NHL. Wouldn't you want to watch swimmers in Coal Harbour, English Bay or Stanley Park's Beaver Lake in Vancouver? How cool would it have been to watch swimming in the Great Salt Lake when the Winter Olympics were in Utah?

Maybe Jared and Subway are on to something!

For more TMI Thursdays, please visit LiLu and you can click here to see all of my TMI Thursday archive, including the story of my first kiss.

Clothing for the Olympic Mom

What would you do after spending nearly two weeks in Beijing watching your son win eight gold medals with cameras fixated on you during every swimming event and having to deal with constant interviews by Cris Collinsworth? The answer: have a clothing line at Chico’s! Capitalizing on all things Phelps, Chico’s is now selling the Debbie Phelps Collection. With Michael Phelps receiving millions of dollars in endorsement deals, Mama Phelps may as well cash in too. I mean she has to support herself somehow, right?



The Phelps Collection includes a variety of jackets and jewelry, including this Persian Luster Zariah Jacket (whatever that is) on sale for only $55.99 from $118.



So get your Phelps collection clothing now! You don’t want to be the mother at your kid’s swim meet without a Debbie Phelps jacket. (I’m sure that Chico’s will use either this line or "Your kid won’t make the Olympics unless you have this jacket!" in its advertisements.)

Final Olympic Notes

Whenever an American won a gold medal and the Star-Spangled Banner was played, I never saw or heard any athletes yell "O" during the next to last line. This includes Michael Phelps and Carmelo Anthony both originally from Baltimore. Do you know why? It is because the athletes respect the national anthem and what winning a gold medal means and do not want to act like buffoons representing their country.

Does American swimmer Katie Hoff ever go by simply The Hoff? If not, she should!

I know that this picture of the terrible towel in Beijing has been everywhere, but I still think it’s cool. There are a lot of comments about this on The Burgh Blog.



Yahoo provides 36 facts about the Olympic medal count.

Finally, what would an Olympic post be without a Ric Blas Jr. article? Blas reflected on the games with the Pacific Daily News.