The olympics seemed better when I was younger. Why? Real amateurs against the machiness? Just the existence of amateurs Less big time sports so they had to cover things like field hockey and team handball. To many no sport segments.. Although I do think Mary Carillo did a great job the kites. (caveat - I am biased as she was the first person who I broke my tennis strings against - when I was about 8.)
gault averaged 30 catches per season in his career. hardly impressive. i'd take my chances with a college receiver over a sprinter who has never touched a football. there's a lot more to football than running in a straight line for 9.7 seconds
Someone asked earlier why baseball was an Olympic sport since it is not international. Since Asia and the Americas and even Europe was represented I would say that makes it pretty international. Was a great Olympics and Rythmic gymnasitcs has the hottest women. They are not 4'2" 85 lbs like the regular gymnasts. They are 5'6" to 5'8" with bodies and great legs. Usain Bolt was unreal. Jogging the last 15 meters to a world's record and huge lead in the 100m?? He looks like he is jogging even when going full speed. As for the NFL, the best receivers in the league were never the fastest (Rice, Irvin, Harrison, Owens, Moss). They were fast but had better hands and timing and instinct on routes then outright speed. One last comment on US sending professionals. The US has been playing against professionals when they sent amateurs for years so why not let the US send professionals. Prior to the Dream Team, USA Mens bsketball was not playing university teams in other countries, they were playing pros as college kids. Many sports still use non pros where there is no such thing as a pro league, just int'l tournaments (running, swimming, etc..). No reason to force the US to send non-pros when everyone else is.
Cant disagree with that. Re; professionalism, your on the money i think-do we want to watch the best of the best, or not? The supposed modern olympic ethos is ridiculous, when it comes down to it-there is a lot of evidence even the ancient greeks were, effectively, professional athletes, with sponsors, benefactors, kickbacks, highly professional training regimes. Bizarrely, it can work both ways, if you look at heavyweight boxing in the last few decades-and in the olympics.
Usain Bolt smashed the world record in the 100m at the Berlin Olympiastadion track today by running 9.58 seconds shaving eleven hundredths of a second off his previous world record of 9.69 seconds set at the Olympics in Beijing exactly a year earler on August 16, 2008. It was all business and no fooling around this time around by the 22 year-old Jamaican. Let's see how this once in a lifetime phenomenon and the fastest man on the planet, fares at the 200m in a few days time when he attempts to better his world record of 19.30 seconds set at the Beijing Oympics.
9.69 * 2 = 19.38. 19.38 - 19.30 = .08. There fore I expect him to shave approximately the same off the 200. He ran a 9.58 100. That is 9.69 - 9.58 = .11. So I expect him to run ~ 9.58 * 2 + .08, or ~19.24.