DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum The Olympics!

jc

McKayla is not impressed At least she's being a good sport about it.

Not to mention the intense pressure. While the losses/mistakes are heart-wrenching, it's amazing to see someone win and what a bond you can make with a random runner from Kenya or a sprinter from Jamaica. Just regular people all over the world who put their heart into an event for that one shot in their life for greatness. It's human drama at its finest.

Tajikistan won a single bronze medal. It must be pretty sweet to be boxer Mavzuna Chorevea today.

Pavlos Kontides of Cyprus is in a similar state as his country's only medal winner, but a silver in sailing.

and Kirani James of Grenada is the only medal winner in his country. the gold medal may hamper his 400m times while wearing it though.




(love the small countries with just 1 medal winner. it has got to be surreal to go back and wear that thing around)

Two of my more enjoyable memories of the Olympics were the first and last events. Alexandre Vinokurov unprobably hanging with a breakaway group that couldn't get caught by the sprint teams and then out-witting the others to take a gold at age 38 ... and the Uganda Marathoner, who looked like he was struggling a bit against two Kenyans, then around mile 23, just blew past and left them in the dust for his country's second medal ever.

I find myself pulling for small countries and underdogs just as much as American athletes.

I didn't get to see either of those events, but when the Americans weren't in play, I found myself rooting for Great Britain quite a lot.
What got me started was the Women's Cycling event that had a Brit in the three-woman breakaway and all I could think of as they wound their way through London streets packed several people deep with spectators along the whole length, was "how cool must it be to be racing in the Olympics in front of your home crowd like that?". From then on, I was pulling for the Brits at every opportunity because those competitors may be able to go on and compete in another Olympic Games, but this was their once-in-a-lifetime shot at doing it on their home turf and those fortunate enough to medal have that extra bit of special for their accomplishments.

I think my favorite was the weightlifting. This guy, Ilya Ilyin broke the world record and made it look easy. He lifted at 94kg and even topped all of the 105kg lifters. I guess he's like a rock star among the weightlifters.

That was a great run in the marathon... I kept thinking that he would just hold on for 3rd, but I'm guessing he was sand-bagging a bit, just letting the kenyans do the work.... then in perfect cross country fashion.. go around a turn and put the hammer down!