Swimming
- I love watching track because you can see the athletes’ faces and they look, well, much more visibly human than the swimmers, who resemble graceful aquatic mammals until they win, take off their caps, and suddenly it’s not a manatee or Aquaman but instead a large British child.
- That said, I fully love these swimming commentators. They sound like they’re having the GREATEST time and their pitch and speed increases so dramatically at the end of every race. And they crack each other up. It’s like having Frick and Frack from Car Talk do the commentary.
- Right now, they’re laughing hysterically at the antics of Chad Le Clos in the ready room, where Le Clos is air boxing and growling like a bear directly in front of Michael Phelps, who is about 50% doing the thing that little kids do “if I can’t see you you can’t see me,” 50% slouching in his folding chair as if he can make himself look small, and 50% giving Le Clos an old-man “get off my lawn” scowl. Yes, that’s 150%; he’s clearly more than one full person.
Gymnastics
- 41-year-old Oksana Chusovitina, who has been competing in Olympic gymnastics longer than I have been watching Olympic gymnastics (I didn’t really follow until 1996, her second Olympics), will be in the vault event final this weekend. I’m guessing she’ll go all out and do her handspring double front, which is probably not a vault any women other than its originator, Elena Produnova, should be attempting, but you know what–it’s Chuso. She can do what she wants. (Dipa Karmakar from India may well do the double front also. Don’t get me started on Igor Radivilov and his decision to skip adding twists to things and instead try to turn himself into a human pinball and do a TRIPLE front vault.)
- Men’s gymnastics: I guess the Japanese men’s team finally winning gold has definitively proven, then, that medals are to Kohei Uchimura what Pokemon are to Kohei and he’s going to catch them all. And if he wins enough, he can pay off his Pokemon Go inflicted $5000 phone bill.
