Saturday, August 16, 2008

Beijing 2008 wrap-up: The I swear I've always loved wrestling edition

Day 8

Your daily Olympic wrap-up. Gotta be quick today…

Notable Canadian performance: Carol Huynh – This spot is intended to look deeper than just at results, but when it takes eight days to get some…a gold medal is the notable Canadian performance of the day.

Notable international performance: Usain Bolt - I have no words. His run was the most impressive thing I’ve seen at these Olympics (and I’ve watched every swim Phelps has made).

The Maple Leaf Gold: Toyna Verbeek – It took a lot of good ole’ Canadian heart ™ to come back and medal after getting blown out in the semis.

Maple Leaf silver: Dave Calder and Scott Frandsen and MedalMania is running wild!

Maple Leaf bronze Rosannagh MacLennan:
We are a trampoline power after all! MacLennan was a solid third in qualifying, stepping up to show that, along with two-time medalist Karen Cockburn, Canada is a double threat on the bouncy bouncy

Maple Leaf tin medal: Blythe Hartley
- I hate to do it (she’s had a rough year, what with her brother dying and all—but it’s got to be Hartley. Over multiple Games now she has shown to really (and I mean REALLY) struggle with the pressure. She squeaked into the final, but looked horrible doing so. Don’t expect a medal.

The WTF was the Ceeb thinking award:
Actually, I’ll give the Ceeb full credit today for nicely balancing our little medal run in the early hours—as viewers, we didn’t miss a thing.

Honorary Canadian award: Have I mentioned how damn impressive Bolt was

Canadian highlights for day 9: It’s all about the rowing, where Canada could win four medals, including multiple gold.

International highlight for day 9: The women’s 100m could see the dirtiest, most cynical world record on the books fall. Let’s hope.

3 comments:

sager said...

Thanks for pointing out that Blythe Hartley has had to deal with the loss of a family member.

Duane Rollins said...

As stated, it's with guilt that I point out her performance under the circumstances. However, from what I know of athletes they would far rather you critique performance than condescendingly treat them with kid gloves.

In her career she's struggled to dive to form at the Olympics. I'm sure she's well aware of it. Likely too well aware of it (inverted U theory of sports psychology, anyone).

She dives this morning. Hopefully she can go out and do something that *she* is happy with. I'd love to make her the notable performance of the day tomorrow...

Anonymous said...

Maybe the chinese diver refering to Hartley as "the fat Canadian" the other day will give Blythe the incentive to go out and kick butt.