Your daily Olympic wrap-up.
Notable Canadian performance: The Canadian 4X100m freestyle relay team – They swam a new Canadian record and were close to going under the previous world record in finishing a strong sixth. This is one of the most competitive disciplines at the Olympics and it’s more proof that the long road back to swimming contention has begun (I actually don’t think Canada will medal in China, but the Olympics still should be viewed as a huge success story—based only on what’s happened so far).
Notable international performance: I know you’re getting sick of the story, but…the US 4X100m team’s come from behind win was spectacular drama and it probably gave Phelps his eight golds (forget drug testing, someone should check to see if he’s from this planet).
The Maple Leaf Gold: Rowing men’s eights – This time they went out and did what clear Olympic favourites are supposed to do. They won. Easily. And they look golden.
Maple Leaf silver: Julia Wilkinson – a solid swim in the 200m IM put her into tonight’s semis. And she gave my favourite post race interview of the Games to boot (When asked how she recovered from a disappointing finish in the 100m backstroke - “I went home and listened to angry music, cried
Maple Leaf bronze: Fencer Jujie Luan and shooter Susan Nattrass – Although neither was close to a medal they are both older than fifty for God’s sake. Fifty!
Maple Leaf tin medal: Daniel Nestor and Frederic Niemayer – Poof, there goes the first real medal hopefuls. The team blew up in the first round of the tennis tournament making 11 double faults on the way to a three set loss. It’s too bad because it’s likely going to be another four years before we get to see doubles tennis on TV again.
And, a new category – the WTF was the Ceeb thinking award On tonight’s schedule, you’ll note that “Defending Olympic champion Kyle Shewfelt leads the Canadian team's charge to the podium” in the men’s team competition. It will be an impressive performance if he does, considering that the team was eliminated two days ago!
Honourary Canadian award: The U.S’s Jason Lezak – the swimmer that made up a body length on the world record holder over the last 50m of the 4X100m freestyle relay won’t get the credit at the end of the Games that Phelps does. But, without his great swim, we would only be talking about a pedestrian seven gold medals for the American fishman/robot.
Canadian highlights for day 4: The best chance for a Canadian medal yet - Roseline Filion and Meaghan Benefeito in syncro diving. Also, let’s not ignore the Canadian teams – water polo, soccer and fastball (it’s called softball on the Olympic schedule – Neate’s lobbing hard for it to be changed) all go tonight/tomorrow morning.
International highlight for day 4: About a billion Chinese will be watching the men’s gymnastics team final. I suspect CBC viewers won’t be given much choice but to join them.
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12 comments:
I'm with you Neate....If you have ever faced a pitch in fastball, then you would agree as well...Plus, that ball is not soft at ALL...the rather large bruise on my arm can attest to that....
Fastpitch. Fastpitch. Fastpitch. I had it drilled into me long ago by a very wise man, who said, "The editor's pen is mightier than any reporter's argument."
The villagers called him, "Borkowsky," and they built several churches in his honour.
The formatting is causing me problems - let me know if the whole post is viewable (on my end it starts with the bronze comment, but when I go to edit it the whole post is there).
Odd.
But what does CP have to say on the subject?
You'll be happy to know that I figured it out. There was a floating < /span > in there
CP & AP are silent, as far as I can tell. The fact that the governing bodies all call it "Softball" is probably why that term is used in the Olympics.
I would generally take any reference to competitive softball to mean fastpitch.
Fastpitch softball is the best in my mind (differentiates it from slopitch softball, which is also an excellent game and played at high levels competitively), but I guess just fastpitch is acceptable as well. Fastball, not so much in my mind.
Never use two words when one will do... fastpitch.
Also, fastpitch by any name is an excellent game: I played it competitively for seven years and umpired it for six more. I'm definitely enjoying watching it at a high level in these games: it's too bad that the bloody IOC's going to yank it for 2012 because of the stupid disputes over baseball. I'll miss Olympic baseball, but at least we'll still have the World Baseball Classic: with softball, there isn't really another competition of this stature that gets any attention, so it will be tougher to follow. I wish they would have kept softball in even if they were determined to axe baseball.
It'll be back for 2016.
Just to interject, Port Dover, Ontario's Megan Timpf, whose mom was the school secretary at Simcoe Composite School when I worked at the Reformer, is 3-for-3 vs. "Chinese Taipei" with three RBI.
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