At any rate, the race turned into what might have been the most exciting and shocking relay in Olympic history. Forget the trash talking from the French. Forget the fact that the world record was smashed by five of the teams in the pool in one race - 24 hours after it had just been broken by the USA in the prelims. Forget that Phelps has 2 gold medals down, probably his two toughest outside of the 100m butterfly, on his road to a record 8.
The story of the race was the final leg by Jason Lezak, the US captain. I still cannot believe what I saw. He overtook Alain Bernard, who led by a full body length with only about 30 meters to go and won the race by swimming the fastest 100m split ever recorded. If it were an individual event, he would have the world record for the 100m with that swim by over a full second.
It's hard to really conceive how incredible his feat was. Under any normal circumstances, Bernard's lead with so little pool left would have been totally insurmountable. I can't even conceive how Lezak made himself a full body length faster over 30M than the world record holder in the 100M. It shouldn't be possible, but it was. The headlines have all been about Phelps and his 2nd gold, but the real man of the hour was Lezak. I am in awe.
If you haven't seen it, go to the NBC website and watch it. It was truly one of the greatest US Olympic moments.
Wow.
6 comments:
I was up for that too and despite being bearish on the sport of swimming I was quite blown away. I was enjoying the look of defeat on the Frogs faces though. Joe Namath was the last guy to ever get away with trash talking like that.
Not true. I was playing Wiffle ball with my brother and his kids on Saturday and I pointed to left field and said, "Opposite field homer" before my bro went into his wind up. Seconds later, that little white ball was on its way to an opposite field homer just outside the swim ropes at the lake.
You're right about whiffle ball. My dad along with a bunch of other dads used to come out after dinner on summer nights and join our epic wiffle ball sessions. The game would be altered every couple of weeks to keep it interesting (with an actual wiffle ball, with a tennis ball, one/two handed batting, etc...). My dad still talks about how much fun that was.
At our family reunion last month we got a little game going at Mathdude's house. I, of course, was awesome. I was hitting balls so deep into the woods, my nephews were afraid to go in after them (seriously, Mathdude's place is so far out in the sticks he's got bears that come up and chow on his wife's landscaping).
Forget the obvious sea of steroids these athletes are swimming in too. Nothing to see here.
If they are all jacked up on 'roids, it doesn't actually detract from Lezak's preformance, perversely. It was still impressive.
Tony, maybe you should go to France, your French hating would be more efficient and effective there.
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