Micheal Phelps avenged one of his few Olympic losses tonight, as he won a thrilling 200-meter butterfly for the gold medal. Meanwhile, the new swimming sensation, Katie Ledecky, won her second gold medal of these games in the same event for women.
With that backdrop, this photo of a 9-year-old Katie Ledecky getting an autograph from Michael Phelps is even more poignant.
10 years ago: A 9-year-old named Katie Ledecky gets an autograph from Michael Phelps (Credit: Ledecky Family) pic.twitter.com/oOOPns5mor
It’s good to be Micheal Phelps. The Olympic hero is definitely leveraging his fame when it comes to the ladies, as he hit the red carpet with his blonde beauty girlfriend Megan Rossee.
Phelps got off to a slow start in the London games but then busted out to win four golds and two more medals.
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The Swimming World Championships in Rome have just finished up and Michael Phelps closed it out with a gold medal performance on the American relay team. That left him with a total of five golds and a silver for the competition, not too shabby. But perhaps even more than the continued domination of Phelps, the real story from Rome seems to be the 43 world records set there. Brian Cazeneuve from Sports Illustrated puts in his two cents:
It’s gotta be the suits. What else could explain the absurd number of world records set in Rome? In 2008, a year when the rise of records left people calling for drug inquiries, pool measurements and the return of 1920s swimsuits, there were 102 records set throughout the year. That’s almost one every three days. In Rome, swimmers set new standards 43 times in eight days. FINA, the sport’s international governing body, has said it will adopt new regulations to prohibit some of the materials in the suits of the last two or three years. They will also restrict the length of some of the suits for both men and women. Still, those regulations won’t go into effect until Jan. 1 and even those will be against the objections of many suit manufacturers who want to liquidate their stock of the suits that will soon be illegal. Once that happens, some of these records could stand for some time.
So all these new-fangled swimsuits are going to be made illegal? When I heard the story the first thing that popped into my mind was the sound of those speed skates in Nagano in 1998 and every Olympics since. Called “clap skates” these things broke every record there was to break in speed skating. But they are still legal today.
With the skates in mind as a precedent then, it seems a bit odd to me that the swimsuits should be banned. Further strangeness in this story comes from the fact that all of the records in swimming HAVE ALREADY BEEN BROKEN by them. If the reason for making the suits illegal is to make the times of the swimmers closer to something a normal human should be able to do, than don’t we have to re-swim every event since Beijing? FINA, the governing body of international swimming, needs to get their heads out of the suits and let technology through on this one.
OK, but then what about aluminum bats in Major League baseball? If we should let in the swimsuits, then why shouldn’t we let in the bats? OK, here’s why: The swimsuits have already been used, the records are already broken. With baseball, if they choose to not let those bats in, then fine, that’s up to them. But FINA shouldn’t have gone back on their previous approval. I don’t care too much about what choices a governing body makes in terms of technological advances, so long as they stay consistent. Baseball has, speed skating has, swimming seems to have had a false start.
Former Atlanta Falcons running back Jamal Anderson was arrested and booked into an Atlanta-area jail late Saturday night on a felony possession-of-cocaine charge and possession-of-marijuana charge, a misdemeanor.
Anderson, an NFL analyst for ESPN’s First Take this past season, was booked into the Fulton County jail in Georgia and denied bond.
His first hearing was set for Monday morning, the Fulton County sheriff’s office said Sunday.
Anderson, 36, was arrested at the Peachtree Tavern in the community of Buckhead after an off-duty officer working security at the club alerted police, according to The Associated Press, citing a police spokesman.
Police found a suspected marijuana cigarette in Anderson’s pocket, local reports said. Another man with Anderson was also arrested. Police said both men were in possession of cocaine, according to the reports.
Anderson never struck me as someone who would get into this kind of trouble, but who knows these days. The marijuana is not the big deal here. The hysteria surrounding the Michael Phelps story is absurd, but cocaine is another matter.
Michael Phelps was photographed taking a hit off of a bong at a house party during a November visit to the University of Southern California South Carolina.
In a statement released Sunday, the swimmer who won a record eight gold medals at the Beijing Games did not dispute the authenticity of the exclusive picture published Saturday by the tabloid News of the World.
“I engaged in behavior which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment,” Phelps said in the statement released by one of his agents. “I’m 23 years old and despite the successes I’ve had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner people have come to expect from me. For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public it will not happen again.”
While the newspaper did not specifically allege that Phelps was smoking pot, it did say the pipe is generally used for that purpose and anonymously quoted a partygoer who said the Olympic champion was “out of control from the moment he got there.”
Marijuana is viewed differently from performance-enhancing drugs, according to David Howman, executive director of the World Anti-Doping Agency. An athlete is subject to WADA sanctions only for a positive test that occurs during competition periods.
“We don’t have any jurisdiction,” Howman said. “It’s not banned out of competition. It’s only if you test positive in competition.”
I don’t think anyone would argue that marijuana would “enhance” Phelps’ performance in the pool, so it looks like he’ll take a public relations hit (pun intended) and move on.
