Unless you watched it online, you’ll have to wait until the NBC tape delay tonight to watch it. Ryan Lochte won the Olympic 400-meter individual medley by more than 3 seconds and Michael Phelps finished a disappointing fourth. Phelps won the gold in this event four years ago with a world record time that still stands. Based on that you have to wonder if all the reports about Phelps not training hard enough might be true. He’s not the same swimmer this time around.
Anyone who saw the opening and/or closing ceremonies for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing knows that they were… well… simply amazing. I don’t care what people say about the fireworks being fake, and a ton of other stuff being CGI, it looked great, and was a real treat to watch. The next Summer Olympic Games will be held in London, England in 2012. Yahoo! Sports columnist Martin Rogers wrote a great piece on the high standards that were set by China, and how hard it’ll be for London to match them.
Any attempt by London to replicate the extraordinary exhibition staged by the Chinese capital would ultimately be doomed to abject failure.
The 2008 edition was the kind of Olympics that is only possible if you have the world’s biggest collection of humanity at your obedient disposal.
Few other countries have the kind of political control needed to order factories to temporarily shut down to reduce smog, or forbid half of all car owners from taking to the road on any given day.
It’ll be really interesting to see what London is able to pull off. However, we’re going to have to wait four years to find out.
