Dutchboy - Olympics- JournalHome.com

8/25/2008 - Olympics

The games are over, so it's time to recap. The Netherlands finished twelfth in the medal table, with seven golds, far behind countries like the US, China, Japan, Russia, but... ahead of countries like Canada, Spain, and Greece. Most of our medals were won by women, including six of the gold ones. The only golden boy on the Dutch team was a 10K marathon swimmer, by the name of Maarten van der Weijden. He's a leukemia survivor, who is already being refered to as the Dutch Lance Armstrong. Other gold medals were won in water polo, field hockey, rowing, dressage, the points race in cycling, and the 4x100m freestyle swimming.

Especially the swimming medal was gratifying. In press conferences the day before, the Australian, and American swimming coaches were only talking about eachother when it came to gold medal chances in the race, completely forgetting about the fact, that the world record was held by the Dutch women. The most surprising gold came in water polo, while the field hockey and dressage golds were entirely expected.

The most disappointing performances by Dutch athletes were the fourth place of the men's field hockey team, the lack of medals in track cycling by one Theo Bos, and the poor performances by one Marianne Vos in the two road cycling events. Ms. Vos however, made up entirely by winning the points race on the track.

Something that struck me about these Olympics, was the un-American behavior of American media. Whenever I visited a US news site, and looked at the medal table, they didn't follow the official medal count, where gold is all-important. Instead they simply counted the number of medals, regardless of color. It's one way of beating China, but wasn't one of the most important commercial slogans surrounding the '96 games in Atlanta (I believe it was Nike), "You don't win silver, you lose gold"? There is a certain undertone of let's say hypocrisy about all this.

The most annoying thing about the games, was that all TV directors had been ordered to focus entirely on the events, and to avoid filming the spectators, and other things happening on the sidelines as much as possible. Commentators made interesting observations, images of which were never shown on TV. This did lead to one interesting situation with the 110m hurdles, however. Everyone in China was counting on one Liu Xiang to win the distance, but even before the heats he was injured. Commentators on three TV stations I could watch the games on had already seen him limping in the catacombs, but since no pictures of this were shown, nobody in China knew about his injuries. When his heat was on, a false start immediately revealed he couldn't run twenty yards. Disappointed fans started leaving the stadium immediately.

The fact that all the medal races in the swimming pool were held at primetime in the US was also very annoying. I had to get up at four in the morning for that, while all the other medal events were held at pretty normal times. I had lots of other things to do in daytime, but I always had a radio, or a small window on my computer screen handy to keep track of everything. Had the swimming finals been held in daytime, I wouldn't have missed two entire evenings thru sleep, nor would I have missed any event I cared about.

Technorati Tags: olympic games, sports
Filed under: olympic games, sports

A Penny For Your Thoughts! (non JH-members may use dutchboy@temporaryinbox.com when posting a comment here).

Share and enjoy

<- Last Page :: Next Page ->

No, I haven't returned to MySpace. This acquaintance goes back eleven years.

EntreCard

Want 3,000 credits? Tell me how you wish to earn them, and if I like it, you win.
View all cards
EntreCard browser by createlf.com
Text links to every blog on my EC favorites list are found by scrolling down

Welcome to Web 3.0. Everything you need, all within one domain. Web 3.0 has been completely stripped of all the non-essential rubbish, by someone who really shouldn't have been entrusted to do the job.

Currently reading: -
Currently watching on TV: Nederland in 12 moorden, QI, Graham Norton, Jonathan Ross (only when it's on, of course)

Click for Amsterdam, Netherlands Forecast

Meet California Singles

For info on how to put a badge from that site on your JH blog, please click here

Movie Reviews

Free advertising for similar webshops available for any serious JH member. I will be the judge of who is serious.
EntreCard members who sell homemade stuff on their blog may also advertise for free. Just send me a message within EC, providing a link to a 70x70 (or at least a square) image I can link to your blog.

The translation this generates is poor, but intelligible

ultimate website translatorWidgetbox

Google searchbox

Unword of the Year 2007

* Autism community

Nominee for 2008:

* Grooming porno

For those who mourn my old templates

My top 3 of favorite search terms that have directed visitors to my blog

1 How to tell North American venimous snakes from n0n-venimous snakes
2 Counter bad luck from shoes on table
3 Vietnamese eggroll machine
4 Alarm clock smurf song
5 Pets for sale Sandusky Ohio
Needless to say you're not going to find anything useful on my blog, using these terms.

Entry dates

ICH SUCHE:
Vinyl-LPs:
Reinhard Mey - Er zijn dagen...
Reinhard Mey - A Vote for Tomorrow
Reinhard Mey - M(e)y Instrumentals
Frederik Mey - Bobino?

Bitte ohne Kratzen. Ich bezahle nur was ich f?mal halte.

Sie k?n meine Email-Adresse auf dieser Seite finden.?

Plugins

My spytools

Find broken links on your website for free with LinkTiger.com

Weblog hits since yesterday
free hit counter code

I'm # 393

My Chatbox

Please first express a desire to chat with me (PM, email, comment), and then be here during my 'office hrs'. I'm unfamiliar with English text message lingo, so bear with me.

Blogthings

You are Sandusky, OH

Loser!
You are boring, have no sense of adventure, no sense of humor, you have no friends, in fact you're no good to this world. You are definitely Sandusky, OH!

Famous Sandusky, Ohio, residents: probably a few hockey players, but no one worth a second glance

What American City Are You?