I can't believe that you're still talking about swimming when curling superstars are langushing in poverty. I just don't understand your priorities, I guess.
Juiced. Find his chemist, and maybe you'll be able to challenge him by next year, ogged.
"Curling superstar" gets 28 Google hits, about half of them denying any such thing exists.
The Scottish curling team is particularly adorable. They could surely capitalize on that.
Back before the Wall fell, the -ski's loved juice, as I recall.
So, when you're swimming, can you have a sense of where the other competitors are in relation to you? Is it like track where you're racing them, or are you just trying to hit your best times based on your own internal cueing from your training regimen?
Curling dudes remain fully clothed throughout, so closet cases have little interest in them.
can you have a sense of where the other competitors are in relation to you?
Yes, although in this case, I'm not sure either knew, with a guy between them. Crocker looked like he was about to cry during the medal ceremony.
Crocker looked like he was about to cry during the medal ceremony.
Yeah, you're all about the joy, ogged.
There is no greater joy than making your opponent cry. Well, maybe driving him to suicide, but let's keep it real.
Luge would get more attention too, if lugers performed half-naked, but they have pride.
Turns out Ian Thorpe is now under suspicion of doping.
Yeah, that's pretty shocking--have to see how it plays out.
So far the report has only been in the same French paper that publishes every allegation against Armstrong.
if lugers performed half-naked
You know, that's an Olympic event I would watch.
I was going to watch swimming, but then I noticed that sports were on.
I watched just enough of the tourney to remember that college ball sucks.
Sure, due process and all that.
Cycling is pretty much the dirtiest sport in the world.
Don't blame the game for your brackets, Ogged.
I don't really follow basketball, but not liking the tournament just means you're malformed.
I've never done a bracket, actually, not even when college ball didn't suck, back, oh, twenty years ago or so.
I've never done a bracket, actually, not even when college ball didn't suck, back, oh, twenty years ago or so.
How can that be? Did the Trib print the brackets next to Family Circus?
More so than mud wrestling?
To paraphrase Angela Lansbury, there are games that are dirty on the outside, but the worst are the ones that are dirty on the inside.
Gawd, college ball really is garbage. It is nice to see that Ewing's kid didn't get his looks, though.
So says a bunch of guys who think that girls can dunk.
I realize this is a swim blog and all, but I'm surprised you're not posting about today's big golf story in the Times.
I should say something intelligent, but mainly I want to note how hot the women in the second picture are. Yowza. I wonder if Moira goes to this bash?
That's the game. Greg Oden has the ugliest shot in basketball. I say this a fan of Nowitzki.
I think that Ogged would really enjoy the Highland Games, if he only allowed himself to.
The Highland Games are great. I think ESPN2 used to cover them, back when they covered sports.
I found this bit from the article in 32 a little depressing:
"And there are a lot of major corporations here, and the more corporations embrace this market, the more it shifts everything. It gets us closer to civil rights."
Gay Marriage: Powered by Finlandia!
sigh.
So, when you're swimming, can you have a sense of where the other competitors are in relation to you? Is it like track where you're racing them, or are you just trying to hit your best times based on your own internal cueing from your training regimen?
You can definitely see the people next to you. If you're beating them, you can see their hands; if you're even, you see their head; if they are beating you, you see anything from their body to their feet. Noticing that you are catching someone is a powerful motivation, especially in butterfly, where if you die, you die hard.
Is that why the people who did well going into the finals are in the middle lanes?
They get seeded from the middle lanes out, meaning the fastest qualifiers get the middle and the slowest the outside lanes. The outside lanes are slower because there's more turbulence near the walls. Jake, of course, can tell you if there are other reasons.
Makes for a nice arrow kind of formation on tv.
They get seeded from the middle lanes out, meaning the fastest qualifiers get the middle and the slowest the outside lanes. The outside lanes are slower because there's more turbulence near the walls.
The "kick 'em while they're down" school of seeding?
The quest for eight all seems to have ended in an uninteresting way, if current breaking news in AU is correct. The US 4x100 IM relay team was disqualified in their heat (Phelps did not swim in the heats, but was going to swim in the final).
According to the official site, Ian Crocker is at fault here, diving too soon. Phelps is in good shape for seven gold by the sounds of it, but still, what a bad week to be Ian Crocker.
Butterflier Ian Crocker was judged to have left the blocks four-hundredths of a second too early in the second changeover from breaststroker Scott Usher.
Four hundreths? What a fucking joke.
Yeah, and he lost the 100 fly to Phelps by five hundredths. Sucks to be Ian Crocker, The official swimmer of Unfogged.
Pulling him up on four hundredths of a second sounds a teensy bit less incredibly nasty when you re-write as one twenty fifth of a second. That's sort of around the boundary of human reaction times in general (I know nothing about relays in particular).
You either go early or not, and he went early. As I understand it, it's kind of a rookie mistake, and he's not a rookie.
The only difficult thing for me is that it's just after 1pm on April Fool's Day here. To believe, or not to believe?
I hate April Fool's Day.
If you were feeling really cynical, you might say that Crocker got his revenge on Phelps. But we're not cynical! And we love Teh Crockah!
To believe, or not to believe?
To believe or not believe what?
After having clicked on way more swim-related stuff over the past few days than I ever thought I would, I have discovered that there are some serious swimfans in the world. Mash-up vids of Phelps and soap opera hotties over love songs, Ian Crocker icons with romantic-foggy pics overlaid in great number--I guess I'm surprised that the commentary on them is not "OMG, what a hot body" but more like, fans imagining these guys could be their boyfriends.
Grad students objectify, teenagers dream.
Well, to believe or not to believe anything at all today, but specifically that the USA was disqualified in the heats of the men's 4x100 medley relay.
I mean, it's pretty likely, swimming is pretty serious, but I've always sort of suspected that one day Australasia will take advantage of being 10+ hours ahead of anywhere important and perpetrate some kind of giant April Fool's effort about something important, like swimming world championships.
Ah. Unless you mean the Aussies tampered with the clock, then I can tell you it really happened, since I was watching the live stream when he did it and they announced it.
Grad students objectify, teenagers dream.
Hm. Maybe it's possible to figure out which teenagers will eventually be grad students by measuring this, because I was a much worse objectifier at 16 than I am now. I remember being puzzled by the girls who said, "Yes, but I really totally am going to marry Christian Slater, so shut up."
Apparently, he went four hundredths early and you're allowed three hundredths, so in fact he blew it by one hundredth of a second. Poor, poor Crockah.
AWB, I think it might just be the difference between the ones with a clue and the ones without. Another in the long list of reasons to be not very bright and not very clear-headed.
Well, we'll get you all someday, even if it isn't today.
As for breaks, in general it seems to be regarded as an outbreak of rookiedom, but Ian Thorpe managed to half dive and half fall into the pool trying to qualify for the Australian team for the 2004 Olympics, so it happens at high levels.
For relays the best I can recall (and for an Australian I'm only sort of moderately a swim fan, I might not even watch to see if Hackett can, all evidence to the contrary, win the 1500m) was the women's 4x200m freestyle at the 2001 world championships. Australia came first and was disqualified for all jumping in the pool to celebrate before the last team had actually finished. The USA came second and was disqualified for one swimmer breaking three hundredths of a second early, but were reinstated sometime after the championships after a successful appeal. I'm not sure if Australia appealed, probably not since it's pretty damn hard to argue that you all accidentally jumped in the pool but we sure did whine a lot.
I do feel super-bad for Teh Crockah. If it were a single-man event, it would be awful enough.
American freestyler Neil Walker was philosophical after ruining Phelps' chances for a record haul.
Ah, the consolation of philosophy.
My first college boyfriend was a swimmer. From what I could tell, it was a really bad sport for people prone to self-loathing. There's so many different things you can attribute a loss to--bad start, bad strokes, bad turns, bad finish. In how many sports is it normal to show every teammate a video of themselves at every single moment of their performance, not doing as well as they could? It had a kind of freaky effect on him, and he started meticulously analyzing every part of his life with the same rigor.
Perhaps it is this way because there can be nothing and no one else to blame a bad performance on? There's no wind, no teammates, etc.
"no teammates" at least in non-relay situations.
Interesting. I've never swum competitively, but this makes me think that I'm right to tell people that the sport swimming most resembles is golf. That's another sport where people make videotapes of their own form and break down each little piece. They also go nuts generally about technique. It seems to be common to sports where you need to repeat a whole-body motion in precisely the same way every time. There's endless opportunity for analysis. Golf is like that, as is swimming, and baseball pitchers are like this too; batters less so, but they do it too.
Tennis too, I think. But in all those sports, the repeatedly analyable moment is rather short--after that, at least baseball and tennis become about reaction times and quick thinking as well as repeatable movement. Swimming may be the only sport in which, for the duration of the entire event, every movement must be carefully perfected and thought out ahead of time. Something about watching one of those interviews with Phelps in which he talks about knowing exactly how many strokes it takes took me back to talking with John about his swims. Then he'd describe his coursework in almost exactly the same terms. It was a bit eerie, as if he wanted nothing in his life that he couldn't could the strokes of before it happened.
Runners, especially sprinters, work on their form like this. Hurdlers count their steps (even in the steeplechase). And bike riders who have to focus on time trials - either as specialists in the event or because it's important to time trial well to have a chance of winning the big tours - often make use of wind tunnels along with regular video.
Also, are the US men's swimming relays trying to imitate the men's track relays? This is like dropping the baton.
Oh, duh, eb. You'd think I'd remember that, since it's how I finally learned to run, with obsessive attention to muscle tensions, etc. I guess I've blocked it out, having been totally lazy about running for the past six months.
Muscle tensions? Wind Tunnels? Golf???
You've all blown your collective load and turned into old men. We can't every day, but this is just pitiful. Hicks has a gag order! The Iranians have several sexy sailors! Outrage or sexual speculation must ensue; I demand it.
sports where you need to repeat a whole-body motion in precisely the same way every time
rowing
False starting happens; I don't know that it can be considered a rookie mistake. It can also be the fault of the person coming in - you have to commit to going when they are still a stroke or more out from the wall. If they short-stroke on the finish, you're screwed. I mean, you'd rather not do it, but you'd also rather not lose by a tenth of a second because your start was slower than it had to be...
Being in the middle is also nice because you can see most of the other people in the pool, and you can most easily see the ones who are seeded closest to you. But it allows the concept of "outside smoke", where you can pull out a big lead in lane 1 or 8 before people realize what's going on.
Oh, but false starting in the morning on a relay where you know you're going to qualify well for the finals is a bit of a brain-dead move. I'd still be interested to see a video of the start to see if the breaststroker botched the finish - breaststroke is the easiest stroke to do so in.
They also go nuts generally about technique. It seems to be common to sports where you need to repeat a whole-body motion in precisely the same way every time.
Bowling too. That's why bowling, golf, and swimming are so enthralling.
From what I could tell, it was a really bad sport for people prone to self-loathing.
"Bad" S/B "good".
People false start. It happens. Nobody is going to be more pissed than Crocker.
as if he wanted nothing in his life that he couldn't could the strokes of before it happened
He really should vary stroke and technique, or else he might not be able to finish with any given partner.
"Hm, 120 strokes is usually enough for AWB. I'll have to look at the films to see what I'm doing wrong.
college ball sucks
Still more interesting to watch than a bunch of guys swimming.