<p>I agree it’s really somewhat pointless to compare one sport to another and try to decide the “greatest”. How do you compare a swimmer to a gymnast, much less to a skeet shooter. How do we say that 19 medals over 2 Olympics automatically trumps five medals over 5 Olympics? How do we factor in competition to the extent that one year the competition is weak, and the next time we have a Phelps and a Phelpsminusone? What if the winner squeaks by in OR time, while another athlete demolishes the world record in a huge and unexpected level? </p>
<p>And even more, how do you figure in the training and equipment? When you had the totally amateur athletes with old fashioned equipment and no private coaches, how do you measure the performance against our pretty much full-time athletes with computer-designed equipment and full-time personal coaches? In the old marathons, they didn’t even used to have running shoes!</p>
<p>So, as Sebastian Coe said, we can easily judge success, but it’s harder to judge greatness over great spans of time. </p>
<p>I’m all for just saying that athletes like Phelps are unbelievably great, but it just doesn’t make sense to try to compare Phelps to Jesse Owens to Daley Thompson to whomever. I’m just in awe of all of them.</p>
<p>I heard a couple of sports talkers on one of our local radio stations say yesterday morning (and I think it’s true) that every Olympics there’s mass outrage over NBC’s coverage, and they just laugh all the way to the bank because the whole thing is just packaged to give them the highest prime-time ratings–and therefore the highest ad revenue–and it works. Even if people don’t like the coverage, they watch. The hard-core sports fans will watch live online, but then many will come back to watch prime-time coverage; they’re the ones who get most agitated about the way the events are covered in prime-time, but they still watch, and so do millions of casual viewers who don’t get all worked up about things like unreported point totals or missing the third Russian gymnast on the floor exercise after we’ve seen the first two screw up. They have a money-making formula and they know it, and they don’t care what the critics or the true sports fans think of them.</p>
<p>Missypie- Did you ever go to the summer league championship meets at the Dallas School District Pool off of Midway Rd? I think it was called Loos? Those meets were sheer hell. However, the USS meets lasted for entire weekends- starting Friday night- and sometimes they were in Ft. Worth or way south of Dallas. Not to mention TAGS (age group championships) in Austin!</p>
<p>It kills me that online you can ‘watch replay’ for just about every event that was live today except swimming finals, gymnastics, or diving…the things they want you to tune in and watch in prime time tonight. Grrrrr!</p>
<p>Ours were in places like Denton and Mineral Wells. “Be in Mineral Wells at 5:45 am on Saturday morning.” So you kid warms up in the pool from 5:45 to 6 am then sits for three hours until the first event, then another two hours for the next, while you sit in the sun thinking you could die of heatstroke right there in your fold up chair and no one would notice.</p>
<p>The only good thing is that one summer, my youngest - when she was tiny - competed in the butterfly and she always placed because almost no tiny girls could get across the pool in fly. Wish I had video, but I was probably busy having seizures from the heat.</p>
<p>"Summer rec swim team in Texas: the Worst Kid Activity Ever!!! "</p>
<p>I can’t argue with you, but I could have sworn it was soccer in the California central valley. I know the humidity must be the worst, but it gets wicked hot here; easily above 100 for most of the summer season. But if I were honest, I would have to admit I more easily relate to the “choreographed” parents of that girl gymnast. </p>
<p>Most *stressful *kid activity ever was D on balance beam. There were definitely moms (like Nastia’s) who couldn’t watch. Some would look away and get a play by play from another mom. I always said there should be a tank of some sort of sedative that they passed to each mom to breathe as her D was on beam. After that, I always said that nothing a kid of mine did could stress me out…then same D started competitive cheer…almost as stressful as beam. The good thing about that is that it is in the culture of cheer competitions for the parents to all stand up, juimp up and down, clap, etc. while their kids’ team is performing…great release of pressure.</p>
<p>Words spoken by Clara Hughes, with her usual grace and big smile, in her post-time trial race interview today, finishing fifth. I thought that was a great attitude. Two months short of her 40th birthday, this is her final Olympics. Her first was in 1996 and she is the only athlete to ever win multiple medals in both the summer and winter games. Her winter sport is speedskating.</p>
<p>I think there’s a future reality show “Gym Parents”. I thought Ally R’s parents were really obnoxious, the weird clapping Dad (father of Danell) and the nice parents of John Orozco who often slept in their cars at meets due to financial issues.</p>
My brother was a scholarship-level swimmer in college, and even in high school they were doing two-a-days totalling 14,000+ yards (8 miles) in the pool…</p>
<p>By this formula, that would be 32 miles a day of running… can anyone do that?</p>
<p>They are totally different, and not really comparable IMO… swimming is largely upper body, running is lower body.</p>
<p>Who cares if Phelps is the best Olympian or not, the only reason this is even being discussed is because he’s American (sad but true). If he was Polish or Singaporean would we be having this discussion? Probably not, after all how many of you had ever heard of Larisa Latynina before she was being compared to Phelps? I certainly hadn’t.</p>
<p>John always looks so serious, and for parts of today (esp when he was at the very bottom of the standings) looked like the saddest man on earth. I think the financial issues were part of why he felt such pressure…dreams of endorsements to help financially. When you look at the number of very devoted, very talented athletes in all sports, there are so few (at least in the US) who make big money. If a guy is the 8th best basketball or football player in the world, he makes millions. John is the 8th best male gymnast in the world…will he make a penny? (Actually, he is doing the Kellogg’s Tour, so yes, he will.)</p>
<p>They weren’t doing 14000 yards every day in high school. And, yes, I have running friends who run 30-50 miles or more in training on some days. Of course swimming and running are very different, but the general rule for cross-training equivalence is 4 to 1. I didn’t make this up- it is widely accepted. It is not a judgement.</p>