@VaBluebird, Swimming against your idol Michael Phelps while still in high school had to be very exciting. Your son must be an excellent athlete.
I went to the US Olympic speed skating trials back in the 1960’s. The ice rink was at the end of my street in Wilmington, MA so I could walk to it. I was just a kid and a local athlete, Jeanne Ashworth, lapped all the other competitors during one of the races. She finished 3rd in the Olympics in 1960, and 4th in 1964. Russian women finished in the top three spots in 64. But that was before drug testing, so she might have actually been the fastest woman alive.
The show jumping team was announced. Lucy Davis is a year older than my D and grew up here in California and showed her horses on the hunter jumper circuits my D did!
I completely forgot that there were equestrian sports. I have a serious question- are the horses going to be OK in Rio? I know it’s basically a cluster---- right now and some human athletes are just not risking it. Are there going to be proper conditions for the horses down there?
@romanigypsyeyes - I have to assume that the horses will be ok. The people that manage the horses for the teams are top notch and many of the horses are worth in excess of $1 million dollars so I don’t think they would let them go to Rio if there was a high risk to them.
Missypie, one has to be a superhuman to race anything after 200 free. She had 14 minutes or so apparently after qualifying for finals in the 200 and her 100 back final.
Who the bleep scheduled those events?! This is not an age-group meet we are talking about!
I know, BusenBurner - I think she was superhuman 4 years ago (at least younger.) I wondered the same thing. It didn’t seem like such an odd combination of events that no one would be expected to compete in both.
Missypie, I think youth, excitement, and being the “trials underdog” of sorts are the factors that keep the mind from collapsing under physical and psychological pressure. Swimming is brutally mental, and swimming as a defending Olympian is brutal. I remember a local gal, Megan Quann qualify for and win her signature event in the Sydney Olympics when she was a 16-yr old novice. She was never able to repeat that… There are many other examples as well.
Many backstrokers are good freestyles and vice versa, so I am not sure why the order of events was set in this way.
“As much as I care about the health and safety of our human athletes, I’m 10 fold more concerned about our non-human athletes.”
They are valuable property. I’m less worried about them than about the humans. Their owners would not risk them without a lot of reassurance about their care.
Keeping fingers crossed for Nathan!!! I remember seeing him swim when kiddo was swimming age group team and thinking “Wow, that kid is GOOD.”
And Anthony Ervin? Wow.
:)>-
My not-claim-to-fame is that my daughters would have swam against Missy Franklin if they were any good! Missy is a school grade ahead of my two but the same ‘swim age’. Missy was in another group of swim clubs (outdoor, summer season) very near to ours, and I think they would have been at districts together and certainly state. Alas, Missy was huge and good and my kids were pipsqueaks and not great at swimming so never made it to the upper meets. Many of the kids we swam with and went to school with did swim against her and with her in high school. Just a nice kid.
My (former) SIL was a diver and was in the Olympic trials. She was ranked about 6th in her events when only 2 divers went for each event so she didn’t make it. However, that was 1980 and no one went.
I don’t blame the golfers for dropping out. They’d be out on the buggy courses day after day. I saw a piece that it would take them 6 months or so to recover if infected, and they’d lose the entire season and perhaps cost them millions. The inside sports should be fine, but golf, tennis, equestrian, out on fields and courts and courses? I don’t think I’d go. Track and field? They can probably spray the stadium (but not the marathon course). Other things like rifles that require lying on the ground and up against hay bales? I just don’t know.
Twoinanddone, I would not worry about marathoners. I ran one in Alaska, in a wooded park, and even a slowpoke like me was moving too fast for skeeters to dine on! Not a single bug bothered to bite me. Golfers - I perfectly understand them!
I went to high school with Allison Schmitt (swimmer). I honestly don’t even know if she’s competing this year. I’ve been very not plugged in this year!
I did swim in high school but I don’t think she swam for her high school so I wouldn’t have competed against her.
(Yes, we went to hs together even though we went to different high schools who could’ve competed against each other. It’s complicated.)
The zika question also depends on where you are in your life. I didn’t agree with Gabby Douglas saying this:
"It’s up to you,” Douglas said Friday. “Are you going to let it affect you? Or are you going to go over and do your job?”
Gabby is a young, unmarried, childless person who presumably isn’t planning to have kids in the next couple of years. She’s also in a sport where it’s a miracle that she’s even looking at a second Olympics; 2016 is her last shot. If I were a married parent, with a partner I could infect and potential pregnancy to worry about, that’s a level of responsibility that goes way beyond my job. And if I were, say, a male archer or golfer or basketball player where elite careers can last 10+ years, that would change the balance a lot.
IMO, that was pretty classless to say. I didn’t see that so thanks for bringing our attention to it, @Hanna
There are some jobs that you just can’t do for x or y reasons. My dad was a plumber and if there was toxic mold (or something similar), he couldn’t work that job because both of his daughters were asthmatic.
Everyone needs to make the decision about whether or not to go for themselves and shouldn’t be shamed either way.
