During the woman’s 3 meter diving final, an American diver had a horrible dive where the water sprayed all over the place. The announcer was stunned and could not resist the following comment:
If surf’s up after the diver enters the water, there’s a problem.
Watching the Olympics I was reminded of Voula Patoulidou’s race in 1992.
For over 80 years, no Greek had won a gold medal in track and field.
I remember because I didn’t actually see the race. I mean, she was a Greek sprinter. Greek sprinters don’t win races. Greek athletes choke on the biggest stages. So I got up and started to walk along the beach in Kamari … and then I heard the cheering, the ecstatic cheering.
A lot of American tourists, I thought. But then I noticed some friends of mine, and they were cheering. So I went up to look, and there it was, Voula Patoulidou had won gold. She had won the gold medal!
I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it. A mistake. It must have been a mistake.
But that was not what made her a legend.
No it was 20 to 30 minutes later when the Greek press was trying to interview her, trying to get her thoughts. And you could see how unbelievably happy she was. She was, literally bouncing off the walls, trying to digest what happened. She was screaming incoherently, trying to say something. And then she grabbed her husband (?) and said the phrase that made her a legend:
Gia tin Ellada, re gamoto!
Which literally means "For Greece damnit", but some things can not be translated. She was looking at the eighty years of failure, of misery, of futility, of Greeks convinced that winning was something other peoples do and said:
Damnit, we too, we Greeks can win.
This was a funny page with a bunch of cute definitions
Phelpsian is the new Beamonesque – Fourth-Place Medal – Olympics – Yahoo! Sports
Michael Phelps — Swimming
Phelpsian. adj. felps-e-in. 1) dominating a competition. Eddie Murphy’s Meet Dave is not a candidate to have a Phelpsian run at next year’s Oscars.
—
Asafa Powell — Track
Powelled. v. pow-uld. 1) to accelerate at a jet-like pace. He Powelled out of the restaurant when the waitress brought the check.
—
Dara Torres — Swimming
Torres. n. tor-ez. 1) calling into question an accomplishment based on unconfirmed speculation of shenanigans. Bryce said he got the bartender’s number, but everyone called Torres on his account of the story.
Right after Michael Phelps won the 8th gold medal, Visa ran an ad congratulating him.
Morgan Freeman in the Visa ad, tried to come up with an adjective to describe what 8 gold medals mean.
And so he said
Well if one gold medal is great and two is incredible, and three is unbelievable, then well, eight is … we’ll have to come up with a way to describe it.
Maybe Phelps teammate came up with the right phrase:
It’s Phelpsian!
One of the more, most?, irritating aspects of today’s search engines is that for all of their bullshit about "content neutrality", they obviously prefer to redirect you to their sites.
So look for an image on Yahoo and you get a whole bunch of flickr pages.
Look for the same image on Google, and flickr doesn’t even exist.
Don’t believe me? Look at a search in yahoo images for Tony
And what happens when I look for Tony on Google images?
No flickr!
A pox on both of their houses!
Andrea Kremer interviews Natalie Coughlin after a backstroke heat where Natalie was once again unable to keep a straight line:
Andrea: So are you having troubles keeping a line because of the ceiling (I mean every other woman in the heat was not weaving like a drunk sailor)
Natalie; It’s something I working on, I guess
Andrea: (why can’t you focus like a serious athlete): Oh.
So Hoff just finished a great performance and Andrea is interviewing her:
Andrea; How were you able to recover after your bronze medal performance in the 400 IM? (I mean you were the favorite and choked)
Katie Hoff (who assumes Andrea is talking about the disappointment of how she swam, implying that she choked, and is visibly irritated): well actually I did quite well in that race, matching a personal best.
Andrea: Oh no, I was talking about your endurance (a visibly freaked out Andrea who is not looking forward to being relegated to interviewing people on the street about the Olynpics)
Katie Hoff: OHHHHHHH… that’s what you meant (Lying bitch, but I’ll give you that out so you can keep your job)
Andrea Kremer in the 2004 Olympics set a new low for sports journalism when she ripped into the women’s gymnastic team after the team competition.
Her interview was so poor, that Bob Costas who was watching it live had his hand over his mouth in shock and said:
Thank’s for that interview, Andrea.
Andrea failed to make an appearance at the Olympics after that.
But she’s back, and we have to got track her Andreaism ….
kathimerini.gr | Η άμυνα «πρόδωσε» την Εθνική
Lost 2-0. Blech.
Apparently things were going well until the last 20 minutes when the Swedes scored twice.
Stargate is one of my favorite shows. And one of my favorite lines in the show is the comparison Col. O’Neill makes between the Jaffa weapons and the Earth weapons.
These are weapons of terror. They are used to terrorize the enemy. Pointing to the P9’s These are weapons of war. They are used to kill the enemy.
This is why we have always defeated every Jaffa in every skirmish we have ever been involved with.