Olympic gold

The 2008 Olympics are in full swing in Beijing, and I've been glued to the coverage all weekend. I saved a medal standings results page as a favorite on my laptop. And believe it or not, I actually have a CD in my car right now with Olympic theme music from John Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra.

In what some are heralding as the best swimming relay of all time, the Americans just took down the French (and everybody else) in the men's 4 X 100 relay, the one swimming event in which the French were heavily favored. In fact, the French were talking some smack, publicly stating pre-race, "The Americans? We're going to smash them. That's why we came here."

It was pretty incredible, and if you haven't yet seen it, make sure you do: http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/share.html?videoid=0811_HD_SWB_HL_L0194. The Americans trailed for most of the latter half of the relay, but anchor Jason Lezak rode the wave of the Frenchman, Bernard, and created an incredible finish. My reaction was about the same as Michael Phelps' above =).

To give you an idea of how fast these swimmers were, consider this: The Swedes, whose 5th place finish didn't even get them close to the podium, still came in with a time under the previous world record. The Americans crushed it by like four seconds!! And to add insult to injury, the world record for fastest split time had been held by the vocal Frenchman, until that too was crushed by Jason Lezak. Who's talkin' now?! =)