Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Stand up, dammit!

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.

They spent the last eight months firing professionals and replacing them with ideologues.

People are weird.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

Be a wild strawberry.

Not all heroes wear capes.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

The lights are all blinking red.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

No Kings: Americans standing in the way of bad history saying “Oh, Fuck No!”

Innocent people do not delay justice.

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

You are here: Home / Sports / Great Race

Reader Interactions

37Comments

  1. 1.

    Jake

    I suspect this will do?

    Let me ask you something: why is it that you mock posters for not being able to embed links while you don’t seem to know how to use YouTube?

  3. 3.

    Punchy

    As a former competitive swimmer, let me be about the 91st person to say that, yes, the hyperbole is worth it. That was, simply, the best comeback in a relay that I’ve ever seen. You just dont make up a half-body lenght with only 50m to go. Not against the world-record holder.

    Just unreal.

  4. 4.

    DSB

    Slightly OT, but I have to ask, did anyone else watch the USA-China b-ball game and see President Bush “raising the roof”? Really, I didn’t think I could be more ashamed, but he goes and raises the bar once again.

    I really just want a president who will be, you know, presidential.

  5. 5.

    Dave

    DSB,

    I saw it. I thought it couldn’t get worse than his tapping his knee with the American flag in the Opening Ceremonies. I guess I was wrong.

  8. 8.

    jp2

    The NBC site has actually been pretty tremendous. I have a crappy connection but have seen great quality stuff live and on tape as well. (Full soccer games as well – I recommend New Zealand vs. Brazil)

  9. 9.

    mamaph

    I also swam competitively. I was on my feet cheering as I watched the last lap of that race. Absolutely incredible! I was also amazed that four teams were under world record pace going into the last lap. Truly exciting.

  10. 10.

    OriGuy

    The women’s sabre finals were pretty intense, too. Fencing is hard for a spectator because it happens so fast. They did a pretty good job of showing the angles in the replays, although they didn’t use slomo.

  13. 13.

    guyermo

    just to give an idea of how fast that relay was, the top 5 finishers ALL broke the world record set by the Americans either earlier that day or the day previously

  14. 14.

    Tsulagi

    Great Race

    It was, it was. Made all the sweeter by the Brie-eaters’ trash talk before the event.

    USA! USA!

  15. 15.

    bootlegger

    The whole comeback choked me up, but to swim the fastest relay leg ever, by .6 of a second?! Now that, was something special. Lazak blasted off that wall and got into the French Swimmer’s slipstream and actually rides his wave back even with him then just overpowers the Baguette Bragger in the last 15 meters.
    If you’re the French all you can say is “how the fuck can you beat that?”

  16. 16.

    Krista

    Oh for feck’s sake — the video’s not available outside of the U.S.

    Is it available anywhere else? I’d love to see it….

  18. 18.

    Louise

    I always love it when announcers lose their minds over an event that deserves it. I replayed that last leg 5 times just to hear them screaming.

  19. 19.

    Krista

    It’s finally up on YouTube. The quality is crappy, but it’s better than nothing. I couldn’t find anything on CBC’s webpage, unfortunately.

  20. 20.

    Hawise

    Try CBC Olympics- at the bottom of the current videos, click on more videos which takes you to On Demand vidoes. On the right you can choose type- go to sports, down to swimming and click. To the right will be a selection of choices. You want Mens 4×100, it is from when they walk out until it is over, a little heavy on the Canadian swimmers but good coverage overall.

  22. 22.

    gopher2b

    Query:

    I watched it live and the the top five finishers all broke the world record. How is this possible? Are they on the juice? This reminds me a little bit of 2003 when my grandmother starting hitting baseballs out Wrigley.

  23. 23.

    montysano

    Pic of the day

    No, PC.

    This one’s worse.

    Awww, fer Chrissakes I wish I hadn’t seen that.

    I’m a former collegiate volleyball player, and I’m a big May-Treanor/Walsh fan. Kerri Walsh is one of the most stunning and graceful athletes I’ve ever seen.

    I guess that, if the Preznit comes calling, you smile and act nice. Otherwise….. ewwwww.

  24. 24.

    b. hussein canuckistani

    Speaking as an auslander and a heretic, yeah, exciting race, but I was pretty sick of the strutting, posturing and boasting after the first 15 minutes of it. Don’t you have any athletes who can win gracefully?

  25. 25.

    montysano

    Speaking as an auslander and a heretic, yeah, exciting race, but I was pretty sick of the strutting, posturing and boasting after the first 15 minutes of it.

    Yeah, I’m with you. The testosterone-fueled bellowing was a bit much. And, although I’m no prude, I thought Michael Phelps “Hey, look at my pubic bones” semi-nudity was tacky.

    Don’t you have any athletes who can win gracefully?

    See May-Treanor/Walsh above. Class acts all the way.

  26. 26.

    EddieInCA

    b. hussein canuckistani Says:

    Speaking as an auslander and a heretic, yeah, exciting race, but I was pretty sick of the strutting, posturing and boasting after the first 15 minutes of it. Don’t you have any athletes who can win gracefully?

    Yeah… Ian Thorpe won so graciously…

    Sheesh.

  27. 27.

    HyperIon

    I watched it on CBC….infinitely superior to NBC. But I was surprised that they also showed lots of “bellowing”. Not just when the race was over but then later as a kind of re-cap.

    Why do Americans think it is OK to act like an asshole? And why would Canadian broadcasters approve?

  29. 29.

    PeterJ

    Query:

    I watched it live and the the top five finishers all broke the world record. How is this possible? Are they on the juice? This reminds me a little bit of 2003 when my grandmother starting hitting baseballs out Wrigley.

    Answer:

    The reason that they were all breaking the world record is a new swim suit, the LZR Racer. So no illegal substances but I guess you could call it technological doping (and many have).

  30. 30.

    Chris

    Gopher2B —

    The swimming pool is a full meter deeper, greatly reducing the turbulence you have to fight during the turn, which will speed up all the races. Also, the pool has a couple of extra lanes which reduce the waves you need to push through. Add the special swimsuits, and you’re absolutely breaking records.

    Still awesome to watch.

  31. 31.

    asdf

    I watched it live and the the top five finishers all broke the world record. How is this possible? Are they on the juice? This reminds me a little bit of 2003 when my grandmother starting hitting baseballs out Wrigley.

    It has to do with the pool and the new Speedo low drag suits. The Beijing Olympic pool was designed to be a fast pool, it’s deeper, the temperature is different there are gutter on the sides to absorbs the waves.

    Here’s a link talking about it.

    Speaking as an auslander and a heretic, yeah, exciting race, but I was pretty sick of the strutting, posturing and boasting after the first 15 minutes of it. Don’t you have any athletes who can win gracefully?

    The French was the favorite to win and they’ve said the reason they came was to smash the American. With 50m to go, the French have about a body length lead which seem insurmountable and even the announcer said the American will have to settle for silver. With 25m to go the French still lead and the American caught up and beat them by about a hand length. I think as a competitor you’d have to have died of exhaustion not to be pump up and excited, cheering and watching your team mate doing what seemed impossible.

    You can fault them if they were ungracious during the medal ceremony, but I don’t think you can fault them for being pumped up and excited during and right after the race when emotions are running high.

  32. 32.

    iluvsummr

    Anyone know how a non-Intel Mac user (NBC’s site only supports Intel Macs) can view the 4 x 100 relay footage? I have OS X (10.4.11) and Firefox 2/Safari 3.1.2. The CBC content is apparently not available to US viewers (or at least, I can’t view it) and the YouTube video has been pulled. I do have the silverlight plugin.

  33. 33.

    bago

    You need silverlight 2.0 . Apparently they finished it got to beta 2.

    1.0 dropped without out so much a real jit but more as a proof of concept. 1.1 Slammed in a real JIT.

    2.0 Apparently tweaked the xaml, and then looks like they snuck in an abstraction layer between the event system and the animation system. So a lot of autogen code for events and better threading.

    And of course, the big win, Isolated storage, which means you can’t use the flash indexer variant member exploit to bypass code access security, which is the primary vector for infecting a computer with a virus these days.

    Apparently, ActionScript uses explicit CASPOL callouts, rather than implicit caspol callouts on a stack unwind. The EAP exploits were bad enough, but this is much worse.

  34. 34.

    iluvsummr

    bago Says:

    You need silverlight 2.0

    Silverlight 2 can’t be installed on PowerPC. I guess I won’t be viewing any of the MSNBC Olympics videos. Oh well.

  35. 35.

    b. hussein canuckistani

    It must be said, he behaved much better after his third win. Maybe it was just a few bad apples on the relay team.

  36. 36.

    gopher2b

    I didn’t think the celebration was that bad. It was a relay, the were losing up until the last second and they came back. If I get excited enough to fist pump in my room then the people celebrating should be given some leave to whoop it up. Besides, it was the French so they deserve it (even if they didn’t talk shit beforehand).

    I can’t believe a suit makes that much difference. Wow. Another question, all the swimmers seem to swim faster underwater than their actual stroke. Is there a limit on how far they can swim underwater? I’m assuming most of the guys could hold there breath for almost the full first 50 meters.

  37. 37.

    Skippy

    You know, I really wish these video format wars would get resolved. Silverlight, Flash, blah, blah. I’m on a non-Intel Mac, ain’t going to see any Olympics clips.

    In a civilized world someone would scream “To hell with market-driven format wars, how about we establish a standards board, (government or industry, don’t care which) and put an end to this nonsense.

    I know, we might stomp on innovation. But I’m frickin’ sick of innovation, I wanna watch some video!

    Oddly enough, online porn seems to work just fine.

Comments are closed.