>>>>>>>>>>Moving away from doping, how about throwing? As in deliberetly throwing matches?
>>>>>>>>>>http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444226904577562112515755348.html
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>Very un-Olympian, I'm glad they got booted.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>OTOH it's good to see some aspects of the Olympics are 100% reliable: "Still, Locog and the IOC both said tickets to the Tuesday matches wouldn't be refunded."
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>They should be embarrassed. Of course, Olympic committee potentates long ago proved themselves incapable of embarrassment. If you saw their compensation packages or travel arrangements it would make you sick to your stomach. Wouldn't that money be better spent on development programs for young athletes?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>I pass through the West end of London every morning at the moment and see the limousines parked up with the rather haggard looking Olympic potentates being loaded into them. Most look like they've ever done much more than jog to the bar.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>So true. There was a good cartoon in The New Yorker recently (as there always is, or a dozen of them) with a flabby guy sitting on the examination table in a doctor's office. "Is there any history of exercise in your family?" the doctor asks him.
>>>>>
>>>>>For your friday pleasure.
>>>>
>>>>LOL
>>>>
>>>>I have been watching the Olympics the way I watch most sports now. I set the recorder, wait an hour or hour and a half after the start, and then start watching. That way I can fast forward through all the commercials. And boy, are there a lot of them. I have not measured but bet commercials take up close to 15 minutes every hour.
>>>
>>>With the exception of the NFL on Sunday this is how I watch everything now. For me, I skip the commercials, the stories and pontification. I watched last night's 5 hour broadcast in about 1:45. ;) The re-airing of the Phelps interview that had already been shown to close Saturday's broadcast was a quick 35 minutes saved. ;)
>>
>>Yeah, that was really strange. I buzzed right through it, too. I watch many of the stories and enjoy most of them. Mary Carillo has done some nice stuff and so has John McEnroe, much more engaging than I expected. Last night I really enjoyed the closing feature with Missy Franklin and Bob Costas. Man, is she a charmer. Also the feature on Oscar Pistorius. One of the coolest moments of the games so far was when the guy who the 400 semi that knocked Pistorius out came over and asked if they could exchange bibs. They did. I have never seen that in track and field.
>
>We watched the Phelps interview, the puff piece on Franklin and a couple others. We also watched the Pistorius piece which led to an interesting discussion where we agreed to disagree. ;)
>
>Didn't see the bib exchange, was already fast forwarding.

Sometimes when we are too much efficiency experts we miss the best parts ;-)

More on Kirani James, if you fast forwarded through this as well he won the gold yesterday. It was the first Olympic medal for Grenada, an island nation of fewer than a million people previously best known in the Reagan era. At the end of the show Bob Costas related another anecdote about James. He said before the Olympics we sent a crew to do a profile on him, as we do with all high profile contestants. A woman came up to him and asked him to sign an autograph for her daughter. He obliged and wrote, "Sydney, your mom loves you a lot, Kirani James."

The kicker: Kirani James is 19 years old.

UPDATE: http://espn.go.com/olympics/summer/2012/trackandfield/story/_/id/8240833/2012-london-olympics-grenada-kirani-james-runs-away-400-meter-gold

I am definitely going to be left with a circus-has-left-town feeling when the Olympics end on Sunday.