Top 10 Olympic moments

Posted Aug 26, 2008 by Erik Erlendsson

Updated Aug 26, 2008 at 11:02 PM

I know many of you have been waiting with bated breath anticipating the next installment of the Top 10 list here at Bolts Report, so as I started to see some faces around the area begin to turn blue - I may even have seen a few darken that shade to a slight purple today - I figured I better bolt into action (pun intended) and put fingers to keyboard.

Of course, as tends to be the case lately, plans today were disrupted as I had to make a run to the pediatrician for a case of strepp throat for my oldest son that totally threw out of whack my plans to get something up this morning before heading downtown for a meeting. So, needless to say, this is about 12 hours later than I had planned.

Now, the reason I decided to go off topic here is because I am an Olympic junkie. I love watching the Olympics, and watch them I do. Field Hockey? Yup, I watched a USA Women’s relegation game online. Team Handball? Yup, caught an exciting finish in the women’s semifinals in which Korea rallied from down three late to tie the game, only to have Norway score just as time expired. Showjumping . . . synchronized swimming . . . trampoline . . . team rhythmic gymnastics - I watched some part of all of them. That, of course, is in addition to the prime time events shown on NBC featuring swimming, beach volleyball, gymnastics, et al. I even stayed up on many of the nights of competition until 2 a.m. or later catching the live events telecast on MSNBC and would immediately turn on the television once my morning calmed down. My wife even hinted to me late last week that maybe now I’ll get some things done around the house now that the Olympics are over. She may be right. But then again, she may be wrong.

And before I get to the list, I wanted to give a shout out to the men’s team handball team from Iceland for capturing the silver medal. As some may guess from my surname, my Scandanavian roots are tied directly to Iceland, where my father was born and raised (no, I’m not from Iceland directly, I was born in Gloucester, Mass.). And I know many of my relatives take a gander at this blog from time to time, so I wanted to just say “Way to go’‘. Winning a silver medal in a team sport in the Olympics for a nation of roughly 300,000 is quite an accomplishment.

My top 10 Olympic moments, and they are not all about the glory of victory!

10 - Dara Torres showing sportsmanship - It was a terrific accomplishment for the 41-year-old swimmer to come out of the games with a silver medal in the 50m swim - and she lost by .01 of a second - but the image I will take from Torres came during her semfinal heat in the 50m freestyle. As the swimmers were called to the starting blocks, Torres walked over to a meet official to inform them that one of the swimmers were missing because of a torn swimsuit. The start was delayed slightly to allow the simmer to change and get to the starting blocks. It really was a nice moment.

9 - USA Women’s softball - They were expected to dominate the tournament, and during the preliminaries, they did. But coming away with the silver medal was a shock for this team. And while it may hurt the team to lose the game, the loss may help the sport which will not be on the docket for the 2012 games in London, mainly because the U.S. was considered too superior to the rest of the world on a competitive level. By the way, it may have been a bit melodramatic and it was ripped off from wrestling, but I did like the added touch of the U.S. players leaving their spikes at home plate in what may have been the final Olympic softball game ever.

8 - Henry Cejudo wins gold - In one of the few events I didn’t see at all, Cejudo won a gold medal in wrestling to complete a fairy tale story as the son of undocumented Mexican immigrants who goes on to win an Olympic gold for the USA. Talk about a compelling story.

7 - USA relays drop the ball - Actually, they dropped the baton. Both the men and women fail to qualify for the 4x relay race after failing to finish their qualifying heats and dropping the baton. Of course, after watching the Jamaican sprinters put on a clinic in the individual sprints, it probably wouldn’t have been much of a final had the Americans qualified anyway.

6 - Beach volleyball - It was the talk of the 2004 Olympics, especially the Walsh-May-Treanor women’s team, and this year was no exception. This year, add the Todd Rogers-Brad Dalhousser team to that list. My son was even asking me each night whether these guys were still alive in the tournament. I had to tape the quarterfinal last set, in which they fell behind 6-0 to Switzerland before rallying for the victory, so he could watch it the next morning. It certainly was compelling.

5 - Men’s gymnastics - With the Hamm brothers out of the competition, the U.S. team wasn’t expected to be a factor in the team competition. So even though they faltered badly in the final two rotations, including a near disastrous choke job on the pommel horse, it was a nice to see their joy and exuberance in winning a bronze medal, an unexpected accomplishment and quite a contrast to the women’s team tears of disappointment in capturing the silver.

4 - Nastia Liukin - She’s America’s new golden girl. Or is she? There is no doubt that NBC was pushing Shawn Johnson, the 16-year-old with the All-American smile who was the defending All-Around champion. Liukin seemed to be almost an afterthought, up until she won the gold in All-Around. I would like to think that there wasn’t a bias against her because of her Russian background. But either way, it was a treat to watch her capture the gold with a style that just screamed grace. Fortunately for NBC, Johnson was the silver medalist and then won a gold on balance beam.

3 - Usain Bolt - Fits in perfectly with this blog, eh? The Jamaican sprinter stole the show at the Bird’s Nest with dominating performances in both sprint races. To watch him just destroy the field in the 100m - how fast would his time have been had he not pulled up at the end? - to shatter the world record was a spectacle we may not witness again. Then, he did it again in the 200m just pulling away from the field with an amazing burst of speed to break a world record many though Michael Johnson would hold for decades. Sure, there will be whispers of performance enhancement, but without knowing much about the drug testing policy, I would say his performance enhancement is the 6-foot-5 frame that allows him to cover so much ground with his long strides.

2 - Michael Phelps - Sure, this maybe should be in the No. 1 spot, but it’s my blog and I’ll list them however I feel. Two images I will take away from these games are Phelps’ reaction when Jason Lezak chased down Alain Bernard in the 4x freestyle relay to help capture the gold. There was just pure passion and excitement in the reaction. Then, duriing the 100m butterfly, as it appeared Phelps would finish second, seeing his mom hold up two fingers in the stands before seeing on the scoreboard that Phelps’ had stolen the race by .01 second was priceless. Phelps is just a freak, and his eight gold medals are an amazing, amazing feat.

1 - Men’s volleyball team - Sure, winning the gold medal is great, but that’s not the story here. It was the fact that the Olympics started with the tragic death of the father-in-law of U.S. men’s coach Hugh McCutcheon in a random attack of violence. McCutcheon’s mother-in-law was also stabbed and hospitalised with serious injuries. McCutcheon missed the first three games, but returned to help lead the team to a gold medal. It’s just a touching story of overcoming tremendous personal adversity and grief to set out to do a job. And McCutcheon was so open about everything and how he dealt with it. Just a story that grabs at the heart.

So there is my list and I leave you this list with this image below - - - - - - -