Olympic ponderings

Thoughts from me, Amanda, Brett, and Iddo on the Olympics from Monday through Thursday night. Because we are awesome Olympic commentators. Enjoy! Also, clearly I should do these more often because this one gets long.

There’s a German men’s beach volleyball player with a fun white hat.

The Olympics is the place to be undefeated if you’re going to be undefeated. Walsh Jennings picked her undefeated place well.

I saw an article that would show me the 20 most beautiful female athletes. The photos gave no indication of their sports. And they’d never do an article like that for the male athletes. If they did, it would be obvious what their sports were. Amanda saw an article about Phelps balancing swimming and fatherhood, which was a nice change. It would be nice if they brought up Olympic fathers as much as they do mothers. Parenthood doesn’t do the same to their bodies that it does to the moms, but it’s still an adjustment. Also, the male gymnasts should have to do their floor routines to music too. And what’s with the beach volleyball uniforms? Men are decently covered, but there’s just way too much cleavage for sand to get into, both front and back, for sand to get in for my taste, and way too many wedgie pickings per point compared to any other sport.

We had to figure out why they were listing Cammile Adams as “N. Adams” in the overlay on her lanes on Tuesday. Turns out her first name is Natalie. And in the process we discovered that she has a twin sister named Ashley. So then I had to figure out who the multiples are at the Olympics. This is what I’ve found out so far:
– Cammile Adams (USA, swimming). Her sister Ashley isn’t in the Olympics.
– Leila, Linna, and Lily Luik (Estonia, marathon)
– Lucija and Ana Zaninović (Croatia, taekwondo)
– Monica Rokhman (USA, rhythmic gymnastics). Her sister Jenny is the team alternate
– Bia and Branca Feres (Brazil, synchronized swimming)
– Jonathan and Kevin Borlee (Belgium, track and field). Younger brother Dylan and older sister Olivia are also competing.
– Lisa and Anna Hahner (Germany, marathon)
– Sanne and Lieke Wevers (Netherlands, gymnastics)
– Sven and Lars Bender (Germany, soccer)
– Megan Rapinoe (USA, soccer). Twin sister isn’t in the Olympics.
– Roger Federer (Switzerland, tennis). Not a twin himself, but he has two sets of twins.
– Conor Dwyer (USA, swimming). Twin brother isn’t in the Olympics.
– Niall Williams (New Zealand, rugby). Twin sister isn’t in the Olympics. Her older brother is on the men’s rugby team.
– Eirini-Marina and Anna-Maria Alexandri (Austria, synchronized swimming). Triplet sister Vaso also swims, but it’s a pairs event.
– Alexandra and Yekaterina Nemich (Kazakhstan, synchronized swimming)
– Nada and Nehal Saafan (Egypt, synchronized swimming)
– Etel and Sofia Sanchez (Argentina, synchronized swimming)
– Felipe and Daniel Sancery (Brazil, rubgy)
– Katherine and Michelle Plouffe (Canada, basketball)

We didn’t have to look up that Cammile Adams is a Texas A&M Aggie though. She gave that away with a “gig ’em” at the end of an interview.

Cupping. It’s weird. And we don’t really need videos of anyone, athlete or news commentator, getting it done.

Phelps broke a 2,168 year-old Olympic record. I didn’t even know records from the ancient Olympics existed like that.

Watching handball and water polo it occurred to me that the only difference is the uniform and the playing surface. Iddo prefers water polo.

Slow-motion side-breathing in the butterfly stroke looks funny.

We discussed apparating licenses and time turners to be able to see different events. Unfortunately all the time turners were destroyed. But you’d think they’d be able to make more. It’s probably very complicated and regulated magic, but it has to be possible.

The gusto of Olympic parents is fun. Ledecky’s dad pushing her on from the stands was great.

Phelps’ shoulders are unreal. When he flaps his wings on the starting block – that’s not natural. I told Amanda I wished my shoulders were as loose as his and she suggested cupping. We don’t have any cups so I’ll just have to settle for spooning.

Lochte’s hair looks weird. We’ve decided that’s what he was going for.

Rio has a very distinctive accent. It’s fun to hear in the background. I’ve been told it’s the closest Brazilian Portuguese comes to sounding like Portugal Portuguese.

I’m learning just how many gymnastics places are in Tucson because they are all running commercials right now. Iddo likes doing “tricks” as she calls them on the couch so we’re probably going to get her in some type of gymnastics classes soon. Shimri will probably do gymnastics too because he already likes jumping off things so we probably ought to teach him how to do it without getting hurt. The way Shimei dances to any music she hears on the Olympics or commercials she’d probably prefer a dance class.

From Twitter Tuesday night: Medals won by India in the Olympics in 116 years = 26. Medals won by Michael Phelps alone = 25. We are still leading by 1. Jain Hind. #IND

Brett thinks Phelps should sing a different verse the the National Anthem every time. And when he runs out of verses he should go to the drinking song.

Men’s cycling time trials – do they really need people after the finish line indicating to them to slow down?

Wednesday morning the commentator at men’s beach volleyball, “They’re working on the husband and wife area of no communication.” That was a weird, and premeditated based on how smoothly it came, comment. We think he was going for the idea that husbands and wives often don’t need to talk to communicate. But it was an awkward way to say it.

Some of our favorite swimming tweets:
– “REPORTER: What was your strategy? SWIMMER: I tried to swim as fast as possible.” @ddiamond
– “Michael Phelps is the Katie Ledecky of men’s swimming.” @CraigMac
– “Why do we have different swimming strokes in the Olympics? It would be like if we had the 100m dash and then the 100m goofy trot.” @NoahGarfinkel
– “Olympic swimming is really impressive to me cause there’s no other sport that would literally kill me if I tried.” @mdotbrown
– “The swimming events are here to remind us how weird humans look without ears.” @romanmars
– “They need to throw one regular person in the Olympic swimming pool lanes for context.” @EricHutchinson

Me: The tweet about different strokes – I was just wondering why we need breast and butterfly when they aren’t as efficient as freestyle.
Amanda: If I’m ever swimming away from something, I’ll definitely won’t pick breaststroke.
Me: Exactly.

Water polo players never use the breast or butterfly strokes.

Amanda: Lochte references how old he is and how that impacts his swimming/recovery and then the interviewer says “Alright, old man” in closing the interview and he looks surprised and taken aback. Silly boy.
Me: Accurate description of Lochte.
Amanda: Locthe’s career really has been so overshadowed by Phelps. He really does so well, better than most, but Phelps is even better.
Me: Brett was saying how it stinks to break a record but still come in second.

We’d like more coverage of obscure events.

Me: There are very few differences between any team sport involving a ball.
Amanda: It’s like Mexican food. Same ingredients, but wrapped up in different ways.

Watched Smolen in the K1. Go immigrants! He was born in Poland and couldn’t compete in the 2012 Olympics because he wanted to compete as an American and his citizenship wasn’t finalized till February 2013. Iddo watched all the splashings (in the K1). She’s not fond of the kayak because their eyes get wet and she’s not sure how they get out of the boat, but she likes that their feet stay dry. She asked if it was their friends cheering for them.

Iddo keeps wanting to watch the “flipping swimming.” That could mean diving or just the starting blocks of the races. She was demonstrating proper starting block position on our couch Tuesday.

Brett doesn’t feel threatened that I’m incredibly impressed with the physique of the male gymnasts. He was the one who first commented on their guns. And then we figured out that it was a stylized eagle face on the chest of the US male gymnasts, which lead to a reenactment of the National bird argument from “1776”.

Appropriate use of drones – overhead shots during rowing.

Sandra Boynton’s son was in the kayak doubles event and she got a shout out. She’s one of Iddo’s favorite authors but she didn’t really care to pause reading a Magic School Bus book to watch their run.

If you’re doing women’s archery you wear a bucket hat. I’ve already got the hat. I’m almost there. Although I’m a lot better with guns than I am with bows.

From Amanda – Kudos on Judo? Really Al Michaels?

A lot of the athletes make their sports look easy. Not so with windsurfing. That looks HARD!

Slow motion face shots are awesome!

Indoor cyclists have aerodynamic socks. I have a lot of fun socks, but I’m pretty sure none of them are aerodynamic.

I think I could get into watching rugby. It’s faster than soccer and football. And I definitely like it better than basketball right now. I’m rather turned off by the NBA. The whole league seems really full of themselves. They’re too individualistic for being a team sport. I had to watch the end of the Fiji vs. Great Britain gold medal game not because the end was in doubt but because it was going to be the country’s first ever Olympic medal and that was just awesome.

Iddo tried playing field hockey with a Boomwhacker and a Portuguese alphabet block.

There was a British 50m freestyle swimmer named B. Proud. That’s the perfect Olympian name.

Before age 7 or 8 children have a fixed and absolute view of morality. Things are either right or wrong and intent does not matter. So I’ve had fun explaining to Iddo that the water polo players aren’t taking time outs because they were bad and she keeps reminding me that the fencers shouldn’t be hitting or poking people.