Tossing batting practice….while wondering how citizens from landlocked, mostly cold weather countries like China and the Netherlands get involved in beach volleyball to begin with.

The opening round of beach volleyball was played in pouring rain today, I’m pretty sure that there is no group of athletes more ill prepared to compete in foul weather in these entire Olympics.

I was watching a little bit of rowing, and started falling asleep because the announcer was filled with all the enthusiasm of a golf announcer in the final round of a tournament not involving Tiger, or maybe I was watching the PGA Championship, I’m a little out of it.
Anyways I perked right up when the announcer told me that the Italians had won, followed closely by the Cubans. The concept of Cuban rowers brought about so many questions.
Are these two on the national team because the 1 million fastest rowers in Cuba are currently living in Florida?
Did they decide to dedicate their lives to rowing after being unable to out row the Coast Guard?

I think all differences aside, the Cuban government should have let El Duque and Livan Hernandez don the national colors once again and get in a boat and row. Since neither one can pitch anymore, they might be able to restore some pride.

Today’s random way off the cuff sport, was 10 meter trap shooting in the rain. When the analyst, is getting text messages from the US coach, who is actually in China, as opposed to a studio in NY you know that NBC doesn’t care about you. Or maybe a better sign is hockey analyst Bill Clement is the lead announcer.

It wasn’t a sport conducive to TV, but the puff of smoke that indicated a busted target was pretty cool, albeit somewhat rare, kind of like choosing a Pope.
The event did feature a heartwarming comeback story of a shooter who was unable to train for most of the year because his gun license was taken away from him while he was on trial for battering his girlfriend, whom it turned out had made the entire thing up.
Only in trap shooting can your livelihood be truly jeopardized by the ramblings of a crazy woman.

The Chinese not winning a cycling event is sort of like the US not winning at basketball right? Wait, that’s a poor turn of phrase, how about the US not winning at Women’s basketball?

I guess if the event was the fastest time in gridlock from Tiananmen Square to the Forbidden City, then the Chinese would own it.

Is the goalkeeper in water polo the guy on the team who can’t swim, but is excellent at treading water and flailing his arms like a maniac?
And yes, with the shower cap on (I’m still not sure the need to be aerodynamic in this game by the way) these guys have the look of the “wacky inflatable arm waving tube man” from Family Guy.

Wikipedia and Google answer so many questions I have about these fringe sports, such as how deep is the water in water polo, it’s 2.0 meters which according to online conversion, courtesy of google is 6.5 feet.
Imagine how good Shaq or Yao would be in this sport if the water is only 6.5 feet deep? Better still a 6-10 flame throwing Randy Johnson.


President Bush is just livin the dream right now. He looks like a guy who’s about to retire, but was just told by human resources he better use those personal days or they’ll be gone.
So what does he do? Take a five day trek to China for the Olympics. The real world Corporate America equivalent, would be a five day west coast ballpark tour culminating in a weekend in Vegas.

There’s been a lot of clamor about these new full body speedos in swimming circles. However, I just want to go on record as saying I am 100 percent for them in men’s swimming.

The gender ambiguity of the German gymnastics team is a quaint reminder of the old days when there were more communist countries to root against.

(11:26 p.m.) I wish France were better at sports so I could root against them in more events. But I guess tonight’s relay will have to suffice. Seeing their snooty arrogance get crushed will be rather satisfying.
I give them credit for trash talking though and spicing things up, in an otherwise monotonous event.

(11:31 p.m.) Well, that was even more satisfying than could be imagined, France's anchor surrendered that lead like his grandfather surrendered Paris in 1940.
Granted nobody outside of swimming circles will ever remember this by Thursday, but that brought some excitement to these games, and kept Phelps' hopes for the eight golds alive for one more night.
A feat I think only, Phelps, his parents, and NBC care about.

That’s about it for tonight, but I’ll be sure to watch the badminton singles tomorrow morning, so that you don’t have to.