Well day 4 of the Olympics is over and again China has found gold medals coming their way and also the great Michael Phelps has bagged himself his 3rd gold medal of the games and his 9th gold of his career.
Well I know everybody and everybody is going on about Phelps but he is nothing short of astonishing, at 23 years of age he currently holds 9 gold medals to his name and I can pretty much guaranty you that in the early hours of tomorrow morning; whilst most of us will be asleep, he will out-swim the 7 others vying for the gold in the 200m butterfly. If he is to go on and win the gold he will make a large piece of history, in becoming the first person ever to have won 10 Olympic Gold medals. What an achievement that would be. The thing that makes this achievement all the more impressive and also all the more scary is what I mentioned before, the guy is only 23 years old. He could potentially go on to another 3 Olympics and be still in his prime.
He is going to make such a big impact in the years to come, he has already jointly got the most gold medals ever won by an Olympian, and by the time he decides to hang up his swimming cap I wouldn’t be surprised if he was wearing 25 Gold medals around his neck. He is already the Michael Schumacher of swimming and in a decade’s time he is going to be the Schumacher/Senna/Fangio of swimming all combined together.
It’s not just the swimming I’ve been interested in watching, today I thoroughly enjoyed watching Gail Emms and Nathan Robertson superbly come back from 12-17 down to win 21-19 in the third and final set of their tie against China’s champions Gao Ling and Zheng Bo. Emms and Robertson won the won the first set convincingly 21-16 and then carried on their dominance into the first half of the second set. When the British pair were leading 8-3 I was thinking ‘ok they have this one wrapped up now’ and I was correct until the second half of the set when the Chinese champs notched it up a few gears and came back to win the set 16-21.
The Chinese started the third set where they left off in the second, dominating the British duo. It was quite annoying to see them picking up the pace and just outwitting the brits but I never gave up hope of a comeback. They could have saved me a near heart attack and come back earlier but like all our athletes we always seem to do things the hard way. The Chinese reached 12-17 and from somewhere Emms and Robertson managed to win seven points in a row to bring the game to a photo finish. The third and final set finished off 21-19 and all I can say is well done Gail and Nathan because they really did try their best and never gave up, which paid off in the end.
So you might be thinking that I’ve just been sitting in front of the tele all day watching our British athletes with their mixed successes over the last few days. Well you may be partly correct but I have been thinking of a few ideas. I watched one brit getting knocked out of the women’s singles archery by other fellow countrywomen. Whilst watching I couldn’t help but come up with a few ideas of how to improve the TV viewer’s excitement, a few of the ideas were simple ideas like the archers should get shot in the face with water if they get a 6 or something similar. Also maybe even get an electric shock if they shoot so poorly to manage a 5 or below. Now you may be thinking well that would be mean to them but I don’t think it will, because I believe it will improve their accuracy somewhat. Also the comedy value of these highly professional athletes making a mockery of themselves.
