The story of the gymnastics tournament is Aly Raisman, Gabby Douglas' heroics notwithstanding.
Aly was not on the radar coming into these games. It was all Jordyn Wieber, and maybe Gabby a distant second. Aly was considered a solid gymnast, but not a significant factor. The drama surrounding Wieber being crowded out of the All-Around was probably misplaced. Aly belonged there, and Wieber didn't. Wieber was in only one individual event final and flamed out. Aly was in two and got a gold and a bronze.
The possible lesson from this is that your solid gymnastics performer may be your go-to for the Olympics. The great challenge of the Olympics is how to handle the nerves. Every Olympic gymnastics meet features a broad array of broken performances in routines that had been performed hundreds of times by these athletes without problem. You need to find the rock that can deliver when it counts. The great Russian team had no rock, they had a number of mercurial athletes who could perform brilliantly on occasion, but no one who was consistently solid.
This is all fine in hindsight, however. The Americans had reason to believe that Jordyn Wieber was that rock, and the Russians may have had reason to believe in their various rocks. You never know until that Olympics spotlights starts shining and everyone who has ignored gymnastics the previous three years and fifty weeks (like me) suddenly pays attention.
Sometimes the game finds you. It found Aly Raisman this last ten days, and she performed like an Olympian.
My Olympics are spent in a 16 day blackout of all media except NBC television. I go to extreme efforts to avoid results spoilers - no radio, no Internet news, no other TV. Antarctica could have blown up, and I wouldn't know it because they don't have an Olympic delegation.
This creates some challenges, because I never watch the broadcasts live. Everything's on DVR so I can speed through the ungodly mountain of commercials, mawkish bios and Team Handball. However, I couldn't manage to avoid the spoiler that Gabby Douglas won the all-around gold, it was huge news.
But thank heavens I didn't hear the result of the US-Canada women's soccer semifinal. That match was EPIC, and if I had heard the result ahead of time, I would have been PISSED!!
I feel bad for Canada because Christine Sinclair does not get the props she deserves and she was so brilliant in the game, and they kind of got jobbed on those calls that led to the third American goal. But I've seen calls like that go for my team and against my team. I'm not shedding any tears over it.
That game was so great, NBC actually pre-empted the first quarter of the US Men's Basketball game to do in-studio analysis of it, and when did that team EVER get pre-empted? Doc Rivers actually joined them for the studio analysis. This is what makes the Olympics so special. When the hell would Doc Rivers get a chance to talk about any other non-basketball sport, let alone women's soccer?
What an amazing swim meet the US had! Sixteen out of 32 golds! Thirty out of 96 total medals! Astounding domination in a modern era of strong international competition. This is not like the NBA pros kicking third-world ass. Swimming has long been very deep in international competitors. Such a dominant showing in swimming is an enormous triumph.
Clearly such results can only be the product of brutally hard work, a laser-like focus and a total disregard of frivolity.
And as if he cares - my apologies to Michael Phelps for prematurely predicting his demise. He reached deep down and pulled out four golds and two silvers in seven events. I'm convinced now. He is the Greatest Olympian of All Time.
As of this writing, I don't know who won the Gold Medal Women's Beach Volleyball match between May-Walsh and Kessy-Ross. I honestly think it's a pick-em call. Both teams were brilliant in their previous matches. I detest NBC's favoring of the May-Walsh team at the expense of Kessy-Ross.
But May-Walsh made an AMAZING play at a crucial moment of the second set against the Chinese team in the semifinals that will make you never doubt their greatness, both as individual competitors and as a team.
If I had to choose sports that I would like to see more of in the Olympics, they would be archery, shooting, wrestling and cycling. There has been plenty of cycling, but mostly only at medal moments. I would hope there's more of this in the next Olympics. Some of these events seem intriguingly close to Rollerball.
I'll write more about the track and field later, but one other thing -- apparently you can litter as long as you're running 26.2 miles.