Ok, so Michael Phelps won 8 gold metals to become the most decorated Olympian ever, the Redeem Team is on pace to destroy the competition, the USA as of today leads the overall metal count. These are all great stories of triumph and success, and to be honest they are all a little trite. Swimming hands outs metals like confetti on new years days, and the USA is actually loosing the gold metal race with China which probably means that they are going to roll their red asses across the Pacific and assimilate the the USA into their Borg-like factory system based on a a wierd combination of capitalism and communism.
Is this history in the making? Probably. Is this the best story of the Olympics? Hell no! The Olympics has always been about making a bunch of money off all the people coming to the host country, and a little thing called friendly international competition. I could write a thesis here about how much I love the Olympics as each sport is actually a little society with simple rules, punishments for breaking said rules, and rewards for being the best. For example in the long jump the rules are simple. Run as fast as you can at a pit of sand and jump as far as you can. If you step on the line it doesn't count, you have three jumps, good luck.
My favorite stories are the ones of the underdog; never the ones of the people that are suppose to win. Rooting against the Yankees is more fun than rooting for them, watching the "Redeem Team" kick the crap out of everyone they play against is a little is boring. I want to see the Kenyan or Nigerian runner who historically should be shooting his neighbors for being a different shade of "dark chocolate", but instead decided he was going to take his long legs and start running. No only would he run well, but he would defy AIDS and so much more just to make it to the Olympics. Then he would continue to eat his Wheaties, and run 26.2 miles faster than anyone else in the world. These are the stories!
Panama finally has it's first gold metal in the history of the Olympics, EVER! Before this year Panama had two Bronze metals for basically showing up to the games. With a long jump of 8.34 meters Irving Saladino long jumped his way out of one of the toughest neighborhoods in all of Panama into Panamanian sports history with the first gold metal by an central or south american team this year, and the first gold one for Panama. So the rich countries can celebrate celebrate all their gold metals by taking the winners out for a "good job pizza", but I'll be dancing in the streets on August 21 with the rest of Panama City to the hero's welcome for Saladino as if he had single-handedly stopped the Russian invasion of Georgia.
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