Olympic Medal Count or GO Canada GO!

[Kevin]

When professionals were barred from the Olympics, what you'd see is the USSR/China dominate those fields. It's somewhat difficult to go for world championship when you aren't paid by the government to train, and have to work a 9 to 5 job.

I'm not disagreeing with you at all on that, and that is the reason the rules on being a professional were lifted. An interesting note is that based on the rules from even just 30 years ago some folks you might not expect to be considered professionals would bel. Michael Phelps made about $5 million last year due to swimming. Yes, you read that right. It was from endorsements mostly, but he got appearance fees at some meets as well. So that would make Michael Phelps a professional swimmer by the older standards. I believe most of the of the US team would actually have been ineligible based on the older rules actually. But back then it was pretty easy to avoid being a professional swimmer, no one wanted to pay them money to swim. Now there is enough of a market that someone who dominates the sport can make a few million. It's happened in gymnastics as well.

Jim Thorpe wasn't able to compete in an Olympics due to a very obscure issues where he got like $200 from someone (this was before he actually played in the NFL way back when). There have been issues where someone couldn't compete in the Olympics in track and field because they got paid to race a snow mobile. Issues where people ran in 5K race that had prize money but had to sign waivers saying they wouldn't accept if if they won to keep their eligibility. Case like that really put me on the side of being more lax on what you consider a professional.

What made the rules worse is that the IOC had some rules but various countries had other rules. So someone may have been considered a professional by the US but not by the French. Some Americans even played in leagues for various sports in different countries but weren't considered professionals by the US standards in one sport, but were in other sports. There are still messes like that.

But like I stated earlier I'm fine with sports that have major leagues in several countries (soccer, baseball, basketball, hockey, etc) not being in the Olympics. I'm not that bothered by them being included either though. I like to see the extremes of human sports performance and the folks that are in the professional leagues certainly posses that. But as evidenced by the last few major world events in basketball it doesn't always translate to success. The US doesn't have a national team. Prior to 1992 the pulled one together from the college ranks and then played against other national teams and teams that had NBA players on them or players from the European leagues. Then we allowed NBA players on the US team and we put together the "Dream Team" and wafflestomped everyone. But our NBA stars haven't been doing quite as well previously because better teams, with less talent, outplayed us. Or we lost to teams from other countries that had 3 or 4 of their own NBA players + a couple of European League professionals as well and who played together on their national team together frequently. Story lines like that do interest me.

I still say the biggest issue with the Olympics is that it's so hard to actually watch the Olympics. You have to find streaming video to see any actual sport. I did some timing of NBC tonight. They showed 10 minutes of actual competition in a 45 minute span. The other 35 was people talking and comercials. There were 8 different sports with events happening during that time. So what people see of the Olympics is next to nothing.

As to the other issues. I don't get as worked up about the underage kids stuff or even some of the drug issues. It was still pretty cool to see Ben Johnson hopped up on roids go stupidly fast in 88, a 9.79. The medal was of course stripped later. But I remembered that, and when Maurice Greene tied that time, 11 years later, at the world championships in Athens, I found Greene's time even more amazing. I knew a human on roids could go that fast, but someone who wasn't on roids finally did go that fast.

And yeah it's easy to be jaded by all the people who have used roids. There are 2 Americans who were stipped of world records in the 100m dash post 1988 as well. It's easy to believe everyone is using. I kind of like how they are dealing with it for the swimmers this Olympics. They are tested immediately after each swim. They were tested prior to the Olympics, randomly on average about once a week starting back in May. Phelps had 4 tests in one day at the Olympics already. The data from the tests for the swimmers is going to be logged for 5 years as well. Apparently testers have found that some of the new substances that aren't being directly tested for, once they are discovered, can be found by looking at old test data. This isn't always the case, but it has been shown that it can show some stuff up.

Of course I wonder what people 80 years ago would think about some of the nutritional supplements and such that is legal these days.

And of course there is the thought, that even with performance enhancers that would in the long run ruin my body, that I couldn't do what these folks are doing so I'm still amazed. :) Since I watch because I want to be amazed that still works for me, even if it's cheapened.

And of course I'm amazed just by the effort Phelps puts into training. He has been eating a 12,000 calorie a day diet for months and he burns all that off or converts it more muscle as he still sits at only 4% body fat. Burning that many calories every day for months. All that nutrition data that is reported on the food we buy here in the US is based on 2000 calorie diet. I did some calorie watching last week for myself, I only took in 10,000 over 7 days (but then again I don't do a hell of a lot some weeks). It's crazy the work he puts in to be that fast, even if he is using drugs, he is still putting in crazy amounts of work to be that good.

Wow I knew I was gonna ramble but I really went off didn't I? Kudos to you if you read this whole thing. :)