Athens 2004

[Guest]

[ferdinand_the_yak]

Anyone keeping up to date with the Games? Because of the time difference, most of the interesting events (ie. for me - the swimming) are on at 3am in the morning here in Oz!!!

But I had to set the alarm this morning for the Ian Thorpe/Pieter van den Hoogenband/Michael Phelps/Grant Hackett 200m free showdown - what a spectacular race!!! Did anyone else see it?

[savage727]

Is that the one where the "Thorpepedo" won?

[ferdinand_the_yak]

Yep

Thorpedo - gold, Van den Hoogenband - silver and Phelps - bronze

I think the US is putting too much pressure on Phelps - what about the $1 million he was offered to win 8 gold medals Poor guy is only 19! We're guilty of it in Australia as well - it is like the pressure that is put on Thorpie every time he races, if he does not break a record, everyone is like 'What happened?' even if he won the race!!! I think we need to realise there is only so far that we can push our bodies and not to expect tumbling world records all the time!

[savage727]

Amen to that FTY!  I agree with you 100%!

The relay race was fantastic with the USA coming in first place.  I really thought the Australians were going to catch us near the end with Thorpe!  He is one fantastic swimmer!  

[Goofyjas]

I guess we sorta stole the medal count

Did anyone watch womens softball? 54 2/3 innings SCORELESS? that team is simply amazing.

I cought most of the swimming and gymnastics myself. I do agree about phelps but wow to race 25+ times in that amount of time and walk away with that many medals ( 8 total I think) amazing. one think I do hate is the whole Paul hamm deal withthe gold.. they are giving him so much crap over that here for something that he didnt do wrong

one other thing i didnt like is anyone who qualified could give up there spot for ANYONE else.. like thrope after he DQd himself

overall very good games, went well and I think amazing people competing

[ferdinand_the_yak]

Jas, i agree with you there about the Thorpie-Craig Stevens issue, however, there was immense pressure on Craig to give up his spot - nothing overt, but the pressure on the guy must have been intense! It was kinda like:

 'No OF COURSE we don't want you to give up your position to THORPIE the WORLD CHAMPION and MULTI-WORLD RECORD HOLDER who IF he could swim would carry the dreams of  nation on his shoulders and would win the GOLD MEDAL!!! But really, you shouldn't have to give up your position!'

The truth of the matter is that he would not have gotten a medal and together with that I think the intense pressure the country put on him made him stand aside - I admire him for that. The backlash if he did not win anything and if Thorpie were to lose his 7 year hold on the 400m freestyle would have been tremendous here! But we are not all like that, there were many people who disagreed with the majority including Dawn Fraser (a world class Ausssie swimmer herself in the 1960s)