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memo to CNNSI.com, Michael Phelps
please see Sir Steven Fucking Redgrave, and we'll go from there as greatest Olympian
muppet.
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- SuperflyPete
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- Black Barney
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- Sagrilarus
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S.
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- SuperflyPete
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Sagrilarus wrote: I'm surprised there isn't a shooter with more medals than Phelps. They compete for decades.
S.
Just too few events. Fencers, judoka, and even wrestlers often go 3, 4, or 5 Games. Hell, I think badminton and table tennis players go 4+ games, too. If you only get 1 or 2 shots to medal [fencers don't seem to cross-compete much in the 3 different "blade arts"], you just aren't getting anywhere near 20. Diving, gymnastics and track & field are pretty much the only shot you're going to stack up the summer hardware and it sure seems the shelf-life for most of those atheletes has dropped from the dozen+ years it was in the 50s and 60s to barely half that.
WashPost did a good piece on Phelps during the Beijing games that broke down his body as it relates to the physiokinetics (that a word?) of swimming. With that long torso, ape-like arms, and those huge paddles for hands and feet, the man has a very strange build that is closer to a combo of shark and seal than anything human. Was an interesting read.
Back to my fencing coverage....
Edit: And, hell, this is Phelps' 4th Olympics, isn't it? I thought he had 1 or 2 events in 2000, too. That's no small feat in and of itself. The coverage is overbearing, without a doubt [and you don't live in his neighborhood. The coverage here in the Wash-Balt metro area is inescapable], but he's still friggin' good at what he does...
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Black Barney wrote: and don't discount my skillz at TRACK & FIELD. mashmashmashmashmashmash... no one does those hurdles like me
Or playing the 2600 conversion with the joystick. It was like perpendicular masturbation.
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But there are loads of others like Thorpe, Owens, that are well ahead of a guy who dominated only ONE Olympics and won a crap load there.
To say hes "clearly the best Olympian" is, well, sorry, fucking retarded. End of story.
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ldsdbomber wrote: Redgrave only a bit better than Pinsent, the guy won golds in FIVE consecutive olympics in an incredibly demanding aerobic sport. 16 years. I'm not sure it's really possible to comprehend that.
But there are loads of others like Thorpe, Owens, that are well ahead of a guy who dominated only ONE Olympics and won a crap load there.
To say hes "clearly the best Olympian" is, well, sorry, fucking retarded. End of story.
And Pinsent medaled 4 times--rowing in the same boat with Redgrave for all of 'em I believe--and matched his world championship totals gold for gold. So Pinsent was just dead weight that Redgrave hauled around? (More to the point, to talk about Redgrave without talking about Pinsent is kind of insulting. Redgrave didn't win any individual medals; 3 in the pairs; 2 in the 4x. Pinsent and Redgrave were *the* absolutely dominant pair in the sport.)
For the rest, I presume you mean Jesse Owens, who I'm pretty sure competed only in the 1936 games. His performance was phenomenal in that moment but it was far more significant a cultural, vice atheletic, event. Thorpe was an astonishing all-'round athelete but he had precisely 1 (utterly amazing for 1912) appearance at the Games. Carl Lewis is probably the better example when talking about dominating track & field achievements in the modern era (some Finn named Nuurmi, who was a mystery to me before I looked up the stats, would probably be the all-time all 'round summer games "greatest"). Hell, when you look at it, a great many of the "great performances" in swimming and track & field prior to 1972 or so wouldn't even make the olympic team, let alone the medal stand, these days.
As for Phelps, yea, he utterly dominated 1 with 8 medals, but medaled kind of extensively in 2 others, both as an individual and in team competition, in a sport that isn't exactly friggin' archery either. You're right that he's not "the best ever." That is a retarded statment. That said, he's certainly the most decorated, and if it were that easy for swimmers to "win 56 medals" per games, the top half of the all-time list probably wouldn't have been completely dominated by flying pixie gymnasts and track atheletes that also regularly compete in a half-dozen+ events.
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ldsdbomber wrote: Im not demeaning Pinsent, but he didnt get the 5th medal did he. Of course Pinsent is a great olympian but if 2 great olympians competed together and won 4 and one of them won ANOTHER one increasing his span to 4 more years total, I dont see what youre getting at, how can you not put that guy ahead of the other guy? The longevity is the quality I'm arguing makes him great.
Honestly, I wasn't exactly sure what your bottom-line was. I was kind of confused by the one-off names like Owens and Thorpe you subsequently brought up since that had fuck-all to do with longevity. Part of my thing, certainly, is that I apply a bit of a mental asterisk to team/group medals versus individual medals as well as the comptetitive lifespan of the atheletes in many of those sports. (Redgrave was always part of a great team. In much the same way, I have more limited interest in relays versus individual performance.) Retarded perhaps, but that's just the way I look at it. *shrug*
So, yea, we're talking apples and oranges. Sorry...
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ldsdbomber wrote: don't you shrug at me, I get enough of that with Jean Claude at BGG!
Not sure how to respond to being mentioned in the same breath with anyone named Jean Claude [or is that Clearcroak?], so I'll go with "May you spend the rest of your life at the mercies of an Olympic boxing judge!" ;-P
(If you didn't see yesterday's utterly fraudulent Japan-Azerbaijan bantamweight bout, today's Iran-Cuba debacle should seal the deal in everyone's mind that Olympic boxing is actually MORE of a friggin' fraud than pro boxing. I had vague memories that Olympic boxing was kind of a mess [see, e.g., Roy Jones Jr. in '88....] but I didn't think this level of goat-fuckery was actually possible...)
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Summer Olympic Wins:
1996 Bronze road race.
1996 Bronze Individual Time trial.
**Her bike racing outside of the Olympics is even more impressive; she qualified for 2012 London with a broken back.
Winter Olympics:
2002 5000m Speed skating Bronze.
2006 5000m Speed skating Gold.
2006 Team persuit Silver.
2010 5000m Speed Skating Bronze.
She leads the pack of elite few to medal both the Winter & Summer Olympics. She has 6, Christa Luding of East Germany has 5 (She’s the only Olympian in history to win a medal in both consecutively), Jacob Thams of Norway & Eddie Eagen of the US.
Oh, & fuck that Iranian. Dude was holding, this shit should never happen in the first place. The Iranian went on to say that he “always holds, and he’s never been called on it before”. Ref’s need to call more of these boxers out, they are the ones killing this dead horse sport, I say take away the gloves & head gear, give them a line to stand on and go till your fucking toe comes off the line. Last man/woman standing wins.
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