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Anyone watch them? It's more entertaining than I thought, currently USA and China are winning, USA with the most medals and China with the most golds.

Yea I watched a little bit of the swimming. Seems like Phelps will be earning a few more world records this year.

I usually watch the olympics, especially this year, because I'm following both phelps and Shawn Johnson who is from Iowa like I am. Phelps is on fire, world record and a gold in all 6 finals so far.

I just saw Phelps swim his 200 meter IM. World record of course. He was a full body-length ahead of everyone else by the end of the event.

He(Phelps) beat the second place person by a full second and near a second and a half.

Nah, I watched the highlights of the opening ceremony and nothing else... although I did hear about one English (yay! even though I support Ireland more in sporting events!) swimmer whose name escapes me, he got 5 golds in 5 races...

I was was going to post an Olympics thread when it started up, but primarily for the opening ceremony, which was done by The Best Director In The World Right Now - No Questions Asked (Zhang Yimou), and was thus mostly, genuinely amazing.

But I've always hated the actual events, as it's nowt but politics, brown bags, and sports which either shouldn't be included, or that no one gives a damn about.

....oh, and Phelps, greatest Olympian? No chance.

Currently, im only watching Handball(Denmark FTW!), Feather(?)weight boxing, tennis, beach volley and Badmington.

Well, Tourist, Phelps has won the most gold medals by one person ever, how is he not the greatest, oh yes, he also set 6 more world records. So he is the greatest olympian ever, statistics.

I watched a few minutes of the opening ceremony then I started to get a little angry about how the Chinese government could spend so much money on this when there's so much poverty in China. Haven't watched any of it since then.

^the most impressive sections were the opening eh.. 'set-pieces', based around the caligraphy of the character Harmony - I don't think I've ever seen anything as impressive as that before. If it were CGI, I would've been impressed, but to find out it was actually people doing that? That was amazing. Oh, and 2000 people doing tai'chi was never going to be anything but beautiful.

King; I thought I editted in my explanation when I posted first, but apparently not.

Swimming; they hand out medals like confetti, which devalues the overall count. Aaaaand... ; that laser suit is nothing but cheating. If the entire field in every event had them, fair enough, but they don't. Real Olympians are track and field, where it all started. Not cheating in a big phat time-trial pool wearing a speedy-suit... I'm cynical, I know, but I'm not the only one who's getting bored with Phelp's record breaking. Every medal he earns in Beijing should be denoted with a caveat, mentioning the suit and the pool.

Well if we have to use the same thing as past olympians we can't use gatorade for track and field because the earlier people didn't have a rehydrating drink. We also can't use those specially designed shoes to run because past people didn't have them. Newer technology comes we have to use it.

Farson wrote:I watched a few minutes of the opening ceremony then I started to get a little angry about how the Chinese government could spend so much money on this when there's so much poverty in China.

Exactly my stand on the whole thing.

Watch out for politics.......

No event has yet to top the opening ceremony....wow...

Phelps is a frickin' machine though man...he's responsible for nearly half of the USA's gold medals!!!! That boy's got a solid Wheaties endorsement deal for life!!!

Man, Shawn lost the all-around gold, I was hoping she'd win, at least she got the silver. Plus the 4 finals left. Looking forward to phelps' final tonight.

Canada is eatin * right now

Personally, I've never liked the Olympics. The only thing left in it now is prestige and money (and that is mostly for the trainers). I also don't like to see people killing themselves over it.

Gymnastics, for example. Once you hit 21, you're trash. Not cause you're too old, no. But you will have premature arthiritis, your bones will hurt, and you're unable to walk normally. And why? All because you pushed yourself (or got pushed) to work so hard. And they certainly get pushed. There were several girls who didn't want to do it any more, but their trainers/family made them. There are girls who wanted to give up gymnastics because of that.

On a second note, ever seen the Chinese gymnasts? I swear that most of them are definately not 16. There have been investigations as well. They found at least three girls who were on a gymnastics team listing ages 8-13. Two weeks later, they appeared on the Olympics with passports saying they are 16.

Sorry about going on about just gymnastics. It was just the only one I kinda glanced at (apart from the shooting one... go Russia!!! silver in shooting an automatic!).

I personally believe that the olympics are the one sporting event that isn't all about prestige and money, and it is truly about the sport for the most part. As well, most of those "I want to give up gymnastics" deals came from Chinese gymnasts who don't have much of a choice anyway.

However, the deal with the chinese gymnasts, it's ridiculous, why does china need to use underage athletes just for gold medals? These olympics for me have kind of been a bit less fun for me, due to the conflicts, and china constantly trying to do whatever they can for golds.

Vesna's right with the underage Chinese gymnasts. There is no plausible way the two in the all-around finals could've been 16. The small one... I forget her name... the announcers described her floor whatcha'ma'callit as her having an amazing smile or somesuch. She looked barely 12. At most 13. The other Chinese finalist I'm not sure about. She looked like she could've been 16 or so. She probably wasn't though.

The thing that really got me about gymnastics was the faulty scoring half the time. Sure they corrected a couple of them... (one very unjustly), but they didn't correct the ones that were obvious to even a common viewer. It was ridiculous.

Lulz@Phelps tying the gold record. I'll pass out pancakes if he gets the 8th gold.

You better make a lot of pancakes. He is going to get that 8th gold...I hope.

Speaking of Gymnastics, my hobby is watching that, then pointing out when they mess up an ending... It's so obvious, they take a second step when they land, and try to incorporate it into the act... that's the best bit of the Olympics

And Phelps gets the 8th!!! (though I slightly agree with Tourist, track and such is much more impressive to me... especially with what's-his-face getting a 9.69... wow. And he could've done better if he wouldn't have slowed down 15 meters early. )

So now I give to you... endless stacks of pancakes. I should really ask Blackhawk to make a pancake emote, lol.

*pulls back a curtain revealing a wide hallway at least 300 meters long, lined on both sides with tables utterly filled with pancake stacks with a small spot on the lower left corner of each table for syrup* Enjoy.

Yeah! For Phelps and our pancakes.

Johnson going for gold tonight, excited for that, really hope she wins.