A closing thought or two on the Olympics

Highlight: Women's marathon.
Lowlight: Dropped batons all around in the 4x100 relays. I know, it's super hard! But that's what practice and teamwork are far. This is why - besides not being a fantastic sprinter - I liked the 4x400 better: No need for a blind baton pass. And enough with calling it "the stick" already.
Top rule change to ditch: No ties in gymnastics. They must be short on dough if they can't afford two gold medals when there's a tie.
Top rule change to make: Relay teams need to be pared down. I would prefer teams be limited to four members, with no alternates, for the whole competition. I could live with four plus an alternate, but why compromise?
Top TV highlight: Mary Carillo's acupuncture and kite-flying reports, followed by Bob Costas' interview of George Bush.
Wish they'd covered it: Men's 800 meter run. Seriously, it would only have taken a couple of minutes.

All in all, an entertaining couple of weeks.

Music for the summertime, which it isn't in my town

I think I heard this in a commercial during the Olympics, but I can't recall for sure.

Speaking of, how about Insane Bolt? Damn! He made Michael Johnson look a little pokey, but I suppose he makes everyone look a little pokey.

I'm still voting for the women's marathon as my favorite event so far - Bolt and Phelps are awe-inspiring, but their races are so short I don't think you get the same impression of domination that the marathon had, especially being as the Romanian with the ever-changing name (Constantina Tomescu-dita or Tomescu-Dita or Dita-Tomescu, depending on who's talking) made her move on Ms. Domination, Catherine Ndereba, and the rest of the leaders with 10 miles - 10 miles! - to go. A great race.

Olympic fun

OK, Michael Phelps is obviously awesome, and a Tunisian won the 1,500, but although swimming is now my sport, my first true love is distance running, and for me, the highlight - the moment that made my hair stand on end - was Constantina Tomescu-Dita's marathon win.

When she made her move about halfway through the race, the announcers rightly expressed some doubts about how things would turn out, but she just kept it up and kept it up. And kept it up. Damn!

I was watching a documentary on ESPN about a mixed martial arts wanker who is suspected of being a big-time robber, and at one point, a coach-like guy said if the MMA dude was really the big-time robber, he had "brass ones."

Yeah, maybe, but Tomescu-Dita showed a lot more chutzpa than any of those slap-fest pissants. She was brilliant.

On a side note, I'm getting tired of NBC's fake-o pronouncements about how their coverage is "live." I'm sorry, if they're live, USA Today is the best prognosticator of results in history.