Social Sports - Beach Volleyball and Speed Walking - the Beijing Olympics 2008

The players in both events made these sports look like a lot of fun. I am looking forward to participating in both beach volleyball and speed walking someday after having watched these events on the Olympics. These are attainable endeavors to pursue for the average armchair athlete.

Beach Volleyball - The Americans Get the Gold Medal, Both the Women's Team as Well as the Men's Team

After three sets, the American team of Rogers and Dalhausser completely showed their ability to be gold medalists in beach volleyball to the world. The Brazilian team of Araujo and Magalhaes showed a few signs of a potential win, and actually did win the second set, however, the predictions were true, and Team USA acquires another gold medal to add to their total during the Beijing Olympics.

The Olympic Beach Volleyball competition, the United States versus Georgia was something that could have been discussed during "the dance," rather than as a distraction while we were trying to observe the fast serves and volleys of the four competitors. It looked to me as if the players for Georgia were deliberately throwing the match, sort of dancing around the court while the American players were visibly running and hopping, for the most part.

The team Georgia players were excellent at striking poses and adjusting their sunglasses, which admittedly, did fall off quite frequently during the match. Evidently, more time was spent looking at the sand than where the volleyball was coming from, which is another sign that perhaps little concentration was being made to earning more than the bronze medal by this Olympic team. However, the players on the Georgian team successfully played a game of beach volleyball far superior than that of your average team without exerting themselves a lot.

There were times when the Georgian players did come to life, however, these were, for the most part, after the ball had already been dropped, usually in their court. I failed to see the American player kicking the player for Georgia, however, much noise was made about this, also. I found the commentator's noise about the beach volleyball to be more distracting than informative; and had begun to watch the game with somewhat glazed, albeit critical eyes, noting that the American players were more interested in the post-event performances than in finishing their volleyball match.

Grimacing and acting, the injured player for Team Georgia did some acting that might have earned grade of "pass" for a kung-fu movie screen test about not being injured, then, immediately went back to playing the game, quickly forgetting the supposed injury, apparently. The event was still somewhat entertaining, and the players did begin to run and pace during the last set, of the volleyball match, after it was obvious that the American team would win the match to all present in Beijing. I can hardly wait to watch Geor and Gia, the bronze medalists from the Georgia Team in a few of next season's kung-fu action, thriller and comedy movies, or Children's Television Workshop performances.

You are going to think I am not in my right mind for suggesting this, perhaps, so the indirect approach usually works best. I think that the Olympic judges need to look over that videotape and procure a few sets of infra-red detecting sunglasses for their field-based observers, after seeing how someone from Team Georgia hit a wall on the beach volleyball court. Maybe I'm wrong, perhaps the American did more than a near-miss, however, this is not the only sport that I winced while watching athletes hit some sort of new wall of China that was not there during a performance. As an amateur observer, this is just imagination.

The volleyball players on the United States' team, "The Beasts", versus, Geor and Gia, obviously, fake names for Team Georgia, were both able to throw entire sets, as observed during the last set of the meet, when the American players began flirting with their girlfriends who were observing the game from box seats more than they were paying attention to their supposed sports activities of playing the beach volleyball event. The American team stopped paying attention to their performance, and actually attempted to have Team Georgia catch up after this, while still playing the beach volleyball game.

Thus, during an anticlimactic ending to a somewhat predictable match, the American players move on to the gold medal competition match in beach volleyball, which will be held at the outdoor arena in Beijing. The Georgian players were obviously affected by recent political events, and the American players were obviously affected by the bizarre wall under the court net. We people of the United States are concrete thinkers who think in tangible terms, usually, even, our hopeful gold medalists such as Rogers and Dalhauser, evidently. The Americans need more gold medals.

Tomorrow is the game between Team USA and Team Brazil, which we hope does not turn into a Latin dance competition instead, until after the beach volleyball game is over. We realize that both teams could actually do this while playing a passable beach volleyball game, however, we fans cannot. Take it easy on us out there in TV Land, please. The United States' womens' beach volleyball team has already won the gold medal, and we are hoping that the men's team will be doing the same tonight, when Rogers and Dalhausser from the United States face Araujo and Magalhaes from Brazil.

Next year, we can watch the dance routines on programs like Dancing with the Stars, or So You Wanna Dance? featuring dancers in athletic costumes portraying athletes, doing dances such as the samba, rhumba, and tango while using a volleyball as a prop. This year, we hope to see our athletes for the beach volleyball men's team, Rogers and Dalhausser, bring back the gold medal for us.

The 22 kilometer walk

The 22 kilometer walk, became a duck walk in the big duck pond with commentators quacking the entire time for Olga Kamininski, the gold medalist, due to rain.More people should be trying to walk like this, especially given the gasoline shortage. I do not know the names of the Norwegian, Italian, Chinese or Spanish competitors, and thought that the competitor from Belarus did a most excellent job of doing the necessary task, and no more than was necessary, then dropped back to a respectable finish, purposefully.

After the spill of Lolo Jones, during the track hurdles at the 9th hurdle, a lot of people were certain that someone would fall during the race, especially, given the rain, evidently. Maybe the bad luck for Olga Kamininsky was rained out, thus, nothing interfered with her obvious superiority to the other co-runners during this Olympic event, the 22 kilometer walk. Her performance during the race was good enough that this could have been labeled a mass hallucination.

However, there were no mishaps, and the person who was in the best form for the race clearly won, despite the fact that the gold medalist contender was somewhat visibly upset that nobody else was in the running for the gold medal for most of the race.

The rules to the competition of speedwalking are simple, although, difficult to do, one foot on the pavement, the other foot off the pavement, no skating, no jogging. A few of the ladies were given yellow, and then red flags for jogging, nobody on the field was skating, luckily.

Many viewers were surprised that there were no collisions on the course, and the entire pack was very well-behaved. Olga Kamininski made history, and she was well-behaved on the track, obviously. If we could manage to emulate this athlete's behavior, next time, we might need to "raise the bar". Team USA, despite all those walking tracks in places like Florida and California, was nowhere to be seen in the top speed walkers during the 22 kilometer race, let alone the medalists, during this Beijing 2008 Olympic race.

We saw lots of flags and fans and umbrellas on the track today, and the aerial cameras that showed the well-oiled machines racing were unable to catch more than the finale of the race, which Olga Kamininski won without falling down, at the end of the track, to carry away the Olympic gold medal with a different sort of a red, white, and blue style.

The people tumbling down after crossing the finish line were not acting, doing 22 kilometers (about 10 miles) in less than one and a half hours is not an easy thing for a human sprinter to do, let alone a walker. The judges were quacking a lot during the race, making a lot of noise, maybe it was the rain, however, I think that the judges were excited by the spectacle of Olga Kamininski, who was almost a full minute ahead of the best of the pack for most of the race.

The Olympics in General

The Olympics happen every four years. This is the international competition. There are many competitive sports covered in the Olympics. These include archery, soccer, swimming, track and field, weightlifting, horseback riding, gymnastics, volleyball, baseball, archery, wrestling and other sports. There are team sports activities, solo activities, and couple athlete activities covered in the Olympics.

The Olympics are highly competitive. Athletes compete for medals, the bronze, the silver, and, especially for the gold medal, which is given to a first-place athlete. Infrequently, there is a tie for first place in a given competition for a contest. More often, there is a tie for second or third place, for the silver medal, or for the bronze medal. If there is a tie, the judges will do a tie-breaker for the gold medal.

The Olympics are covered in print, website, radio, as well as by television media. In some nations, the way of watching the Olympics is by way of town square television, this is similar to the pay-per-view coverage offered at many sports pubs or in some casinos.

Magazines such as Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, and newspapers such as USA Today or your local paper will be covering the event. There are souvenir magazines being sold at the Olympics in many languages.

Tonight there will be more track and field events, measured in various meters, as well as tomorrow. There is much about track and field in the Olympics, such as running, pole vaulting, and the decathlon. The women's running competitions contained a few surprises, the track and field surprises were almost predictable, though.

I had trouble keeping track of all the BMX competitors, and the BMX competitors apparently were having trouble keeping track of each other, also, which proves that the elimination round might have been a bit too crowded of a field, for the cyclists. Maybe we should be thankful that nobody was seriously injured during the BMX competition at the Olympics.

Tomorrow, there will be women's beach volleyball, women's water polo, as well as other events. Team USA received the gold medal for the ladies team, I did not watch this event, though. The semi-finals will be Brazil, Germany, Japan, and the United States in the soccer competition.

Athletes in the Olympics, the Olympic athletes are well-trained, highly measured competition machines who are given a number of tests prior to competing in the athletic competition called the Olympics. This is true in the case of the Beijing Olympics, as well as in all of the other Olympics.

Judges in the Olympics are highly scrutinized and criticized people. Every point, every 1/10th of a point for an Olympic grade in performance sports is highly contested. Sports activities such as weightlifting rely on the judgment calls of the Olympic judges.

In every Olympics, a few athletes are thrown out of the competition for behaviors such as steroids use, a few athletes perform worse than expected, and a few athletes outperform all expectations. However, we need to be certain that every measure of security is maintained for the athletes who are on the field, more than micro-manage drug testing to the point where the intake of a bite of a poppy-seed bagel can be measured.

A matter of much discussion and confusion is the new Olympic scoring system for gymnastics. Without knowing or understanding the system, it was still easy to watch the Chinese athlete, with a slightly more balanced and powerful performance narrowly win over the Korean athlete, whose Little and nimble movements only led to a slightly more orbital landing from the parallel beam bars. The athlete from Uzbekistan appeared to be content to win the bronze medal. The rules for gymnastics will be changing again this year, as usual, the rules to the gymnastics competition are continually changing. I'm way too wound up in the gymnasts emotionally to be able to judge this.

Studies of Olympic athletes show that overall, the bronze medalists are happier than the silver medalists are. This was discussed in detail by the MS NBC commentators. The United States gymnast who won the silver medal was apparently in shock, he was not ecstatic over winning the silver medal, as this parallel bar performer was not smiling, nor was he jumping up and down for joy. Excuse me for being sardonic about the contentment of winning the silver.

I wonder if there was a script for the men's beach volleyball game competition. Do you really want a volley-by-volley replay of the game itself, if so, look on MS NBC for the video. Maybe you can get a detail of the wall-slamming by both the Georgian player and the American player.

Many other people who are writers for Associated Content are watching the Olympics also. A few of these people are writing stories about the Olympic Games in Beijing.

Sources: MS NBC, website; MS NBC, Olympic Games, television broadcast; Beijing Olympics, website; Beijing Olympics in Chinese, website; Beijing Olympics in French, website; Beijing Olympics, Wikipedia, website; United States Women's Volleyball results, MSNBC, website; Georgian alphabet, Omniglot, website; Spanish-language description of Olympic line-up Beijing 2008, website