Well, I feel the USA is having a mixed Olympics. There are really good days and some bad ones too. The best days so far were Tuesday July 31 and Wednesday August 1 followed by Friday August 3 and Saturday August 4 when the USA swim team started winning medals and the USA women's gymnastics team won gold. The first few days the USA fell behind the Chinese in medals and gold medals, then caught them and now that swimming is over, may fall behind the Chinese again. USA swimming won 30 medals, 16 of them gold.
Team USA's worst days were Saturday, July 28, Sunday July 29 and Monday July 30 where Michael Phelps failed to medal and the USA men's gymnastics team finished 5th.
On Day 10 USA men's track failed to advance anyone to the finals of the men's 400M. We would lose 3 medals alone on that event as I believe we swept that event in Beijing.
USA swimming started out slow and finished strong with Michael Phelps winning 4 gold and 2 silver medals. Missy Franklin had 4 gold and 1 bronze. Allison Schmitt had 3 gold 1 silver and 1 bronze. Ryan Lochte had 2 gold 2 silver and 1 bronze.
In my predictions earlier I estimated the Chinese would have 95 total medals, 34 of them gold. After Day 10 the Chinese already have 30 gold and 61 total medals and lead the USA 61-60 in total medals. The Chinese may win more gold than the USA but I'm confident the USA will win more total medals than China on the strength of team sports like basketball, volleyball and beach volleyball. We could pick up 4-5 gold medals that won't be decided until the last 2 days of the games.
Its hard to tell if my predictions for the USA winning 103 total medals will be correct. The USA is on a pace to win more than the 41 gold I predicted. The USA could struggle to win gold in Track and Field as evidence by the only gold out of 7 total medals the USA has won in the first 3 days of Track and Field.
Great Britain has already won 16 gold and I predicted 27 total gold and the British are well on their way to that mark and the 37 total medals won by Great Britain in the first 10 days are well on their way to the 65 total medals won that I predicted.
In the men's 100M I was off by .01 of a second as Usain Bolt won in 9.63 seconds and I predicted 9.62 seconds.
I also wanted to comment on NBC's Olympic coverage which I always thought was great until this Olympics. When NBC decides not to show a beach volleyball or indoor volleyball game during the day and decide to air it in prime time NBC cuts and pastes parts of sets together. NBC did that in the USA men's volleyball match vs. Brazil on August 2. They skipped the first 2 sets, joined midway through the third and televised the rest of the third set then skipped some of the final set and televised the last part of the set. In all NBC televised about one set out of 4 total sets.
NBC has done this in 2 beach volleyball sets involving Misty May Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings the past 2 nights. NBC tries to fool us by starting with a 0-0 score then takes a commercial and when they come back the action has progessed considerably in that set missing up to 10 points on each side. I would prefer if NBC aired these matches live in the afternoon instead of primetime so we can see the whole volleyball match instead of bits and pieces.
Also NBC has shown live studio interviews with Michael Phelps and other Olympians which is fine but when track and field gets pushed to late night as evidenced by Sanya Richards Ross gold medal ceremony tonight/this morning I feel NBC's coverage is not as balanced as it was in past Olympics. It should have aired in prime time. There was no track and field at all in late night in Beijing in 2008.
No comments:
Post a Comment