Olympic Watch II

The Olympics have reached their half-way point and these have been my three personal highlights.

1. Michael Phelps' 7 Gold medals - he now has 13 Gold Medals overall in his Olympic Career. Phelp's last race the 100-m Butterfly was won by a hairs breadth but such is the nature of the swimming. What is not impressive though is how poorly the archdeacon's of the US Olympic Committee have treated all-time great Mark Spitz - whose seven gold medals at a single Olympics Phelps has just tied. Blogger Debbie Schlussel has more on this.

2. Kristy Coventry from the troubled nation of Zimbabwe winning the 200-m backstroke - she had already won three medals in other events.

3. 9.69 seconds........... Usain Bolt the 21 year old Jamaican literally runs away with the 100m Mens Final and it wasn't even close (he was 2/10ths of a second faster than second place Richard Thompson of Trinidad). World Champion American Tyson Gay failed to qualify for the final - he was carrying an injury - but I doubt whether he even at full health would have been able to stop Bolt (who looked as though he was cruising at the end and could have easily run a sub 9.6 seconds). Bolt can add to this Gold by winning the 200m (his speciality) and the 4 x 100m relay. Here is some old footage of Bolt's earlier world record time of 9.72 seconds that he has of course eclipsed.

4. Roger Federer recovers from an upset loss in the singles to lead Switzerland to Gold in the Men's Tennis Doubles.

5. Swimmer Rebecca Adlington of the UK breaking Janet Evans' 19 year old mark in the 800m freestyle. Evans is arguably the greatest female swimmer of All-Time.